Is Your Name on the Voting Lists

Oh here we go - 2000 Revisited

By DEBORAH HASTINGS, AP National Writer Sun Mar 2

Welcome to the first presidential election in which nearly every state
must have a list of every registered voter. Here's the catch: if your
name isn't on it, you may have trouble casting a ballot in this
historic race for the White House.

The lists have already caused problems in New Mexico, Arizona and
California, where people waited hours to choose a presidential nominee
only to find they weren't listed as registered voters — or they
weren't listed in the party of their choice.

On Tuesday, when folks line up in the crucial states of Ohio and
Texas, election observers fret that similar snafus will confuse and
delay primary vote counts that could help decide whether the
Democratic nominee will be the first woman or the first black man to
hold that title.

"It could be the sleeping giant in terms of voting problems," said
Larry Norden of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York
University's law school, which monitors election issues.

The problems stem from a federal law that was supposed to deter voter
fraud. Under the Help America Vote Act, every state was required to
have a computerized database listing all registered voters. The
deadline was 2006, which several states missed. Some of them,
including New York and New Jersey, were sued by the Justice Department
for not having databases up and running.

This year marks the first time the lists are being used in
presidential contests, and every state except North Dakota (which has
no registration system) has some interim or permanent system in place.
But there is great confusion about what to do if a voter's name is
missing, or shows up under the wrong party affiliation, election
advocates say.

In states such as New Mexico, where Super Tuesday caucuses were
plagued by long lines and registration issues, it took nine days to
tally votes. Part of the problem stemmed from an avalanche of
so-called "provisional" ballots — which take longer to count — given
to voters for a variety of reasons, including being dropped from
registration lists. In California, the Super Tuesday final tally has
yet to be certified because of large numbers of impromptu ballots cast
by voters whose names weren't on the list, as well as other poll problems.

The voting law was designed to produce accurate lists of eligible
voters that could be coordinated with other government databases,
including drivers' license and Social Security rolls. It allowed to
states to purge clutter caused by multiple registrations and to
eliminate those ineligible to vote — the dead, for example, and in
some states, convicted felons. In 2005, a Seattle woman registered her
Australian shepherd-terrier to vote under the name Duncan M. MacDonald
— via mail, with a phony utility bill submitted as identification. She
did it, she said, to show how easily non-citizens could register.

Some election officials went too far, according to voting activists,
and interpreted those requirements to mean that registration
applications should be denied when they don't match government data.

In Florida, the state NAACP chapter and others sued election
officials, saying more than 14,000 people, most of them minorities,
have had their registrations wrongly denied or delayed since 2006.
According to the federal lawsuit, many of the discrepancies were
caused by transposed numbers, and confusion over minority names that
results in data-input error. Hispanic names can contain maternal and
paternal family names, Haitian and Hispanic names can be hyphenated
and African-American names can contain unique spellings and
apostrophes, the suit said.

In December, a federal judge ordered election authorities to stop
enforcing the 2-year-old law, saying there is proof that it has
resulted in "actual harm to real individuals." The case is on appeal.
"Depending on the decision, it could be an important issue in the
general election," said Justin Levitt of the Brennan Center. Florida,
which decided the presidency after experiencing recount havoc in 2000,
"obviously was important, is important and will be important in any
election," he said.

So are Ohio and Texas, two states with significant delegate counts.
Hillary Rodham Clinton has pinned her struggling candidacy hopes on
winning both primaries on Tuesday. Her Democratic opponent, Barack
Obama, has won the last 11 primaries and caucuses and currently leads
the delegate count. Primaries also will be held Tuesday in Rhode
Island and Vermont.

But Ohio and Texas have had problems getting their registration
databases up and running, creating fears that it may take days to
tally votes from these important contests — and Ohio knows a great
deal about delays.

In the last presidential election, nearly 3 percent of voters were
forced to cast provisional ballots because of registration questions
after waiting in lines for as long as 14 hours.

Those paper votes, which take longer to count, helped prolong the
final tally by more than a month. On December 6, 2004, then-Ohio
Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell certified that George W. Bush had
won Ohio by about 119,000 votes over John Kerry, a slim margin that
handed Bush his second term in office.

Texas faces its own brand of problems — generated not so much by
disenfranchised voters but by fed-up counties. In rural Henderson
County, for instance, election officials opted for a privately run
database rather than use the state's system.

According to Texas figures, 39 of 254 counties use their own databases.

The state system was "forever going down, having glitches. We couldn't
deal with it and operate, too," said registrar Carolyn Craig. "We got
tired of dealing with it."

Despite local grumbling, state officials say their database should run
smoothly on Tuesday.

"Any problems that were out there have been identified" and corrected,
said Scott Haywood, spokesman for Texas Secretary of State Phil Wilson.