NEW YORK -- October 28-- Today Miles Rapoport, President of Demos, a nonpartisan election reform organization, issued the following statement in response to decisions from the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declaring that Ohio and Michigan are not required under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to count provisional ballots cast by eligible voters who appear at the wrong polling place:

"Confusion over polling locations may be particularly common this year, as many new voters head to the polls and others adjust to redrawn district boundaries – or special circumstances such as Florida's hurricane damage. When registered voters are at the wrong polling site – but in the right county or municipality – more than a dozen states will simply count those ballots for eligible races. These states should be applauded for this democracy-affirming approach.

"But with Election Day fast approaching, knowing that tens of thousands of voters under its jurisdiction will cast provisional ballots, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court has overturned previous District Court decisions stipulating that these ballots must be counted. They have done a disservice to our electoral process and certainly distorted the intentions of HAVA.

"Some have argued against provisional ballots and other mechanisms intended to promote voter access with claims that they promote fraud. In turn they offer solutions that distort our laws and severely limit ballot access, denying many the right to vote and compromising the integrity of our elections and this democracy.

"The question of whether to accept provisional ballots cast at the wrong polling place pits voter access not against the worthy goal of fraud prevention, but instead against more mundane concerns of administrative convenience. As a former secretary of state, I certainly sympathize with the difficulty of administering elections, especially when voter interest is high. But election officials must not let the challenges of a full Election Day workload get in the way of one of their core duties: facilitating ballot access to all eligible voters and promoting fair and transparent elections.

For more information on provisional ballots, see Demos' recent report "Placebo Ballots: Will ‘Fail-Safe’ Voting Fail?" online at www.demos-usa.org.

Demos: A Network for Ideas & Action is a national, nonpartisan public policy organization based in New York.Miles Rapoport, President of Demos, was Secretary of the State of Connecticut from 1995-1999

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