Ballot Jitters

Jonah Goldman

October 06, 2006

Jonah Goldman is the director of the  National Campaign for Fair Elections. 

These are good times for political pundits. With the balance of power in both houses of Congress in limbo, a number of key gubernatorial and state legislative races in play, and the country struggling with tough decisions about war and prosperity, we are on the precipice of dramatic political change. This fall’s election season is the stuff of political history.

What is lacking in the analysis, however, is that the legacy of Nov. 7, 2006, may have less to do with political performance than with administrative and technical meltdowns. In the days and weeks following the election the suspense may not be because key races are too close to call, but because the election infrastructure in key districts is too precarious to trust.

Since the 2000 presidential election debacle, Americans have become increasingly familiar with uncertainty in election results. In 2000, the locus of the problem was Palm Beach, Florida, where butterfly ballots and hanging chads cast doubt on the outcome of the presidential election. Four years later, the spotlight was on Franklin County, Ohio, where inequitable distribution of election equipment and poor poll worker training caused tens of thousands of eligible voters to be turned away at the polls.

The latest lesson in election dysfunction has just been learned by voters in Baltimore and Montgomery County, Maryland, where inept election officials, insecure technology and arcane election rules caused mass disenfranchisement, leading Baltimore and Montgomery County to hold the polls open for an extra hour. Overall, the broken process cast doubt on the outcome of a number of primary contests. The experience of Maryland voters—like that of the citizens of Florida and Ohio before them—forces the unfortunate realization that the most meaningful opportunity we have to participate in the political process rests on a third-rate system of election administration.

The problems exemplified in Florida, Ohio and Maryland threatens to contaminate the election process in key races throughout the country this November. A closer look at the situation voters faced just a few weeks ago in Maryland foreshadows the potential chaos that voters across the country may face on November 7.

Much of Maryland’s electoral meltdown can be traced to the recent introduction of new electronic voting technology. Advocates and experts have detailed the very real threats to the integrity of the electoral process posed by technical glitches, untrustworthy software and security risks posed by electronic voting machines but—as voters in Maryland discovered last month—the root of potential problems this November is far more likely to be human than mechanical.

While the voting machines failed to perform as they should, with machines freezing up causing votes to be lost, the failure by election officials to properly plan for the introduction of these machines by implementing effective procedures, training protocols and contingency plans coupled with significantly under funded electoral administration doomed a smooth election in Maryland. With over 30 million Americans casting ballots on new electronic voting machines on November 7, voters across the country are at risk of disenfranchisement because their election officials have not learned the lesson of their colleagues in Maryland and are dreadfully unprepared to implement a new voting system.

 In the September 12 primary, nearly every polling place in Montgomery County delayed opening because election officials failed to include all necessary materials in the poll kits—in this case, a memory card necessary to operate the voting machines. This error set off massive confusion leading to widespread disenfranchisement as Marylanders in polling places across the county were told that they could not vote until the problem had been resolved. In other polling places, voters were told to write their choices on a piece of paper and drop the votes in an unsecured box. The correct procedure was followed in some polling places where poll workers offered voters provisional ballots until the necessary materials were received. Unfortunately, even where the correct policy was followed, voters were still disenfranchised because many of those precincts ran out of provisional ballots.

North and east of Montgomery County, voters were turned away from the polls because of an arcane and unworkable provision in Maryland election law that was poorly implemented by election officials. According to the law, each polling site must have an equal number of Republican and Democratic poll officials; however, in many parts of Maryland, the partisan make-up of the electorate makes this dictate nearly impossible to fulfill. The problem was particularly pronounced in Baltimore where election officials have a hard time recruiting a sufficient number of Republican poll workers. Despite this policy, voters should not be penalized for the failure of election officials to muster the balance of personnel necessary to satisfy this statutory requirement, but again, guidance from election officials was either lacking or overly restrictive. Some polls were turning voters away hours after they were scheduled to open.

Elsewhere throughout the state, voters who submitted timely voter registration applications were turned away because their names never showed up on the registration rolls. Poll workers who ran out of essential supplies, such as provisional ballots, were turning away voters because they could not get in touch with the election officials responsible for administering the elections. Moreover, election machine security protocols were not followed causing suspicion about those machines’ vote counts.

While the powder keg exploded in Maryland, unprepared poll workers, under resourced election administration and outdated policies put elections across the country at risk of similar disasters this November. Electoral breakdowns and administrative disasters have caused more Americans to question the security of our election system. As we incorporate new questionable technology into the process and fail to implement the necessary safeguards to ensure that the people who administer our election process are competent, well-resourced and correctly trained, we remain at risk of chaos every time we hold an election.

The tragedy is that solutions to these problems are not rocket science, yet the policy makers at both the state and federal level who have attempted to address the issues that plague our electoral structure have concentrated on political strategy instead of substance. Instead of offering real reform by increasing funding for election administration, making it easier for all eligible voters to cast a meaningful ballot and provide real security solutions for new voting technology, law makers have instead decided to focus on politics—by crafting the legislation to suit their partisan goals, such as discriminatory photo identification proposals, that will once again remove traditionally disenfranchised voters from the process. Consequently, we arrive on the eve of another federal election with a real risk that our democratic support system will collapse.

Hopefully, we will wake up the day after Election Day confident that the outcome of this historic election season reflects the will of all eligible voters who want to participate. If, however, we wake up on November 8 to chaos and confusion, we must demand real and meaningful change from those who are eventually awarded victory. In order to do this, policy makers must reshape their vision of reform and take the politics out of election administration. Senator Clinton’s “Count Every Vote Act” is a good start. While the bill needs to be updated, it puts the interest of the voter over the partisanship of the sponsor by thinking of real solutions to the problems that cause the electoral breakdowns. Similarly, Senator Obama’s “Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act” will go a long way to solving the continuing problem of intimidation and deceit in the electoral process.

Unfortunately, up until now these proposals have garnered little attention. Hopefully, if we have to suffer the frustration of another uncertain election, we will be able to grasp the silver lining of real reform.