Washington Post
October 15, 2004
Voting
Rights Machinery Doubted: GAO
Says Justice Is Unprepared for a Flood of Complaints
By
Jo Becker
The
Justice Department is ill prepared to handle a large influx of complaints about
voting rights violations in the Nov. 2 presidential election, according to a
report released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office.
Campaign experts predict that the department's voting rights section will be
flooded with calls and complaints about poll access and other irregularities in
the face of a close race between President Bush and Democrat John F. Kerry and
uncertainty over the effects of changes in election law and procedures. Some
fear a repeat of the 2000 deadlock over the presidential election results in
Florida.
The GAO's William O. Jenkins Jr., center, prepared the report on voter
complaints and the Justice Department. (Lucian Perkins -- The Washington Post
The Justice Department "lacks a clear plan" to reliably document and
track allegations in a manner that could allow monitors to swiftly pick up
patterns of abuse and take corrective steps, according to the GAO, Congress's
nonpartisan investigative arm.
"The reason it's so important to collect this information is to look for
patterns in a particular county or in a particular polling place," said
William O. Jenkins Jr., who prepared the report at the request of three
Democratic lawmakers. "For instance, is it only Democrats or Republicans
that seem to be having this problem? Were different voters told different
things?"
The Justice Department said it has put in place better reporting and tracking
mechanisms since the GAO report draft was completed in August and has devoted
significant resources to ensuring that election reform laws passed since 2000
are followed.
"Additionally, as the GAO report points out, the Civil Rights Division, at
the direction of the Assistant Attorney General, has worked with civil rights
leaders, state and local election officials, and U.S. Attorneys' Offices prior
to election day to help ensure that citizens' voting rights are protected,"
spokesman Eric Holland said in a prepared statement.
The report comes amid criticism by Democrats that the Justice Department is too
focused on pursuing allegations of voter fraud and trumpeting terrorism concerns
that could scare people away from the polls, at the expense of its mission to
safeguard the right to vote.
The Justice Department said it plans to deploy 1,700 civil rights monitors to
key states on Election Day. But with more than 200,000 polling places
nationwide, the department will be able to cover only a fraction of the
facilities.
In 2000, the report found, the department relied on contractors to handle a
record number of call-in complaints. The contractors' logs were imprecise, the
report found, and did not track complaints at all in four states: Arkansas,
Kansas, Montana and North Dakota.
Democrats who requested the report blasted the department.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said it was "inexcusable" that the
"Justice Department does not have the systems in place that are necessary
to respond to reports of voters being turned away from the polls on Election
Day."
New voting rules cited in the report as potentially problematic vary from state
to state and continue to change.
In Ohio, for instance, a federal court yesterday reversed a ruling by the
secretary of state and said that "provisional ballots" must be counted
regardless of whether they were cast in the correct precinct.
Provisional ballots must for the first time be given to people nationwide who
show up at the polls and do not find their names on the rolls of registered
voters. They will be counted if it can be determined after Election Day that the
voter was in fact eligible. Other federal courts have ruled differently, and
legal battles are ongoing in battleground states including Florida.
Meanwhile, new problems crop up daily. In Wisconsin, Milwaukee Mayor Tom
Barrett, a co-chair of Kerry's state campaign, and Milwaukee County Executive
Scott Walker, a co-chair of Bush's state campaign, are wrangling over the number
of ballots that election officials should make available in the city. Barrett
wants more, saying the city could run out; Walker has said the request is
excessive and poses potential problems of ballot security. |