Florida fears in FInal days

Across the battleground states, where Democrats had a 2-to-1 advantage in new registrations, voting-rights groups contend the 11th-hour verifications demanded by Republican officials are partisan attempts to disenfranchise the new voters.

The flood of millions of first-time voters across the country could lead to crowded and contentious polling places, triggering last-minute identity checks that could deny ballots to those whose names or addresses don’t match other government records.

“This one is the meltdown scenario,” Judith Browne-Dianis, co-director of the Advancement Project founded by civil rights lawyers to pursue racial justice. Common Cause, the American Bar Association, the League of Women Voters and a phalanx of other public interest groups are urging states to ensure that the polls are adequately staffed to handle an unprecedented onslaught — as high as 85 per cent of registered voters. Turnout in 2004 was 60.7 per cent, the biggest share since the 1960s.

Although that would be a welcome boost to participatory democracy, voting advocates are worried about its effect in states like Virginia, which has one of the lowest ratios of voting machines to registered voters. “Voters will simply walk away, if the lines are too long,” warned Susannah Goodman, who directs the election reform program at Common Cause.

Litigation brought in recent weeks in Ohio, Georgia, Florida and Colorado may alert voters about the potential they’ll be challenged. But in many states, the verification methods have created more obstacles than they have removed. In Florida, an aggressive “no match, no vote” standard has been applied to question whether over 10,000 of those who have signed up since the start of the year should be given ballots despite discrepancies between their registration information and their government records, said Tova Wang, vice president for research at Common Cause.