Inundated With Voter Applications, State Seeks Counties' Help

Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
TALLAHASSEE — Overwhelmed county elections officials are getting a lot more work - from the state Division of Elections.
So many voter registration applications are flowing into Tallahassee that state officials can't handle them all. They want local supervisors to help process the applications, according to a memo by Division of Elections chief Donald Palmer on Wednesday.
The request for help came less than two weeks before Florida's voter registration books close on Oct. 6.
When asked what might happen if applications aren't entered by Oct. 20, the day early voting begins, a spokeswoman for the Department of State said: "That's not going to happen."
Like the state, counties are swamped with new registrations as well, as expected in a hotly contested presidential election year. Unlike the state, local elections officials have to get machines ready, deal with early voting and other duties such as absentee ballots.
Assistant Palm Beach County Administrator Brad Merriman, who has spent the past month trying to resolve ever-changing ballot counts in a very close Aug. 26 judicial race, laughed when he heard about the state's request.
"What else can possibly go wrong?" he asked.
The state is asking for help to enter data by hand into a statewide voter registration database and to scan the forms as required by state law.
The state is being swamped by third-party groups gathering applications, such as the National Rifle Association and even Barack Obama's campaign, which aims to register 500,000 new voters before Oct. 6.
State officials say they have a backlog of 32,000 applications - including 25,000 received on Tuesday alone - awaiting entry, Palmer wrote. They've processed 30,308 since June. And they don't know how many more they'll get before Oct. 6.
Despite hiring 25 temporary employees working 12- to 16-hour shifts, the division can't keep up, Palmer wrote, and will need to send the applications back to local officials for data entry and scanning.
State officials say they are still able to verify the voter's identification after the forms are entered under the "no match, no vote" law implemented two weeks ago. The law requires that a voter's Social Security or driver license number match federal or state databases.
"They haven't properly planned for the voter registration applications. That was perfectly foreseeable. ... I didn't plan on doing the work of the Division of Elections in 2008," said Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho.
Despite its recount woes, Merriman said county elections staff would certainly answer the state's call for help.
"When they get here, we'll start cranking them out," said Merriman, who is serving as the defacto elections chief for Arthur Anderson, who has been absent from work because of back problems.
The volume of applications raises the specter that all of the new applications may not be entered into the system by the Oct. 19 deadline, the day before early voting begins.
"That's not going to happen. Either we will get it done, or they (the counties) will get it done," Department of State spokeswoman Jennifer Krell Davis said.
If voters show up on Election Day or for early voting and they are not on the rolls, they will have to cast a provisional ballot. But provisional ballots have a much higher chance of being tossed out, according to elections experts.
The Washington-based Advancement Project released a report Wednesday outlining problems with provisional ballots. Of the 14,550 provisional ballots cast in Florida's 2006 general election, 3,857, or nearly 27 percent, were rejected, the report found.
State elections officials lobbied to be able to function essentially as Florida's 68th elections office and have been able to enter voter registration applications directly into the statewide voter registration database since 2006.
Palmer also asked local supervisors to volunteer to sort and enter applications as some did before the presidential primary earlier this year.
Elections officials in the Panhandle counties of Bay, Okaloosa and Gulf are willing to help, Davis said. But others scoffed at the idea.
Treasure Coast election officials said they could not process applications from any county but their own.
"We're certainly not volunteering to take on any more. We feel like we're kind of overwhelmed ourselves," said Gertrude Walker, St. Lucie's supervisor of elections.
Vicki Davis, Martin's supervisor, said her office volunteered to help the state in the spring, but couldn't now.
"For us to take on additional work, with my limited staff, I'm not able to," she said.