Project Finds Votes Remain Uncounted

Florida is not the only state that has trouble counting ballots, according to a report released yesterday by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University.

The report, entitled “Democracy Spoiled,” exposes problems with ballot spoilage—ballots cast but not counted—at the national, state and county levels in the November 2000 election.

“We’ve identified a problem. What was sort of anecdotal in the Florida election has been shown to be much more pervasive,” said Angelo Ancheta, director of legal and advocacy programs for Civil Rights Project and a lecturer of law. “The basic finding is that where you live greatly affects the value of your vote.”

The report also found that counties with large black populations were the most highly affected by ballot spoilage issues, thus disadvantaging black voters.

“What we suspected, and what we ultimately did find, was that counties with large minority populations had higher spoilage rates,” Ancheta said, adding that problems faced by minority voters in Florida served as the impetus for launching the report.

“After the November 2000 elections, there were a lot of recommendations that were coming out about election reform,” he said. “One problem that we wanted to look at specifically was ballot spoilage.”

The report found that Illinois had the most spoiled ballots of any state—comprising 12.5 percent of the national total—while Illinois, Georgia and Texas together accounted for one third of spoiled ballots nationwide.

Florida—site of the 2000 presidential election controversy—comprised 7.8 percent of the national total.

Georgia led the nation in spoilage rate, or the percent of ballots spoiled, at 4 percent—more than double the national average of 1.94 percent.

Massachusetts had a 1.28 percent spoilage rate, comprising about 0.3 percent of the total spoiled ballots nationwide.

States with spoilage rates below one percent included Connecticut, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama and Maryland.

But the report also showed major local discrepancies, with the highest county spoilage rates occurring in the South, where 82 of the 100 worst counties are located.

Sixty-seven of the 100 worst counties also have black populations above the national average, while only 10 of the best 100 counties had similarly large black populations.

Duval County, Florida—where 27.8 percent of the population is black—ranked as the county with the worst voter spoilage rate in the nation, with almost one in 10 votes spoiled.

Richard F. Carlberg, assistant supervisor of elections for Duval County, contested the report’s numbers.

“It was probably 8.5 percent if you count the undervotes [ballots with no candidate selected], because I count the undervotes as a perfectly valid choice,” Carlberg said.

Carlberg said between 6,000 and 7,000 voters who cast their ballots in Duval County in 2000 did not select a candidate for president. He also said that there were an “unusually high number” of overvotes, or ballots with more than one candidate selected for a single office.

Carlberg said these overvotes and undervotes may have contributed to Duval County’s ranking. He declined to comment on the report’s finding that race affected ballot spoilage.

John Sullivan, an official for the Registration and Elections Department in Fulton County, Georgia—which was ranked second worst by the report—echoed Carlberg’s criticism.

“I would assume that the report is very incomplete because there are a lot of counties that are a lot worse than us,” said Sullivan, referring to a state report on the November 2000 election, which ranked Fulton County more favorably.

Sullivan said the policy of reporting overvotes and undervotes in Fulton County, which has a black population of 44.6 percent, might have disadvantaged the county in the report.

“We have always reported overvotes and undervotes. Most counties do not,” he said.

He also declined to comment on the effect of race, though he said the most important factors in improving results were voter education and voting technology.

While Ancheta acknowledged the merit of both Carlberg and Sullivan’s claims, he said that different methodologies lead to different definitions of spoiled ballots.

“There is always the possibility that [an undervote] was a perfectly legitimate ballot,” Ancheta said. “That is a legitimate concern to be raised.”

He added that the report’s methodology may have penalized some counties, but he maintained that differences over the definition of a spoiled ballot did not fundamentally alter the survey’s validity.

“It doesn’t negate the fact that the percentages are much higher than one would like to see,” he said.

Carlberg also said Duval County voters will cast their vote this November not by punch card, but by manually selecting candidates using a pen. The ballots will then be tabulated using an optical scan system similar to Scantron forms used in exams.

“We have a whole new voting system,” he said, adding the change was mandated by state law.

He said they chose the manual system over a touch screen ballot because it was more voter friendly and economically feasible.

Sullivan also said that in the wake of the November 2000 elections Georgia has gone to touch screen voting machines.

Ancheta said that achieving this type of reform—focusing on solving ballot spoilage issues at the state and local level—was one of the ultimate goals of the report.

The report is by Professor of Law Christopher F. Edley Jr., co-director of the Civil Rights Project, Professor Philip Klinkner of Hamilton College and research assistants Jocelyn Benson and Vesla Weaver.

An updated report that includes data from the 2002 elections will be released this winter.

—Staff writer Christopher M. Loomis can be reached at cloomis@fas.harvard.edu.