Gov. Edward G. Rendell (D) has said he hopes to change the law in time for November's election. Republican legislative leaders are skeptical, but Rendell spokesman Abe Amoros said change is needed: "We're trying to prevent chaos."
Registration Problems
A Caltech-MIT study found that of the estimated 4 million to 6 million votes lost nationwide in the 2000 election, about half can be traced to registration problems that disenfranchised qualified voters.
Kay J. Maxwell, president of the League of Women Voters, said registration problems could prove to be the "sleeper issue" of 2004.
"There's been so much discussion about voting machines," she said, "but this could turn out to be equally if not more important."
In Pennsylvania and Minnesota, county officials also are concerned that new statewide registration systems designed to prevent fraud could lead to disenfranchisement. Glitches in Pennsylvania's system have made processing new registrations and absentee ballot applications so laborious that officials fear they will not be capable of accommodating a large influx of absentee requests just before the election.
"I don't even want to think about what to do if that happens," said Deena Dean, the elections supervisor in GOP-leaning Bucks County, north of Philadelphia.
Minnesota's new computerized system was rejecting eligible voters because of inconsequential differences between the information applicants put on the forms and existing state records. Officials believe that problem has been addressed, but some worry other glitches could arise when it is too late to fix: Election Day, when two-thirds of the state's voters register.
"Unfortunately, we're going to have to test this system in combat," said Joe Mansky, election manager of Ramsey County, which includes St. Paul.
Another registration problem that emerged during the 2000 Florida recount was that state's use of a flawed list to purge dead people and felons from the voter rolls that wound up disenfranchising thousands of eligible voters. The state was set to repeat the mistake until news organizations revealed that the 2004 list was similarly flawed. Florida scrapped the statewide list, leaving it up to each county to decide whether and how to purge ineligible voters.
ID Requirements
Meanwhile, related questions have arisen in another state. Prison advocates have filed suit in Ohio, charging that election officials are giving misleading information to felons about their voting rights.
Perhaps the most partisan disputes to emerge this year have centered on new voter identification. In general, Republicans support ID requirements to prevent fraud, while Democrats say such requirements disproportionately disenfranchise poor and minority voters who may not have a driver's license, a utility bill in their name or other acceptable documents.
Striking a compromise, the Help America Vote Act mandated that any first-time voter who registers by mail must either include a copy of an acceptable ID or show it at the polls. States, however, were free to go further, and as a result the nation now has a confusing hodgepodge of identification laws.
The Republican-controlled states of Florida and Missouri are among 17 that require all residents to produce identification when they vote. By contrast, New Mexico's democratic secretary of state decided to require only the bare minimum, prompting a Republican lawsuit.
At issue is the Republicans' contention that thousands of new voters who registered during drives conducted by third parties are, in effect, registering by mail and therefore should be subjected to identity checks at the polls.
