Virginia is ready for Election Day - really, state officials say

RICHMOND

Brushing aside admonitions by voter advocacy groups that Virginia is woefully unprepared for Election Day and that polling places will be choked by long lines, state officials Friday said they are ready for record turnout.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine "feels that Virginia is ready," said his spokesman, Gordon Hickey.

State officials pointed to the 300 new voting precincts established across Virginia since the 2004 presidential election and the 30,000 poll workers expected to be on duty throughout the state on Nov. 4.

Those new investments are a response to experiences from past elections, said State Board of Elections spokeswoman Susan Pollard.

"Our preparation really started last November," she said. As part of the planning, she said, contingencies have been devised for traffic congestion, crowds at schools that double as polling places, even power outages that could affect voting.

Earlier this week, officials announced that Virginia has more than 5 million registered voters, including more than 436,000 who are newly registered this year.

Overall turnout is expected to reach a record 90 percent, a marked increase from the 71 percent voter participation in 2004.

Some voter rights groups have said Virginia's system is inadequate to handle the crowds.

"I think election officials, at this stage in the game, have no choice but to say everything is as best as it can be, because there's nothing they can do between now and Election Day," said Joseph Waymack, executive director of the Southern Coalition for Secured Voting, one of the organizations that issued a warning Friday about Virginia's voting practices.

Of particular concern, Waymack said, is the state's requirement of one voting machine for every 750 registered voters in a precinct.

"In North Carolina, the standard is one machine for every 250 voters," Waymack said.

Hickey said Virginia has enough voting equipment.

"There are at least twice as many in all precincts, and in some places three times as many machines as required by law," he said.

A different assessment is found in "Is America Ready to Vote?," a 50-state analysis released Thursday by the Brennan Center for Justice, Common Cause and the Verified Voting Foundation.

That study classifies Virginia's overall voting system as "unprepared" and ranks several state voting practices as "inadequate" or "needs improvement."

Pamela Smith, Verified Voting president and a co-author of the study, cites as one trouble spot a lack of consistent policy on the use of paper ballots as backups in the event of voting equipment failure.

"In a high-turnout election, that's a disaster if you don't have a way for voters to vote," she said. "So you've got to have emergency paper ballots in place."

Virginia laws governing audits of election systems and recount procedures need to be revamped as well, Smith said.

Pollard said state election officials are reviewing the findings in that study "to determine if there are inaccuracies." She would not comment on other, similar reports.

Additional criticism of the state's voting system came last week from the Advancement Project, a Washington, D.C.-based national voter protection organization.

In a study of six cities, including Newport News, Norfolk and Virginia Beach, the group concluded that Virginia lacks sufficient voting machines or poll workers.

Pollard acknowledges that there might be voting delays at some polls, but she rejected the doomsday scenarios.

"It is realistic for people to anticipate waiting in line," she said.

Staff writer Debbie Messina contributed to this report.

Julian Walker, (804) 697-1564, julian.walker@pilotonline.com