Provisional votes could be this year's hanging chads

By Anne Gearan
The Associated Press

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

WASHINGTON — Call it the law of unintended consequences.

A new national backup system meant to ensure that millions of eligible voters are not mistakenly turned away from the polls this year, as happened in 2000, could wind up causing Election Day problems as infamous as Florida's hanging chads.

Congress required conditional, or provisional, voting as part of election fixes passed in 2002. For the first time, all states must offer a backup ballot to any voter whose name does not appear on the rolls when the voter comes to the polling place on Nov. 2. If the voter is later found eligible, the vote will count.

But Congress did not specify exactly how the provisional votes will be evaluated.

Add the ordinary problems that come with something new, and the result is a recipe for mix-ups at the polls and lawsuits over alleged unequal treatment of some voters, said Doug Chapin, executive director of Electionline.org, a nonpartisan clearinghouse for information on election reform.

"If I had to pick the one thing that will be source of controversy on Election Day, it will be provisional voting," Chapin said.

Provisional ballots A 2002 election-reform law requires every state to offer backup, or provisional, ballots to voters this year. The ballots will be used when voters think they are properly registered but their names do not appear on the rolls. States have adopted different rules for evaluating the ballots. • Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia will count provisional ballots only if they are cast in the correct precinct. Five of those states are considered among the most contested for the presidency. • Five states — Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Missouri — are facing lawsuits over rules for provisional ballots. • The deadline to count provisional ballots in battleground Michigan is Nov. 9, seven days after the election. • In a Chicago primary in March, 5,914 provisional ballots were cast; 416 of those votes later were determined eligible.

State election officials have adopted differing standards for when a provisional ballot will count; some of those rules are still in flux three weeks from the election.

Rules for who casts provisional ballots and how they are counted probably will vary even within states, especially if there are long lines, confusion and hot tempers at the polls, election experts said.

Some states where the race is tightest, such as Florida and Ohio, also have the strictest rules for provisional ballots.

Democrats and Republicans are training lawyers and election monitors to look for problems with provisional voting. Already, suits in five states claim officials are adopting too strict a standard, denying the right to vote to some eligible voters.

Questions about provisional ballots could produce a battle after the election, too, with echoes of the Florida fight of 2000.

Lawyers for President Bush and Sen. John Kerry are ready for a new overtime contest in states where, if the election is close enough, the winner could be determined by provisional votes.

Like Florida's punch cards, provisional ballots are pieces of paper that must be evaluated individually and counted by hand. The task is time-consuming, and most states have short deadlines to get the job done, said Doug Lewis, director of the Election Center, a nonpartisan research and training organization for state and local election administrators.

Post-election suits could resemble the Supreme Court's Bush v. Gore case, which settled the 2000 election. The justices said it was unfair for Florida counties to apply different standards in recounts, and there was not time to fix the problem.

Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia have adopted the view that a provisional ballot must be cast in the correct precinct or it will not count.

Under that interpretation, voters unaware that their polling place has moved could be out of luck. So could voters given wrong information about their polling place. It would not matter whether the mistake was the voter's fault or a clerical error.

Other states will count a voter's choice for president and other national offices even if the ballot is cast in the wrong polling station.

Provisional voting is not entirely new. About half the states offered something similar in 2000.

It is impossible to predict how many people will cast provisional ballots this year, said Curtis Gans, director of the nonpartisan Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.

It will easily be in the tens of thousands, however. In 2000 in Los Angeles County, the nation's largest voting district, about 101,000 people voted provisionally. Of those, about 61,000 votes were determined to be valid.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

E-mail this article

Print this article

Search archive

More nation & world headlines...