Absentee voting process in turmoil

BEWILDERING SYSTEM, RULES LIKELY TO THROW OFF COUNT

By Michael Moss

NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE  29 September 2004

Four years after overseas voting became a presidential election issue in Florida, millions of civilians and soldiers living abroad still face a bewildering system of absentee balloting that could prevent their votes from being counted.

Election officials concede that tens of thousands of Americans overseas might not get their ballots in time to cast their votes.

Late primaries and legal wrangling caused local election offices in several battleground states to fail to mail out their absentee ballots by Sept. 20, a cutoff date that officials say is necessary to ensure that everyone can return them on time, a survey by the New York Times shows.

In Florida in 2000, late-arriving ballots became a divisive issue when some were counted and others were disqualified.

The tardy ballots are just one of several setbacks or missteps that have affected the ability of the estimated 4.4 million eligible voters overseas to participate in the presidential election.

Some have been unable to send in their registrations to a Pentagon contractor's computers clogged by thousands of voter forms. Others were denied access to a Web site designed to help Americans abroad vote.

And many voters simply have had trouble navigating the complicated rules and methods that determine how and when to register and vote and that vary state by state.

"I found it so convoluted I gave up," says Alex Campos, a management consultant in London who repeatedly tried to register through the Pentagon's program, without success.

To help speed the balloting process, federal officials activated a new system last week in which voters can obtain absentee ballots instantly through the Internet.

But the Web site, myballot.mil, will be offered only to members of the military and their families, quickly raising concerns about fairness in a voting assistance program that the Pentagon has been directed to run for civilians as well.

In addition, 23 states have already declined to join the new system for various reasons, including security, according to Pentagon and state officials.

People on both sides vying for the overseas vote say the balloting system remains so flawed that some are predicting legal battles if these votes prove to be crucial to the outcome of the presidential race.

"If it's a close election, one can expect a great deal of challenges given the confused state of this complex matrix of rules and regulations, and the lack of central leadership in their implementation," said Jim Brenner, the executive director of Americans Overseas for Kerry.

In recent interviews, Pentagon officials defended their voting assistance effort and said the new Internet ballot retrieval system was only one item in a menu of services the program was using to help both military and civilian voters.

"There is no favoritism," said Scott Wiedmann, the program's deputy director, adding that the new system must be limited to the military because only the identities of service members can be verified.

Other efforts under way to help overseas voters include speeding mail delivery for people in the military and a special federal ballot that all voters can request if their regular ballot does not arrive from their state on time.

But election volunteers working overseas say that many voters do not know the ballots exist, or if they do, do not know how to use them.

Both Republicans and Democrats are pushing hard to solicit these voters in the aftermath of some assessments that President Bush's support among the estimated 500,000 members of the military and their families overseas may have weakened.

There is little direct polling of soldiers, but Peter D. Feaver, a sociology professor at Duke University, says surveys have shown that while most officers are staunchly Republican, the newer rank-and-file has been equally divided between the parties.

"Kerry will do better in this group than Gore did," Feaver said, "but he will not reverse the Bush advantage."

There is also little polling of the 3.9 million civilians abroad. But last month, a Zogby poll of Americans who had passports found that they supported John Kerry over Bush, 58 percent to 35 percent.

The concern about states not getting their overseas ballots out in time surfaced most recently in a report this month by the newly formed U.S. Election Assistance Commission, which found that 18 states did not have systems in place to mail ballots at least 45 days before the election.

A commission member, Paul DeGregorio, said in an interview that states with late primaries did not have enough time to turn around and send out their ballots overseas.

In 2001, the General Accounting Office examined overseas voting and found numerous problems, from inadequate public education on the subject to late ballot mailings.

In surveying small counties throughout the country, for example, the GAO, now the Government Accountability Office, found that 8.1 percent of the overseas votes had been thrown out mostly because they were late or not properly completed.

In response, the Pentagon placed voting assistance officers in military units worldwide and retooled its general Web site for voting assistance in an effort to help more Americans navigate the labyrinth of local voting procedures that apply overseas.

But some eager voters say the Web site remains difficult to use and that program workers have provided wrong information.