Let the recounts begin

• Ballot counting. In the 2004 election, at least 1.9 million provisional ballots were cast. And 676,000 of them were never counted. Provisional ballots are supposed to be offered to would-be voters whose names don't appear on the polling place's registration list, who don't bring the proper ID, or who show up at the wrong precinct. Provisional voters are allowed to return later to prove their eligibility. If they do so, their ballots are supposed to be counted.

But other rules for counting provisional ballots vary dramatically. Demos, a New York City-based group that focuses on election issues, reports [PDF] that 31 states and the District of Columbia don't count provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct. Demos calls ballots that election officials allow to be cast but have no intention of counting "placebo" ballots. "Many provisional voters think they are being given the vote, when in fact they are receiving a false promise," a Demos report warned.

In a close election, the rules for counting provisional ballots could become a legal issue, just as the rules for counting absentee ballots played a role in Washington state's 2004 gubernatorial race. Because of the new voter ID laws, more people may end up casting provisional ballots. But most states have only recently decided on procedures for counting provisional ballots, and those procedures have not been tested in court. "Hundreds of thousands of votes in places where there may be close elections are going to be contested as to whether they should be counted or not," predicts Demos President Miles Rapoport, the former Democratic secretary of state for Connecticut.

• New machines. Election administrators' response to the "hanging chads" and "butterfly ballots" that became infamous during the 2000 presidential recount has been to switch to electronic voting machines. The federal government provided billions of dollars to help pay for the changeover. Since 2000, 57 percent of counties nationwide have purchased new voting equipment, according to Election Data Services, a Washington, D.C.-based political consulting firm.

Charles Stewart, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology political scientist, estimates that 1 million more ballots were counted in 2004 than in 2000 because electronic voting machines detected votes that paper-ballot-counting machines would have missed. Nonetheless, many election observers say that the switch to electronic voting machines will cause significant problems: Machines will break down, printers will jam, poll workers will misuse the machines, and technological glitches will arise -- such as in Northern Virginia, where Democratic Senate nominee Jim Webb's surname apparently isn't going to be properly displayed when voters are asked to confirm their choices.

Electronic voting machines are "a problem that's going to cause a lot of anxiety," said Donna Brazile, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute. The Rev. DeForest Soaries, the first chairman of the Election Assistance Commission, is downright pessimistic about the reliability of the nation's voting apparatus, despite the billions spent on supposed upgrades. "We have new stuff that does not conform to national standards, because there are no standards," he laments. "We know more about car tires than we know about voting machines."

In some jurisdictions, administrators are backing up electronic machines with paper records -- a move that could cause controversies during recounts if the machine totals don't match the totals on paper. Just as with provisional ballots, state rules governing the resolution of such disputes have not been tested in court and are ripe for being challenged.

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