REPORT Do improved election systems await voters? Don't count on it

A few states, including Florida, have made some changes.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The presidential campaign season is under way, yet when voters go to the polls this year, the election systems in many states will still be susceptible to the same flaws that caused the 2000 stalemate in Florida.
A report released today found that -- despite promised reforms -- only a few states made comprehensive changes to voting machines and registration in the last three years. The Washington-based Election Reform Information Project reported that money problems and concerns about the reliability of new, touch-screen voting systems delayed action.
It will be 2006, at the earliest, before voters nationwide see the kinds of sweeping improvements that policy-makers said were necessary after the 2000 election.
"The expectation for reform has outstripped reality," said Doug Chapin, director of the information project, a nonpartisan group that studies elections.
One problem: Federal money has been slow coming. Of $3.9 billion authorized in 2002, only $650 million has been distributed to states so far, half of that focused on planning. And Congress only appointed a federal oversight commission to handle doling out the money last month.
Adding to the inertia, computer scientists have raised doubts about the security of the touch-screen, ATM-style machines that federal law encourages for the disabled and which many states are considering for widespread use.
Findings
The report found that:
UPunch cards will still be used in some jurisdictions in 22 states, despite the federal Help America Vote Act's encouragement to retire the equipment that was at the center of the Florida deadlock in 2000.
UStatewide registration databases, which should eliminate the potential for fraud and for voters mistakenly being denied the chance to vote, are still a few years off. Forty-one states sought waivers to delay action on registration until 2006.
UWhile some polling places in 42 states will have new machines in place for the presidential contest, in many states that means small pilot programs in a few counties or towns, rather than wholesale improvements.
Improvements
Still, there were some changes. Georgia and Maryland switched to statewide touch-screen systems; Florida -- the start of all the controversy -- eliminated its punch cards; and large counties in California and Texas dropped punch cards, too.
Yet in Marshall County, Iowa -- north of Des Moines -- disabled voters will have to wait a few more years for a voting machine that complies with the new federal law, said Dawn Williams, who oversees elections in the county.
"I'm talking about money for voting machines. I'm talking about money for additional training, money for a statewide voter registration," Williams said. "It's pretty hard to do that without any money."
"We've got everybody's hopes up, got everybody thinking we could make these quantum leaps," said Doug Lewis, who works with local and state election officials from across the country at the Election Center, a nonpartisan group in Houston, Texas. "We're stuck in inertia."
In Ohio, 57 security risks found with machines led Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell to apply for a waiver from having the new systems in place by the Nov. 2 election.
Some of the counties will have the systems in place, but Blackwell wants to ease the county boards into compliance. Nine counties had not selected a vendor by the Jan. 15 deadline, but Blackwell has not taken action against them. The counties represent 2.3 million of the state's 7.1 million registered voters.