Focus on voter education to avoid election mistakes

Election officials have had nearly four years to guard against a repeat of the ballot confusion and voter consternation of November 2000 that wound up reaching all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But with the presidential election only four months away, only minimal progress has been made. In some instances, matters may be worse.

Last time, much of the blame was placed on punch-card balloting. The term "chad" dimpled, pregnant and hanging became part of everyday speech.

But has the rush to replace punch cards in some jurisdictions resulted in machines that will create other problems? Concerns remain about the security of electronic machines from hacker attack or other fraudulent manipulation. In many cases, there will be no paper trail to verify results in the event of a challenge. There will be nothing to recount.

Yet the potential problems from newer voting machines are barely on the radar of a coalition of voters' rights groups that recently sounded the alarm that problems persist.

"There are other issues that can affect more people than can be addressed right now," said Kay Maxwell, president of the League of Women Voters.

Perhaps one reason these groups are downplaying the potential problem with newer systems is that they were implemented with haste, in some cases in reaction to the outcry of these and other voters' rights advocates. They don't want to be blamed if the "improvements" create as many problems as the old systems.

The League of Women Voters and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights make some legitimate points about the need to avoid errors in purging lists of eligible voters and ensuring the poll workers understand registration and identification requirements as well as how to operate the voting machines.

But a big part of the responsibility should fall on voters themselves.

Voters should ensure that they know where their polling places are. If they have moved, changed their names or not voted in several years, they should check to ensure they are properly registered well in advance of Election Day.

Many of the mistakes in the last election were not inherently the fault of malfunctioning machines or bureaucratic mix-ups. They were the fault of the voters themselves.

We hesitate to say it's too late to fix the problems that were identified four years ago. But we fear too much haste in these final months could create as many problems as it solves.

Emphasis should be placed on voter education and poll worker training rather than seeking "foolproof" machines or making registration rules so lax that they reward the lazy and/or open the door to more voter fraud.