WASHINGTON - Problems that voters encountered in Florida and elsewhere in 2000 are likely to recur this fall unless Congress, states and voters fix them quickly, a coalition of voters' rights groups warned Wednesday.

The main problems are:

• Confusing voter registration and identification requirements.
  
• Errors in purging lists of eligible voters.
  
• Misused and malfunctioning voting machines, including the infamous punch-card machines.
  
• Inaccurate counting of ballots cast by voters who may be voting in the wrong precincts.

Significantly absent from their list of voting ills, though, are problems created by electronic voting machines, a widely debated concern.

These problems disenfranchised between 4 to 6 million voters in the 2000 presidential election, according to a Caltech-MIT study released in 2001.

The League of Women Voters and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, an alliance of civil rights organizations and labor groups, are joining forces with other voter advocacy groups to push for solutions to as many voting problems as possible before November's election.

Significantly absent from their list of voting ills, though, are problems created by electronic voting machines, a widely debated concern.

"There are other issues that can affect more people than can be addressed right now," said League of Women Voters President Kay Maxwell.

To solve the registration problems, the coalition wants states to compile complete lists of registered voters and provide them to each precinct. Currently, many precincts have only local voter lists and can't help eligible voters who turn up in the wrong precinct.

The coalition also is pressing for better training for volunteer poll workers, who often don't know enough about registration and identification rules to help confused voters. Poll workers, who must show voters how to use voting machines, also need more training in how the machines work.

The Help America Vote Act, which Congress passed in 2002, was supposed to help states and localities set guidelines for voting and pay for improvements. The act hasn't been fully funded, however. In particular, the coalition wants more money for the Election Assistance Commission, an agency created by the act to set voting standards.

While the coalition is critical of the states' follow-through, Meredith Imwalle, a spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of State, said states have been working hard.

"HAVA guarantees that anyone who shows up on Election Day will get a ballot," Imwalle said. "All states are paying real attention to the concerns of" the 2000 election.

HAVA requires states to compile accurate lists of eligible voters, but 41 states - including Florida, Pennsylvania, California, Michigan and Missouri - are seeking waivers to delay compliance until 2006.

The coalition also wants to simplify voter registration rules so that there are fewer technicalities for officials to worry about. It would also help, if registration officials had more discretion to act in voters' favor, said Wade Henderson, the executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.

Henderson advocates voter registration applications that include only "the minimum information necessary to determine voter eligibility."

To avoid erroneous purges of registered voters from voting rolls, the coalition said jurisdictions should carefully compile and check their lists of purged and inactive voters. Both Florida and Missouri faced national criticism for failing to do so in 2000, when hundreds of voters found themselves improperly removed from registration rolls.

Coalition members also sought to remind election supervisors that most purges must be made no later than 90 days before the election, and that purged voters must be notified in writing so that they may respond if purged erroneously.

© Copyright 2004 Knight-Ridder

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