Potential voting woes loom for Super Tuesday

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SUPER TUESDAY

Primaries: AL, AZ, AR, CA, CT, DE, GA, IL, MA, MO, NJ, NY, OK, TN, UT

Caucuses: AK, CO, ID (Dem), KS (Dem), MN, MT (GOP), NM (Dem), ND, WV (GOP 2/3 selected)

Long lines, a shortage of poll workers and unprecedented numbers of mail-in ballots could delay vote counts in the biggest-ever Super Tuesday in American politics — a day in which nearly half the nation will cast ballots.

A record 24 states hold primaries and caucuses Tuesday, the result of a stampede by states to gain prestige and wield clout by moving up voting dates in the Democratic and Republican nominating races for the White House. These all-out charges toward Tuesday provide ample opportunities for confusion and stalled tallies, voting advocates say.

Adding to the list of possible delays: expectations of record-breaking voter turnout in contests expected to be close. Many of the states that moved up primaries have never been involved in one with meaningful impact, often resulting in low turnout in the past, said Tova Wang of The Century Foundation think tank.

So on Super Duper Tuesday, or Tsunami Tuesday, as some also have called it, voters across the country could face a number of difficulties — some new, some reincarnations of elections past.

In their haste to move up primaries, officials in some states appear to have overlooked ordinary facts of life, such as the weather and the advanced age of many poll workers. Cold northeastern states including Connecticut and New York have encountered problems recruiting poll workers because many senior citizens, a sizable percentage of paid volunteers, are still south for the winter. Snow in the middle of winter also could have an impact, especially if there’s bad weather on one end of a state and good weather on the other.

“There’s been a lot of concern about the weather, and poll workers not showing up,” said Wang. “In states where a lot of their senior citizens are snowbirds, counties were having a hard time getting poll volunteers.”

Calling poll workers

A significant shortage of poll workers forced Linda von Nessi, clerk to the Essex County Board of Election in New Jersey, to advertise in local newspapers. “People were either in Florida or they didn’t want to commit because of the possibility of cold weather,” she said. She has added 207 people to replace her diminished ranks. “We’ve never had to hire that many new people,” she said.

But even sunbelt states have felt the pinch. As of Thursday, some California election officials were still recruiting poll workers on their Internet sites.

Super Tuesday “is really like a national primary,” said Doug Chapin of electionline.org, funded by The Pew Center on the States. “And the thing that’s really striking about 2008 is we’re still seeing a tremendous amount of change and a great deal of uncertainty” in the final days leading to Super Tuesday.

If state contests produce tight margins and too-close-to-call races, Chapin said demands for recounts could abound. In New Hampshire, Democrats asked for a recount after Jan. 8 primary results differed widely from pre-election polls.

“If people are unhappy with the results, you may see the same kind of back-and-forth we saw in 2000,” Chapin said, when Florida’s recount went to the U.S. Supreme Court and George W. Bush was declared the victor weeks after the November election.

Expect delays, more work

In California, the most populated state and highest possessor of electoral votes, some election officials have already warned that vote counts will be far later than normal. Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan said record numbers of mail-in ballots and an anticipated deluge of voters could delay final primary results.

Election officials in 21 other counties, including heavily populated Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino and Santa Clara, are struggling to implement what many consider a last-minute shift from controversial electronic machines to paper ballots. The change was mandated after the secretary of state decertified nearly all the state’s electronic voting machines, saying they were vulnerable to errors and sabotage.

In some areas, stacks of paper ballots must be driven to centralized counting facilities and fed by hand into optical scanners. Mail-in ballots, estimated at 40 percent of the vote in Los Angeles County, also must be hand-fed into counting machines. A test run in San Bernardino County showed that scanners could only count 10,000 votes per hour.

Some local elections officials say that could lead to an increase in ballot errors, such as voting twice or leaving races blank. Without those machines at individual precincts, poll workers will not be able to catch mistakes until hours later at county headquarters.

“It’s much more work for our poll workers,” said San Bernardino County Registrar Kari Verjil. “It’s very time consuming.”

Verjil has 4,000 touch-screen machines sitting in storage, for which the county paid $16 million.

“It’s going to be a return to all these things that got us going with electronic voting in the first place,” said northern California Contra Costa County registrar Steve Weir, who also heads the statewide registrars association.

After Congress enacted the Help America Vote Act in 2002 — which was designed to prevent another election disaster — electronic voting was accepted by several states as the answer to cumbersome paper ballots, which must be fed into counting machines or tallied with optical scanners.

State officials in Colorado also have decertified electronic machines, citing the possibility of malfunctions and errors, though machines will not be used in Tuesday’s caucuses.

In Florida — where the “hanging chad” paper ballot debacle of 2000 prompted all 67 counties to embrace touch-screen machines — state officials will now no longer use most of them. This week’s primary marked the last use for most of the 250,000 machines. In November, voters will cast paper ballots read by optical scanners — a reversal prompted by several factors, including pressure from voting activists and a federal investigation under way in Sarasota to determine if touch-screen machines there failed to record 18,000 votes during the 2006 congressional election.

Despite record turnout this week, Florida’s primary went smoothly.

Problem areas identified

E-voting — which accounts for about 40 percent of voting technology used in the U.S., according to activist group Verified Voting — continues to spark controversy in other states as well.

For example, New Jersey officials failed to meet a state-ordered deadline to install paper printers on some machines to provide written proof of a voter’s choice. So on Tuesday, voters will continue to use electronic machines — devices that voting activists say are unreliable and prone to error because they produce no paper or audit trail.

Producing identification at polling places is another troublesome issue, according to voters rights groups.

Georgia, which requires photo ID at precincts, faces its first statewide test of the law enacted after a long court battle. State officials have conducted public education campaigns, listing the type of photo identification that meets the state rule. They include: a Georgia driver’s license, even if expired; a military ID; an American Indian tribal ID; or a U.S. passport.

Voters who lack such documentation can receive a free state photo ID. In some precincts, that identification can be issued at the polling place while would-be voters wait.

But that does little to appease civil rights groups and voting rights organizations that say the law disenfranchises minorities and the elderly — those most at risk for lacking such documentation.

The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing whether a similar, but more restrictive, Indiana law violates the Constitution. A decision is expected this summer.

Arizona, too, faces criticism over state rules demanding photo ID at the polls — as well as requiring that proof of citizenship be shown when registering to vote. Unlike Indiana and Georgia, Arizona allows voters to produce two other forms of ID, such as utility and telephone bills, if they lack photo identification.

A coalition of citizens’ groups including the League of Women Voters of Arizona, the League of United Latin American Citizens and People For the American Way Foundation, filed suit against the law, saying it deprived residents of their right to vote.

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[no name 1]

Paper ballots could delay California results

LOS ANGELES, California -- People hoping to stay awake long enough Tuesday to see who won California's primary might have a long night.

Returns from California's primary could be delayed because of paper ballots.

Polls close in California at 8 p.m. PT, 11 p.m. on the East Coast. Even those who think they might awaken Wednesday to see results of the Democratic primary might still be waiting.

California is the biggest prize of the 24 states holding primaries and caucuses on Super Tuesday.

At stake: 370 Democratic delegates and 170 Republican delegates.

Those numbers could make or break the contests between Arizona Sen. John McCain, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on the Republican side, as well as Sens.Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York in the Democratic contest.

County registrars throughout California are warning that because of what could be record-breaking voter turnout and a change back to paper ballots, Tuesday's results may take some time.

Meanwhile, millions of California absentee ballots and early voting ballots are still out. Officials say many of those voters are expected to drop the ballots off at their polling places Tuesday.

Because of concerns over reliability, California decertified many of the state's electronic voting machines. That means in places like San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, where more than 3,000 voting machines will be sitting in a warehouse, paper ballots are back.

Kari Verjil, a registrar with San Bernardino County, says paper ballots will require more time to tally the votes.

More than a third of the state's 58 counties will go from directly recorded electronic machines back to paper.

Los Angeles County never stopped using paper ballots, but poll workers still spent time this past weekend on a dry run, getting ready for the expected high volume of ballots.

More than 700,000 more Californians are registered to vote Tuesday than were four years ago; 240,000 signed up in December.

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That jump in registered voters may be due, in part, to California officials moving up the state's primaries from June to Super Tuesday this year.

"All signs are that this is going to be a very high-turnout election," said Dean Logan, a registrar in Los Angeles County. "There is a lot of interest and a lot of activity. ... We know that California is at play in the presidential nomination process."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/04/cal...lots/index.html

[Jasman0717 9]

I am working the election here in Orange tomorrow. It is going to be a long day, I have to go down to Laguna Beach and I have five polling places to monitor. Orange got their electronic voting equipment re-certified so we should be good to go.

[kaydee457 13]

I'm usually the first in line at 6:00am...No lines where I vote.....

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I am working the election here in Orange tomorrow. It is going to be a long day, I have to go down to Laguna Beach and I have five polling places to monitor. Orange got their electronic voting equipment re-certified so we should be good to go.

Oh wow, Jim! I'll be voting at Seven Degrees...is that one of your places?

I'm usually the first in line at 6:00am...No lines where I vote.....

Where do you live?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Turnout is typically heavy at my polling station. Tomorrow will probably be heavier than usual. I think. I will do my usual, go after work. It's open till 8:30.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Turnout is typically heavy at my polling station. Tomorrow will probably be heavier than usual. I think. I will do my usual, go after work. It's open till 8:30.

I'm surprised you didn't vote by absentee ballot?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Turnout is typically heavy at my polling station. Tomorrow will probably be heavier than usual. I think. I will do my usual, go after work. It's open till 8:30.

I'm surprised you didn't vote by absentee ballot?

Not an option. I'm registered independent, I have to declare affiliation at the polling place.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Turnout is typically heavy at my polling station. Tomorrow will probably be heavier than usual. I think. I will do my usual, go after work. It's open till 8:30.

I'm surprised you didn't vote by absentee ballot?

Not an option. I'm registered independent, I have to declare affiliation at the polling place.

Ah, ok....a non-allegiant.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Turnout is typically heavy at my polling station. Tomorrow will probably be heavier than usual. I think. I will do my usual, go after work. It's open till 8:30.

I'm surprised you didn't vote by absentee ballot?

Not an option. I'm registered independent, I have to declare affiliation at the polling place.

Ah, ok....a non-allegiant.

What kinda troll would I be if I took sides now?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Turnout is typically heavy at my polling station. Tomorrow will probably be heavier than usual. I think. I will do my usual, go after work. It's open till 8:30.

I'm surprised you didn't vote by absentee ballot?

Not an option. I'm registered independent, I have to declare affiliation at the polling place.

Ah, ok....a non-allegiant.

What kinda troll would I be if I took sides now?

I don't know. I was kind of hoping you'd mutate or something.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Yeah tomorrow evening I'll be mutating into a ( D ).

[Jenn! 918]

How do you know what times polls open/close?

Off to do some googling....

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

How do you know what times polls open/close?

Off to do some googling....

Your state board of elections should have that info on their website

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Yeah tomorrow evening I'll be mutating into a ( D ).

Good little troll.