Advocacy group: Va. is a potential source of dispute

By Ray Reed

Published: September 30, 2008

A voting rights expert at Common Cause says Virginia’s lack of experience as a swing state in a presidential election puts it in a class with Florida as a potential source of election controversy.

Tova Wang, a Common Cause vice president, said her citizens’ rights group evaluated 10 swing states’ plans for preventing election problems. It found what it called gaps in Virginia’s laws and

procedures.

Lynchburg Registrar Patricia Bower said she’s sure her office has adequate plans for dealing with the potential problems Wang cited, including trained election workers and enough voting machines in the busiest precincts.

One of those busy precincts is likely to be at Heritage Elementary School, where students who registered at Liberty University’s postal address will cast their ballots.

As of Monday, the number of voters registered in the Heritage Elementary precinct had doubled since January, to almost 4,000.

That number was likely to go higher because many LU applications were yet to be processed.

The city’s electoral board will make plans for handling the influx at Heritage Elementary when it meets Oct. 13, Bower said, “but we know we will have to have many more poll workers there.”

Paper ballots will be on hand at all precincts for backup in case machines break down, Bower said, addressing a concern that Wang said Common Cause had discussed with Virginia election officials.

“There are a lot of gaps in Virginia’s election law and procedures,” Wang said, and the state has experienced “incredible surges in voter registration in the last couple of months and, I’m sure, in the next week.”

“With Virginia not having been a swing state, not having seen this kind of turnout, it gives us concern,” Wang said.

Virginia already has dealt with one troublesome issue this year, involving college students seeking to register in the community where they attend school.

As recently as Tuesday, the Virginia ACLU said it cautioned Radford’s registrar about sending postcards to dormitory residents asking for their “home address.”

In addition to Virginia’s State Board of Elections Web site at http://www.sbe.virginia.gov, Wang said people with voting questions can check http://www.866ourvote.org, a national group called Election Protection that seeks to protect voter rights.

The group tries to help voters understand their rights, verify their registration status, and obtain information about polling places and absentee ballots.

It also has advice about how to deal with misleading voter-discouragement techniques, such as robocalls the day before the election that tell people their polling-place location has changed.