Shortcomings in election administration have left many eligible voters disenfranchised, said Dr. Robert Pastor, co-director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management, during a panel discussion Thursday.
The panelists, who spoke in the Butler Board Room, discussed whether the nation is ready for the 2008 presidential election.
Pastor, who directed the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform, discussed the discrepancies of the Help America Vote Act of 2002. The United States' election administration process has fallen behind other countries such as Mexico, he said. This can be attributed to the disorganization of registration lists, varying voting technology, poorly trained poll workers, confusion over the new provisional ballots and debate over voter identification.
The technology of computerized touch-screen voting and paper voting have replaced the punch card or lever systems as the new voting methods, said Rosemary Rodriguez, vice chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
Glitches within these new voting structures can discourage citizens from voting, even if they are eligible, according to panelist Edward A. Hailes Jr., a senior attorney for the Advancement Project, a group that promotes democracy and justice action.
Poll workers need to be prepared to document problems, Rodriguez said.
"We don't want to discourage anybody from coming out to vote," she said.
Poll workers are also poorly prepared, Pastor said. The levels of training that the workers received in past elections caused confusion that may have accidentally disenfranchised voters.
Provisional ballots, which are given to people when it is uncertain if a person is eligible to vote, were hardly discussed at some poll worker training sessions, he said.
"This is a problem of training, it's a problem of each county doing it differently, it's a problem of no simple rules," Pastor said.
This election cycle will be highly scrutinized because the level of interest is so high, according to Rodriguez.
"From the administration perspective, contingency planning is going to be crucial," she said.
After the discussion, panelists and guests at the forum watched the documentary "Election Day." The documentary, directed by panelist Katy Chevigny, focused on ordinary people's experiences on Election Day in 2004.
The documentary showed the many sides of the voting experience. In one small town, the voting process was friendly and easy. In a bigger city, some voters were not able to cast their votes because of long lines. Issues like the latter need to be improved, Pastor said.
Universal registration may be one solution to these problems, he said.
"We come up with a lot of halfway solutions to problems when what is needed is a big leap," Pastor said. "If you do a big leap, you can solve a lot of problems at once."
The nation seems both prepared and unprepared for the coming election, said Alison Prevost, a project manager at CDEM.
"I think we are more aware of what the problems are," Prevost said. "But we haven't really fixed all the problems yet"
