Election officials, election watchers brace for Nov. 4

As hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters in Pennsylvania and New Jersey prepare to cast ballots in the presidential election, poll watchers are worried.

Will the record numbers overwhelm precinct workers?

Will long lines or machine breakdowns frustrate voters and force them to walk away?

Do counties have enough oversight to ensure that no votes are lost through technological or human error?

"We haven't done what we should since 2000 to make [the system] trustworthy," said Zack Stalberg, president and CEO of the political watchdog group Committee of Seventy in Philadelphia. "If I were a praying man, I'd pray."

Local election officials say they have watched the skyrocketing registration numbers, which are also rising around the country, and are ready.

"2000 created paranoia on both the right and the left," said Frederick L. Voight, Philadelphia deputy city commissioner. "There's no perfect election so long as you have human beings involved."

Through the fall, reports with names like "Is America Ready to Vote?" and "What if We Had an Election and Everyone Came?" have documented many states' switching to optical-scan voting systems, early voting, and better post-election auditing - all intended to improve counting and prevent discrepancies.

But New Jersey and Pennsylvania lack many of the safeguards other states have adopted, critics say. Neither has a voter-verified paper trail to aid recounts and audits. New Jersey is embroiled in a lawsuit over the ease of hacking, and despite its "no excuse" absentee voting, neither it nor Pennsylvania has true early voting.

Yet amid the technological questions, the bigger worry seems to be people, not equipment.

"People really want to vote this year, but this is an infrastructure that doesn't seem ready to support full participation," said Susannah Goodman, director of Common Cause's national election reform campaign. "I hope I'm dead wrong. We'll see on Election Day."

To avoid long lines, election officials in both states urge voters to arrive during the off-peak hours of 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. New Jersey has even asked businesses to allow workers to take midday voting breaks.

Government and poll-watcher reports all point to record turnout.

The Advancement Project, a civil-rights and voter-protection organization in Washington, studied the allocation of machines and poll workers in seven battleground states, including Pennsylvania. In Allegheny, Berks, Montgomery and Philadelphia Counties, researchers calculated that at two minutes voting time per person, many precincts had too many registered voters to process within the average 780 minutes that polls are open.

In a conservative scenario, for example, 102 of Montgomery County's 411 precincts will likely have lines at 8 p.m., when polls are supposed to close, said Jim Freeman, a lawyer with the Advancement Project, although anyone in line at 8 p.m. will be allowed to vote. "Some precincts we looked at would take more than 30 hours to accommodate all the voters," he said.

The report did not include allowances for machine breakdowns, registration snags or other problems, said Judith Browne-Dianis, Advancement Project codirector.

"It's a presidential election; there are going to be lines out there," said Joseph Passarella, Montgomery County director of voter services.

The county bought 75 additional machines, bringing the total to 1,125, to deal with the registration surge, Passarella said.

Long lines in Pennsylvania's April primary triggered a request from the Committee of Seventy to split 16 city voting divisions because their size exceeds the state recommended maximum of 1,200 registered voters. One, in Chinatown, has 3,400 voters, the group says.

"Unless you're a highly committed voter, if you find a long line, you're going to drop out," Stalberg said.

Voight said the city had added machines and improved check-in procedures at the busy divisions.

In response to complaints that machine failures clogged lines in the primary, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Pedro A. Cortes has told counties to give voters the option of using paper ballots - but only if all machines in a polling place shut down.

On Thursday, voters and civil-rights groups led by the NAACP State Conference of Pennsylvania sued Cortes in federal court to let poll workers hand out paper ballots when half or more of the machines fail at any one site.

Substituting ballots is "not as simplistic as advocates think," said Voight, who ran the Committee of Seventy for 28 years. Paper ballots must be segregated, secured, verified and counted one by one, often not until the Friday after the election. "We would hope people would be patient and vote on machines. That's the best way to be sure your votes are counted on election night," he said.

New Jersey's emergency ballot rules are less stringent, but if any machines are running, the preference is to continue machine voting, said Robert Giles, director of New Jersey's Division of Elections.

"The great victory of the early 20th century was getting rid of paper ballots," Voight said Friday as Committee of Seventy volunteers and city workers tested voting machines in a city warehouse on Wissahickon Avenue.

Crises in voter confidence caused by error or fraud led to the transition since the 19th century from paper ballots to lever machines to punch-card systems to the direct-record electronic systems used in New Jersey and Pennsylvania today. Since the Help America Vote Act, which Congress passed to help remedy the Florida problems after the 2000 presidential election, many counties have switched to "optical scan" ballots, in which voters fill in circles like on standardized tests and then scan the cards into a computer counter.

"There's the cosmic national question of what's the best way to vote. We have a different system in every county in every state," Stalberg said.

Indeed, the eight-county Philadelphia region uses four kinds of machines. Advocates push for standardization to boost confidence in results.

"Compared to other states, New Jersey is not as prepared to ensure that all votes are counted accurately," said Lawrence Norden, counsel in the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

Without a voter-verified paper record of votes cast, New Jersey doesn't have a good fallback if machines fail or the most accurate audit of their performance, said Norden, coauthor of "Is America Ready to Vote? State Preparations for Voting Machine Problems in 2008." Pennsylvania has slightly better procedures, he said.

Acting Burlington County Clerk Wade Hale has complete confidence in New Jersey's machines, used since 1996. The county checked the machine's internal audits after the June primary and "everything added up."

In 2005, the state Legislature passed a law requiring a voter-verified paper backup, but the secretary of state has yet to certify a system.

Also pending is a 2004 lawsuit over the possibility that New Jersey's machines could be hacked.

The thinking is the next technology will be the one that solves our problems," Norden said. "Having all the right procedures in place is at least as important as having the right equipment."

Beyond machines, problems can include ballot design, poll-worker training, and counting procedures.

Any change can confuse voters and poll workers - as in Florida, where some counties have had three systems in recent years.

And, regardless of equipment, elections will always come down to people, officials said. "There's no evidence in problems with machines that cannot be attributed to human error," Cortes said.

New Jersey

"No excuse" civilian absentee ballots: Anyone can vote via absentee ballot without reason in New Jersey by filling out an application, available by mail or downloading online.

Oct. 28 Deadline for county clerks to receive civilian absentee applications by mail

3 p.m. Nov. 3 Deadline to file walk-in absentee ballots in county clerk's office

8 p.m. Nov. 4 Deadline to return a voted absentee ballot to county clerk

Voting hours on Election Day, Nov. 4: 6 a.m.-8 p.m.

To find your polling place or for other information:

» READ MORE: www.njelections.org

or 1-877-NJVOTER (1-877-658-6837)

Pennsylvania

Civilian absentee ballots: Voters need a valid reason to apply for an absentee ballot, such as illness or absence on Election Day.

Oct. 28: Deadline to apply for an absentee ballot from the county board of elections

Oct. 31: County board of elections must receive marked absentee ballots by 5 p.m.

Voting hours on Election Day, Nov. 4: 7 a.m.-8 p.m. First-time voters in a precinct must show an approved form of identification.

To find your polling place or for information:

» READ MORE: www.VotesPa.com

or 1-877-VOTESPA (1-877-868-3772)

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