Ready or not, time to vote

For Georgia’s voting system, new levels of voter participation are creating new levels of challenges.

Unprecedented turnout for advance voting means that 2 million people won’t have to go to the polls Tuesday. Yet, if projections hold, an additional 3.2 million may show up to cast ballots —- more than ever before on a single Election Day in the state’s history.

State officials hope early voting will alleviate stress at some precincts. But many polling places, particularly in the state’s most populous counties, could be swamped. Election officers may find they’ve placed too few voting machines in polling places that experience uncharacteristically high turnouts. Some newly registered voters may not be listed on computerized rolls and could be required to cast “provisional” ballots that might or might not be counted.

Any one of those factors would complicate Tuesday’s election, leaving people waiting in line well into the night, preventing some voters from casting ballots or rendering others’ votes invalid, according to state and county officials, poll watchers and interest groups. A combination of two or more could create an electoral disaster.

“There are so many things that could make this thing difficult that it just drives you insane,” said Doug Lewis, executive director of the National Association of Election Officials, based in Houston.

“We are the best prepared we have ever been,” Lewis said. “And yet at the same time, I can tell you that is like saying Galveston was prepared for the hurricane that was going to hit them.”

Georgia election officials say they are focused on what they can control: setting up polling places to help get as many voters in and out as quickly as possible, testing voting machines and other computer equipment, training poll workers in election law.

The secretary of state’s office has told counties that no voter should have to wait in line more than two hours.

Early balloting —- conducted on a broader scale than ever before —- might help at least some counties meet that goal. Already, more than half of registered voters in seven of the state’s 159 counties have cast ballots, including Henry, Rockdale, Fayette and Forsyth, according to figures released Saturday by the secretary of state’s office. In 26 other counties, at least 40 percent voted early.

But the state’s four most populous counties, home to one-third of registered voters, recorded less lofty numbers. Advance voting drew 39 percent of voters in DeKalb, but 31 percent in Cobb, 26 percent in Fulton and 25 percent in Gwinnett.

The state’s voting is likely to come under close scrutiny, said Secretary of State Karen Handel, Georgia’s chief elections officer. This is the first presidential election in which the state will enforce its law requiring voters to present government-issued photographic identification at the polling place. And long lines during advance balloting —- some taking six hours or longer to navigate —- called into question readiness for what is almost certain to be a historic turnout.

Handel said the state and the counties are as well prepared as possible. Poll workers will check in voters using more sophisticated computers than the ones they had during advance balloting. Some counties have recruited young people with strong computer skills to help older workers. And the secretary of state’s office will have investigators and technicians —- about 100 in all —- poised to sweep into any precincts where problems erupt.

Handel acknowledged, though, that the state faces many variables that could overwhelm any plans: millions of voters, ballots packed with dozens of races and more than 3,000 polling places supervised by 15,000 poll workers whose average age is 72.

“Any time you have close to 5 million people doing anything you are going to have an issue,” Handel said last week. “We want to do our level best to address an issue so it doesn’t become a crisis.”

Florida nightmare

Georgia adopted a statewide balloting system, based on touch-screen voting machines, after the recount of contested ballots in Florida kept the nation waiting for a month to learn the winner of the 2000 presidential election.

The Florida dispute centered on the tens of thousands of ballots that appeared not to include a vote for president. But this undervoting problem was even more pronounced in Georgia, where no vote for president registered on 94,000 ballots —- a higher percentage than in Florida.

The next year, Georgia distributed 19,000 of the electronic voting machines, and by the 2004 presidential election, the statewide under-voting rate decreased to less than one-half of 1 percent.

State officials initially suggested counties deploy one machine for every 200 voters. The counties now own about 27,000 machines, Handel said, one for every 207 registered voters.

But the average doesn’t necessarily hold up in individual precincts.

The NAACP Voter Fund issued a statement last week alleging that Georgia won’t put enough machines in African-American precincts, where Barack Obama’s candidacy is expected to inspire record turnouts.

Handel bristled at that claim.

“I don’t think an interest group has the expertise or knowledge to make that decision,” she said. “It’s important to look at motivations of some of these organizations… . Organizations are out looking at things that can support litigation if they have issues with what the ultimate result is of any election.”

In a recent letter to a Georgia NAACP official, Handel vowed her office would investigate complaints of voter intimidation and other irregularities.

In the interview, however, Handel said deciding how many machines to install at particular polling places is “a county function.”

In DeKalb County, for instance, officials consider past turnout and “traffic habits” when assigning machines to precincts, said Maxine Daniels, assistant director of registration and elections.

Gwinnett County is keeping 260 of its 1,840 voting machines on standby in case of exceptional turnout in particular precincts.

“We are prepared to be at the polls late,” said Lynn Ledford, Gwinnett’s director of registration and elections, “and we are prepared to count ballots throughout the night and the following morning —- and beyond, if necessary.”

Identifying voters

If advance voting is a guide, Tuesday’s turnout may be overwhelming.

Already, 34.5 percent of registered voters have cast ballots. If this year’s turnout reaches the 2004 level of 77 percent, an additional 2.4 million people will vote Tuesday.

But election officials in many counties predict that 90 percent of registered voters will go to the polls. If that’s correct, 3.2 million voters will cast ballots Tuesday; in 2004, about 2.8 million people went to the polls on Election Day, while 420,000 cast votes in advance.

On Tuesday, many will be voting for the first time. Georgia added more than half a million voters to the rolls this year. At the same time, this is the first presidential election in which Georgia will enforce its photo ID law. These factors, many election watchers said, could exacerbate problems at the polls.

Any voter who doesn’t have a valid ID will be given a paper ballot labeled “provisional.” The voter must present an acceptable ID to the county elections registrar within two days, or the ballot won’t be counted.

Provisional ballots also will be given to voters whose names don’t appear on the rolls for their precinct, either because they registered just before the deadline or they aren’t really registered at all.

Handel said she expects few problems from provisional balloting or from the photo ID requirement. In this year’s primaries, just 7,541 of more than 2 million voters cast provisional ballots. More than 5,000 of those voters were not listed on the rolls; just 409 couldn’t present an acceptable ID card.

But glitches may have kept some eligible voters from casting ballots. At a polling place on the Morehouse College campus in Atlanta, dozens of voters, most of them students, were required to cast provisional ballots for the primaries.

Poll workers mistakenly refused to accept students’ out-of-state driver’s licenses, said Mark Henderson, a Fulton County election official.

Counties set their own rules for assessing the validity of provisional ballots. Statewide, officials accepted 49 percent of provisional votes in the primaries. But that number varied widely.

Some counties may reject the hand-marked ballots because of stray pencil lines, while others may try to decipher a voter’s intent, said Randy Evans, a member of the state election board.

Provisional ballots could be critical in several state legislative races, Evans said, especially where districts cross county lines.

“You could have the same district but have different counties count them differently,” Evans said. “In a race where the margin could be less than 100 votes, and we’re talking thousands and thousands of provisional ballots, you can see why it will be pretty high-stakes poker.”

But Handel, who is overseeing her first presidential election, said she’s not losing sleep fretting over possible breakdowns on Election Day.

Still, “elections are run by people,” she said, “and people are human beings.”

Staff writers Heather Vogell and Mary Lou Pickel contributed to this article.

TUESDAY STRATEGY

Here are tips for enduring Election Day at Georgia polling places:

> Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. statewide. Polling places may remain open to allow voters standing in line at 7 to cast their ballots.

> To avoid long waits, experts suggest going to the polls in the late morning, around 10 a.m., or in the midafternoon, about 2 p.m.

> Voters must present a government-issued photographic identification card, such as a driver’s license.

> To verify their registration and precinct, voters can check the secretary of state’s Web site: http://sos.georgia.gov

> Voters can create an individualized sample ballot at http://www.ajc.com

> On Election Day, problems at polling places may be reported to the secretary of state’s office. In metro Atlanta, call 404-656-2871 or 404-656-2881. Elsewhere in Georgia, call 1-888-265-1115, 1-877-725-9797 or 407-725-9797.

On ajc.com

> Build your own ballot online: Our special interactive features enable you to compare candidates and issues and review key races. Also: Find your districts, verify your polling place and more. www.ajc.com/elections