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Rendell Wants to Avoid Florida-Like Election Woes
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| By PETER JACKSON, Associated Press Writer |
June 07, 2004 |
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Rendell seeks to head off presidential balloting woes in Pa.
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HARRISBURG, Pa. - Whatever else may be said about the outcome of the 2004 presidential election in Pennsylvania, no one is predicting a landslide.
Independent polling shows Sen. John Kerry and President Bush running neck and neck in a state that Bush lost in 2000 by only 205,000 votes out of nearly 5 million cast. This year, Ralph Nader's wild-card candidacy could make the result even closer than now appears likely.
And that could spell trouble for officials in Pennsylvania's county-based election system - especially if the national election winds up being decided here.
Echoes of Florida and its bitterly partisan, five-week recount in the 2000 election resounded in Harrisburg this week as Gov. Ed Rendell presided over a meeting that brought together state elections officials, political-party leaders and representatives of most of the 67 county election offices.
"Nobody wants to find themselves in that Florida situation of not being able to certify an election," said Penny Lee, the governor's communications director.
Eleven Pennsylvania counties still use punch-card voting machines like those that produced the infamous hanging chads that complicated the Florida recount, and the rest use a half-dozen other methods or combinations of methods. A statewide, electronic voter registry - a major election reform that originally had been expected to be in place before the April primary - has been postponed until after the general election because of implementation problems.
Like Florida, Pennsylvania is one of a few major battlegrounds in the presidential campaign and its 21 electoral votes represent the fifth-largest electoral prize. Both the Republican president and Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, have campaigned heavily in the state.
Participants in the two-hour private meeting at the governor's residence generally said they were encouraged by the discussion and by the personal involvement of Rendell, whose administration plans to hire a consultant to scrutinize each county's election plans prior to the statewide balloting on Nov. 2.
"We are now out in front of a lot of issues" that could interfere with the balloting, said state Democratic Party Chairman T.J. Rooney, who acknowledged that the prospect of Florida-sized problems in counting the Pennsylvania vote cannot be ruled out.
"Might it happen? I'd certainly need the benefit of a crystal ball," he said.
Besides the still-incomplete Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors, the participants discussed recent changes in state election law - including provisional ballots, which were introduced in the primary for people whose eligibility to vote cannot be immediately verified at the polls. Provisional ballots are set aside, and county officials have three days after an election to examine them.
The provisional votes could be crucial in November. Thousands are anticipated - enough to potentially swing the election. After the Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount, for example, Bush was declared the winner by a margin of only 537 votes out of nearly 6 million cast.
"Certainly, we as a party are going to be scrutinizing the provisional ballot process," said Josh Wilson, political director of the Republican State Committee and a participant in the meeting.
Will Pennsylvania become the Florida of the 2004 election?
Bob Lee, the voter registration administrator in Philadelphia, says tight elections are always trouble.
"Any time you get a close election and you get the media and the lawyers involved, you're never going to avoid problems," he said.
Peter Jackson is the Capitol correspondent for The Associated Press in Harrisburg.
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©Indiana Printing & Publishing Co. 2009
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