Early voting option explored

By JAMES MILLER
Staff Writer Daytona Beach News-Journal

Last : October 12, 2004

Volusia County officials scrambled Monday to devise a last-ditch plan to open additional early voting sites should a federal judge order them to do so.

Last week, the local NAACP sued Supervisor of Elections Deanie Lowe, claiming the decision to have only one early voting site in DeLand unfairly limits East Side black voters' access to pre-Election Day balloting. Just more than half of Volusia County's black residents live in Daytona Beach, according to Census 2000.

On Friday, a U.S. District Court judge in Orlando set an Oct. 19 hearing date. Early voting, in which the voter places the ballot into a vote tabulation machine, is scheduled to start in DeLand on Oct. 18.

"If we are directed sometime after the 19th to do this, we have to have some type of plan, fragile as it may be, in place," County Manager Cindy Coto said Monday.

A state law passed in May requires county elections officials to maintain at least one early voting site. It requires any additional sites to serve voters countywide. Lowe and other officials have said the county would have to open sites in New Smyrna Beach and Deltona if it opens one in Daytona Beach.

"Otherwise, people will accuse us of catering to one segment of the population," Lowe said.

She maintains that opening the sites so near the beginning of early voting isn't possible. She says it would require additional employees with additional training as well as additional equipment, including six new vote tabulation machines the county might not be able to secure in time.

On top of her office's current workload which includes handling thousands of new voter registrations and requests for absentee ballots it can't be done, she said.

But, under the gun, county officials on Monday were investigating whether they could wire libraries to connect to Department of Elections computer software that manages the voter registration system and identify employees who could be trained to staff early voting sites, Coto said. With so much uncertainty, even the question of whether the county would open one or three sites if forced was murky, she said.

"We're still dealing with putting together a plan in a week's time that could create some errors, create some problems," she said. "It's not a desirable solution."

Sam Smith, a Tampa-based attorney for the NAACP, said county officials are right to prepare but they should just go ahead and open the Daytona Beach site.

"We'd like to just see them do the right thing on their own and put the resources into it," he said.

In 2002, Lowe accepted absentee ballots on a Sunday at the Dickerson Community Center in Daytona Beach after discussions with local black leaders. The ballots were not ed into tabulation machines on the spot but were processed later. Elections officials held de facto early voting it was known by a different name then at the DeLand office.

In 2000, the county had on-location absentee balloting at City Island Library in Daytona Beach and the Brannon Center in New Smyrna Beach, in addition to the main elections office in DeLand.