Going into the election, many feared a repeat of the nightmarish Election 2000 that after weeks was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the aftermath of that election, calls for election reform led to the "Help America Vote Act," or "HAVA," passed in 2002. The law was passed to address many of the problems from the 2000 election and included funding for the replacement of outdated voting equipment, construction of statewide computerized voter-registration systems, and training of poll workers.
Demos, a nonpartisan public policy organization, said that some of the most widely reported problems this election included polling places opening late, absentee ballots not being received by voters, shortages of provisional ballots, poll workers asking for ID when it is not a requirement, voters finding they are not on voter registration rolls, voting machine failures, confusion over polling site changes, and understaffed polling stations, leading to long lines.
Miles Rapoport, President of Demos and former Secretary of the State of Connecticut, said the election demonstrated that there remain "significant and preventable structural problems" in the election system and stressed the need of states to address what he called the "weakness in their election system" by making use of funding by HAVA to reform and improve how elections are carried out, including their ability to handle heavy voter turnout.
Apart from this, Mr. Rapoport said voters in this election should be applauded for standing in the long lines and dealing with some of the setbacks in order to cast their ballot and show their "deep commitment to democracy."
HAVA passed in 2002, and states have so far received about half of the $3.86 billion in federal grant money provided by HAVA. An overhaul of voting equipment has been slow to materialize due to money shortages and other delays, and major reforms are not expected to be complete until 2006.
It was largely believed that provisional voting would be one of the major problems emerging from the election. As part of HAVA, states are required to provide standby ballots to voters not found on roll lists, are in the wrong polling location, or without proper identification. Voters are given provisional ballots until their eligibility can be confirmed.
Doug Chapin, Director of Electiononline.org, which provides news and analysis on election reform, predicted provisional ballots could be a possible problem during the election because of "the states' different laws regarding such ballots and the lingering uncertainty about 'what the rules are' on Election Day."
Though provisional ballots are not anything new for many states, this election they were required in all states for the first time, some of which were battleground states. The rules for provisional ballots vary from state to state, on who casts provisional ballots, how votes are counted and verified, and when a provisional ballot will count. Before the election, the issue of provisional voting procedures had come under legal challenge in key battleground states such as Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Michigan, and Missouri. Florida and Ohio have the strictest rules for provisional ballots.
On Election Day, one of the reasons for the delay in the announcement of the newly elected president was because election officials in Ohio needed to count the thousands of provisional ballots in that state. The secretary of state's office released a count of 155,337 provisional ballots. According to unofficial vote totals from Tuesday's election, President Bush was ahead by 136,000 votes.
Nonetheless, in Ohio, where ballots are not counted for 10 days, election workers will review and verify the ballots, discarding any that are ineligible. The official count of the votes must be completed by Dec. 1.
Prior to Nov. 2nd, Democrats and Republicans recruited lawyers from across the country to monitor possible problems with provisional voting during the election. Both parties assembled armies of lawyers to monitor the voting process to ensure that nothing happened that could put their party at a disadvantage and cost them the election. The Kerry-Edwards campaign had up to 10,000 lawyers in place by Election Day and five "SWAT teams" ready to go should problems arise in battleground states. The Bush-Cheney campaign focused on 30,000 precincts in 17 states seen as battleground states. Although, it appears, with the declaration of President Bush as a winner, all is quiet on the lawsuit front.
In an effort to safeguard voter rights this election, particularly minority voters, a coalition of more than 55 lawyer and minority groups established Election Protection. On Election Day, the nonpartisan coalition provided a toll-free national multilingual hotline to assist voters with registration, voting, and all other election-related questions. The coalition recruited 25,000 trained poll monitors, including 6,000 lawyers and law students, to monitor election problems and help voters on location at more than 3,500 African-American and Latino precincts in at least 17 states. The coalition has kept a tally on its website of voter complaints that it received through its hotline on Election Day.
In the weeks before the election, the replacement of punch-card and lever machines with new electronic "touch-screen" voting equipment spurred much debate over the security of new paperless-voting systems. Critics argued that such a system could easily be hacked into and should require paper confirmation of votes. About 45 million registered voters used the e-voting machines during the election, which accounts for about 29% of votes, according to Election Data Services Inc. Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, and Nevada used electronic equipment in every county for the first time in a major election. According to the Election Protection Coalition, there were about 1,100 problems with touch-screen voting. Some people complained of the wrong candidates showing up on their machines checkout screen, and power outages, giving rise to some of the same concerns posed by computer scientists.
"The main risk is that many voters may not trust the announced results, especially if the tallies on Election Day differ substantially from earlier polling data," said Matthew Franklin, professor of computer science at U.C. Davis. "The manufacturers of some of these voting machines are saying, 'Just trust us,' but that is a poor principle of engineering design. Adding some kind of voter-verifiable paper printout is an obvious improvement."
Mr. Franklin accurately predicted that the margin of victory during the election would less likely be small, leaving little room for a repeat of Election 2000. However, he said that legal battles over the validity of some of the voting machines may continue post-election, which he said may not be a bad thing. "We might all benefit from a careful look in court at the engineering practices of some of the voting machine manufacturers."
Much of the country breathed a collective sigh of relief as Election 2004 managed to escape a repeat of Florida. Floyd F. Feeney, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law, said the major causes of the problems that plagued Election 2000 was the closeness of the race, the inadequacy of the Florida election law and administration to deal with the situation, particularly having a political partisan in the position of Secretary of State. "Some of these problems have been solved in Florida and other states but many remain," Mr. Feeney said.
While this election process fared better than the previous, Mr. Kalt, who called 2000 a "perfect storm," maintains that the problems of paperless touch-screen machines remain a real issue to be resolved for future elections. Just as Election 2000 spawned election reform, indeed so will Election 2004.
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