State's voting system has its sore spots

Indianapolis Star

Voter beware
September 19, 2004
 

A number of problems with Indiana's voting system have been documented in recent years, including bloated voter rolls and a lack of poll workers. Here are three areas that could bear watching Nov. 2:

Poll workers

Across the state, election officials are nervous about having enough poll workers.

Marion County, for example, has 914 voting precincts, and each is supposed to be staffed by five representatives from the two major parties to sign voters in, answer questions and fix problems.

The first problem is finding nearly 5,000 people to show up for work at 5 a.m. to get voting locations ready to open. Most poll workers make $70 for 15 hours of work. The managers make $110.

Doris Anne Sadler, the Marion County clerk, said poll workers occasionally oversleep but, in general, do a good job.

Publicity about a nationwide shortage of poll workers spurred a wave of calls to both parties earlier this summer from people interested in being poll workers. This also will be the first presidential election where 16- and 17-year-olds can work at the polls.

The secretary of state's office, meanwhile, is trying to ensure that workers will get the training they need to avoid trouble.

The office is spending $100,000 this year on training, which includes a new 90-minute training video for poll workers and a voter guide for first-time poll workers. The office also is conducting training sessions across the state.

Bloated rolls

A controversial postcard campaign in Marion County showed what many suspected bloated and in many cases inaccurate voter records. While that bothers some election officials, it probably won't affect voters Nov. 2.

More than 40 percent of the county's 450,628 voter registrations are in error because they contain outdated addresses, officials learned from the campaign.

When the county mailed postcards to everyone on the list, more than 182,000 were returned by the Postal Service because they had invalid addresses.

The mailing also found that about 8,000 other voters had moved out of the county, 5,000 had new addresses within the county, 2,000 had changed their names, and 250 people listed as registered voters were deceased.

The Board of Voter Registration agreed not to use the returned cards to cull the voter list after Democrats filed suit, claiming the mailing was illegal and could be used to keep some from voting.

A report from the Indiana Election Division said that the cards were not illegal but also recommended that the county not reclassify voters as "inactive" based on information from mailings.

Some officials fear the inaccurate lists invite voter fraud. They also can make it difficult to estimate the number of ballots needed a problem Marion County had during this year's primary. But others point out there have been no significant fraud cases in Central Indiana.

Absentee voting

Marion County officials expect more than a third more absentee voters this year than in the last presidential election.

People who will be out of the county or unable to vote normally in their precinct can request an absentee ballot.

At the rate those requests were coming in, Sadler predicted last week, the county could have 30,000 absentee votes in November, compared with 21,950 four years ago.

Widespread fraud in absentee voting was reported in East Chicago's 2003 mayoral election.

But members of the bipartisan Marion County Election Board doubt much cheating happens here they checked last year.

Absentee ballots are usually counted at the precincts. But in 2003, officials decided to tabulate them at a central location.

Members of the Election Board, including Democrat Steven Eichholtz and Sadler, the Republican county clerk, examined many of the ballots personally.

"I don't recall that we rejected a single one," Sadler said. "Before doing that, I had thought that this was an area of fraud, but we didn't find any."

John Strauss