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Election 2004: S.C. county illustrates voting difficulties

By THOMAS HARGROVE, hargrovet@shns.com
July 7, 2004

SUMTER, S.C. — An unraveled paper clip in the hands of Sumter County Elections Commissioner Lucinda Macias became a vital tool for preserving democracy in South Carolina.

"Shhhh! This is a punch-card stylus," Macias said as she carefully punched duplicate copies of dozens of bent, battered and torn ballots that came into the Sumter County Courthouse during the June 8 South Carolina Republican and Democratic primaries for federal, state, county and municipal offices.

"Some even had masking tape on the cards. I guess the folks at the polls were trying to fix them. This isn't rocket science! They'd never go through the (ballot counting) machine like that," Macias said as she started copying another punch card. "So we just duplicate them. And, hopefully, they will go through."

Hundreds of counties throughout America must employ similar techniques to lower the rate of tabulation errors, according to election experts.

"It's certainly unsightly to look at, especially if you've never seen it before," said Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services Inc. and a nationally recognized consultant on election procedures. "The punch cards are fragile and need to be treated carefully. And election officials must have procedures set up to handle damaged cards. This is a common problem."

Thirteen of the 46 counties in South Carolina used punch-card voting systems during the 2000 presidential election. The Palmetto State chronically suffers one of America's worst rates of undervoting, with tens of thousands of ballots routinely not registering in major races like president, governor and U.S. senator, according to a Scripps Howard News Service study of election returns. An undervote is the difference between the number of ballots cast and the number of votes that actually get counted.

Four years ago, 50,812 out of the 1.4 million ballots cast in South Carolina did not register a vote for president. That means 3.5 percent of state voters did not have a preference for president, officially at least.

Election experts warn that officials should be suspicious if the undervote for major races exceeds 2 percent. But several counties routinely experience undervotes several times higher. Kershaw County, north of Sumter, reported 19,627 presidential votes were counted out of 21,474 ballots cast, an apparent undervote of 8.6 percent.

"I can't understand that," Bonnie Depperman, vice chairman of the Kershaw County Board of Registration and Elections, said upon hearing of the undervote in her county. "Could there be something wrong with the counting process? Whatever this is, we'd like to get it stopped."

Yet the June 8 primary went smoothly in Kershaw County. About 98.7 percent of the combined Republican and Democratic ballots registered a vote for U.S. Senate. Although the Senate race was the top political issue in South Carolina in June, an undervote of slightly more than 1 percent could mean some voters were undecided but wanted to participate in other races.

The smooth election in Kershaw County was certainly due, in part, to Kerry Morgan, a computer operator for the local school system and part-time tabulator for county elections.

"Fear is a great motivator. And I'm always afraid something will go wrong," Morgan said as he lightly pounded the top of the Triad Model EX-1 card reader with his fist to keep the ballots from jamming.

Morgan said the card reader easily jams under humid conditions or when ballots are printed on different thicknesses of cardboard or are dyed different colors. On June 8, he regularly had to rerun the Democratic primary ballots printed on blue cardboard.

"Blues are usually the difficult ones," Morgan said. "I always expect there will be some problems with the cards. Sometimes they will curl up in the box."

The problems in Kershaw County paled compared to the labors that officials faced in Sumter County.

Scott Vandyke, pastor of the East Dayton, Ohio, Church of Christ and a part-time elections assistant for Triad Governmental Systems of Xenia, Ohio, nearly half of the time had to repeat a run of computer cards because of bent ballots or tallies that didn't agree with precinct reports.

Sumter County voters cast 33,433 ballots in the 2000 general election, but 30,671 registered a vote for president, an apparent undervote of 8.3 percent.

"I'm sure the problem is not with the cards. And, generally, people will vote correctly," said Vandyke.

Only 91.4 percent of the 7,486 Democratic primary ballots registered a vote for U.S. Senate this month, while 96.3 percent recorded a vote for the local sheriff's race and 94.6 percent registered for state auditor.

Why the difference?

"That is something I just don't usually look at," conceded Sumter County Elections Director Patricia Jefferson. "I don't know. I just don't know. These are good questions."



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