Officials highlight voting concerns
Millions of new voters and the introduction of new voting technologies for the US presidential election will lead to long queues, stressed workers and late results in November, US election officials said.
Rosemary E Rodriguez, chairwoman of the US Election Assistance Commission which oversees voting, said she was concerned about "weak spots" after a study revealed poorly designed ballots continue to plague US elections.
More than three billion US dollars (£1.5bn) has been set aside by Congress to resolve the issues caused by the "dimpled chads" of the 2000 election, which prompted fears of an "impending constitutional crisis" and led to the start of George Bush's presidency, but the study found serious problems remain.
It revealed that problems with confusing paper ballots in 2002, absentee ballots in 2004 and touch-screen ballots in 2006 led thousands of voters to skip over key races or make mistakes that invalidated their votes.
Lawrence Norden, of the Brennan Centre for Justice at the New York University School of Law, which conducted the study, told the New York Times he was concerned with the design of this year's ballots.
He said voters were often confused by ballots with instructions written in unclear legal jargon, lists of candidates that spanned more than one column, boxes that could be checked on either side of a candidate's name, or vague borders that failed to distinguish one electoral contest from another.
"The bottom line is that new voters are more prone to mistakes caused by confusing ballots," he said. "We're expecting a lot of new voters in November." He went on: "In the big election meltdowns ... where thousands of votes were lost, ballot design was the primary cause."
Since the passage of the Help America Vote Act in 2002, states have spent more than two billion dollars in mostly federal funds to overhaul their voting systems.
But the influx of new voters who registered for this year's presidential race, and the introduction of new voting machines in parts of 11 states with 15 million potential voters, could play a major role in mistakes when America votes on November 4.
It is hoped the study's conclusion, endorsed by many federal and state election overseers, will lead counties and election system manufacturers to improve ballot designs by the November election.
