Voting at wrong precinct OK, says Miller

But only in the right county and only in federal races, the Iowa attorney general says.

By LYNN CAMPBELL
Des Moines REGISTER STAFF WRITER
October 23, 2004

Iowans who vote Nov. 2 in the correct county but wrong precinct should have their votes for president and Congress count, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said Friday in an opinion that pleased voting-rights groups but upset county auditors.

"I think it's a tremendous boost for full enfranchisement in Iowa," said Brenda Wright, managing attorney of the National Voting Rights Institute, one of the groups that said rejecting the ballots would unlawfully disenfranchise thousands of Iowa voters.

But Polk County Auditor Michael Mauro said people will still be disenfranchised because Iowans voting at the wrong precinct will have their votes counted only for federal office, not state and local offices, according to Miller's opinion.

"I think it creates a nightmare for local election officials," said Mauro, who said he would work to get voters to the correct precinct. "It's really frustrating for me. It creates additional problems. It's a lawyer's dream and an election official's nightmare."

Miller's opinion is expected to affect thousands of Iowa voters. In 2002, about 6,000 Iowans voted by "provisional ballots," used when voters' names do not appear on the voter registration rolls, said Phyllis Peters, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State's Office.

About 25 percent of those ballots were rejected either because the person voted in the wrong precinct, had also voted absentee, or was not registered to vote. Similar statistics were not available for the 2000 presidential election.

Wright said, "It's not that easy to go from precinct to precinct in search of your correct polling place." However, Mauro said Iowans have always had to go to the correct precinct in the past, and "people have never had a problem with it."

The issue of provisional ballots has spurred lawsuits across the nation. Judges in Michigan and Ohio have said votes in the wrong precinct but correct county should count, while judges in Missouri, Colorado and Florida have said they should not.

A lawsuit over Iowa's election laws may have been avoided Friday because of Miller's siding with the voting-rights groups who had threatened legal action.

"Why should we wait to resolve these legal questions in court?" said Iowa Secretary of State Chet Culver, who asked Miller for the legal opinion. "Because of this decision, we will potentially avoid a long, drawn out, unnecessary legal challenge that could have made everyone's work much more involved than it needed to be."

Meanwhile, Republicans cried foul over an opinion Miller issued Wednesday that advised election officials to accept registration forms in which voters forgot to check a citizenship box but signed an affidavit certifying their eligibility to vote.

Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, Washington and Wisconsin have voter registration forms similar to Iowa's and have also ruled that failure to check the citizenship box should not prevent the processing of a registration application, as long as voters sign an affidavit that they're a U.S. citizen.

But Republicans called Miller's opinion illegal. "It's not only a violation of state law to ignore that requirement, but it's a violation of federal law," said U.S. Rep. Steve King of Kiron.

Senate President Jeff Lamberti, an Ankeny Republican, accused Culver and Miller, both Democrats, of trying to change election rules in the middle of the game.

"Democrats can't win if they play by the rules," Lamberti said. "This is purely partisan gamesmanship. It's just unbelievable for them to attempt to change law. It's a case where Democrats are trying to throw the election in doubt. That's what all this is about."

Culver denied it was a partisan issue, despite Democrats in other states joining with voting-rights groups to raise the issue of citizenship boxes and provisional ballots.

"I think they should focus on doing their job and let other elected officials do ours," Culver said of Republicans. "Election reform, as hard as they are trying to make it partisan, should not be. What we're trying to do here is resolve differences between federal law . . . and existing state laws. We're trying to avoid going to the courtroom to settle all legal differences."

Pat Jensen, president of the League of Women Voters in Iowa, also defended her group's challenging of Iowa's voting laws. "We're a totally nonpartisan organization," she said. "We're looking at the needs and the rights of the voters, not trying to stir up anything. What we're trying to do is avoid having problems."