DURHAM GEN ELECTION - 'An enormous mess,''illegal,' 'skewed in favor of Dems'

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Published: Wednesday, June 6, 2001 4:12 a.m. EDT

News&Observer

League concludes Durham election 'an enormous mess'

By BARBARA BARRETT, Staff Writer

DURHAM -- A report by the League of Women Voters confirms the mismanagement and incompetence that plagued the Durham County Board of Elections a year ago and led to a botched and illegal election in May 2000.

"Our main impression was that the election was an enormous mess and that it was mostly due to a lack of oversight," said Gwen Griswold, an author of the report by the league chapter for Orange, Durham and Chatham counties.

The report also raises a new issue, charging that politics wrongly skewed the placement last fall of one-stop voting sites in favor of the Democratic Party. Sites also should have been placed in southern or western Durham County, where more Republicans reside, the group said.

But the organization also praises the work of Michael Ashe, Durham's new elections director, and holds out hope for a legal and well-run election this fall.

The elections office violated state law last spring when it failed to notify voters in a timely manner about precinct changes and when it moved more than 700 voters to new legislative districts. Former Rep. George Miller lost the Democratic primary narrowly to newcomer Paul Miller, and nearly a dozen voters sought a new election, saying they had been disfranchised.

The State Board of Elections refused to call a new election, but the turmoil last summer led to the firing of the elections director, Carol Booth, and the resignation of the deputy director and two of the three election board members.

Since then, the office has been criticized for its bloated voter rolls, computer problems and poor maintenance of the list of eligible voters.

The League of Women Voters spent months this spring going through newspaper stories and interviewing election officials, party activists and journalists about the situation.

The report criticizes county commissioners and state election officials for lax oversight, saying government leaders should have taken more responsibility for the elections office.

The League pointed out that the county technology department did not provide adequate support and that state Executive Secretary Gary Bartlett knew nothing of the office's problems a week after the botched primary.

"Is this systematic, effective oversight? We do not think so," the report said.

Griswold said the group found that leaders didn't act until public pressure forced them to. There was, she said, "a need for people involved to duck the issue for as long as they could."

In a written response from the state, Bartlett clarified some state regulations cited in the report but said he agreed overall with the League's recommendations.

Of the state's own lack of oversight, he said that he hadn't received a complaint from any member of the public, the news media, a county commissioner or the League of Women Voters. And the state, he said, has only general authority over the boards of elections -- not day-to-day operations.

The League's report also criticized the elections board for its work leading to the November election. Sites for one-stop voting, for example, failed to consider Durham County's western and southern populations.

"There are an awful lot of Republicans, including our mayor, who live on the south side," Griswold said.

Ashe said this week that he has asked for enough money to add new voting sites throughout the county and to expand the hours of the sites to include evenings and weekends.

But he also said that the sites' locations last year didn't seem to favor one party over the other. Instead, he said, people who used the one-stop sites were those who were likely to vote anyway.

And the League's report also praised Ashe, who began work a few weeks before the November election. Ashe has reorganized the office, replaced some workers and hired a new deputy director, Barry Garner.

The report also warned that Ashe will be tested this fall during the City Council election, when new wards will be used and the council reduces its membership from 13 to seven.

"The progress he has made so far encourages us," the report said.

Ashe sent a response to county commissioners and the state this week, listing his office's accomplishments and boasting, "There is no crisis or controversy at the Durham County Board of Elections."

Since February, the office has removed the names of more than 10,000 former residents, felons and deceased voters from its rolls. It also has worked to clean up the sloppy coding that led to the illegal movement of voters last year.

And Ashe continues to work on contacting inactive voters so he can remove their names from the rolls. More than 2,700 have been removed since February.

He said this week that he considered the League's report "a historical document."

"I don't expect any of those things to happen again," he said.

"I don't expect any of those things to happen again," he said. This guy is new to Durham. Little does he know. . .

-- Anonymous, June 06, 2001


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