Will millions of votes be lost again?

Four relatively simple and inexpensive steps can be taken to ensure that voting procedures in this November's presidential election are as accurate and reliable as possible, say experts in voting technology from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. "Between 4-6,000,000 voters were disenfranchised in the 2000 election" maintains Mike Alvarez, professor of political science at Caltech. "Although some progress has been made these past four years, we are still concerned that millions of votes could be lost in November--particularly if the popular vote is close."

The recommendations are included in a report prepared by the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project for the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), an independent bipartisan agency that serves as a national clearinghouse for information on the administration of Federal elections. The report includes several steps that the group believes are necessary for avoiding lost votes.

Recommendations include:

* Collect the information that would be needed to audit the 2004 election. This is essential. Currently, 11 states do not report total ballots cast, making it nearly impossible to track the performance of equipment and election procedures in these states. EAC should require a report of total ballots and votes cast for each Federal office from each election jurisdiction. These reports also should include the number of registered voters and absentee ballots cast. The secretaries of state should include these figures in their statement of certified votes.

* Fix common ballot difficulties. This includes some very basic design issues that were problematic in the last election. For example, EAC should recommend that all jurisdictions employing optical scanning use the term "Someone Else (write name)" instead of "Write In." If the ballot has a back side, the front side of the ballot clearly should state so in large, plain letters.

* Produce provisional voting guidelines. Many people went to the wrong precinct in 2000, and were unable to vote. New voting guidelines need to be developed that give uniform procedures for allowing provisional ballots to be used when a person's

* Develop common complaint and election monitoring EAC needs to establish procedure for managing complaints, and should be prepared to serve as an ombudsman to receive, investigate, and follow up on them.

* Ensure that every step in the voting process is checked and improved upon in multiple ways. Among these is the requirement that each stage of the election process have more than one person involved in all matters that can affect voting--including equipment purchasing, ballot storage, and setting up polling places.

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