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created for ballots but did not receive them.318

The Associated Press reported with officials ticketed lawfully parked demo at the version

stations.319

Election protection volunteers received complaints about provisional ballots from voters,

many of whom reported being denied the opportunity to vote by provisional ballot. Some

polling places either ran out of provisional ballots or never had any at their location. For

example: a voter registered to vote in September. When she went to the polling place in

Cuyahoga County on Election Day, they said she was not registered and they refused to

give her a provisional ballot.320

In Franklin County, some voters, who were in line to vote, but outside of the doors to the

polling place, were sent home at 7:30 p.m. when the polls closed.321

Analysis

Just as we witnessed in the Florida presidential debacle four years ago, improper purging

and other errors by election officials represent a very serious problem and have a particularly

negative impact on minority voters. The fact that the Greater Cleveland Voter Registration

Coalition projects that in Cuyahoga County alone over 10,000 Ohio citizens lost their right to

vote as a result of official registration errors and that the NAACP received more than 1,000

purging complaints on election day indicate that the overall number of voters who may have

been disenfranchised as a result of official mistakes and wrongful purging is in the scores of

thousands, if not more. Congressional passage of HAVA's provisional ballot requirement was

intended to mitigate errors such as this, but Secretary Blackwell's unduly narrow interpretation

of this requirement, as well as weak rules for counting and checking provisional ballots, have

made it far less likely that individuals whose registration was wrongfully purged or never entered

would be able to receive a provisional ballot and have it counted.

Given the information we have, it is unclear whether improper purging and other

registration errors which appear so prevalent in Ohio were the result of human mistake or

intentional misconduct. If it was intentional, a strong case can be made that it violated the

Voting Rights Act, Equal Protection, Due Process, possibly the National Voter Registration

318

See Judiciary Democratic Forum (Dec. 8, 2004) (statement of Hilary Shelton, Director,

Washington Bureau, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).

319

See Mabin, supra.

320

See PE O P L E F O R T H E AM E R I CA N WA Y E T A L, EL E C T IO N PR O T E C TI O N 2004,

SH A T T E R I N G T H E MY T H : AN IN I T I A L SN A P S H O T O F VO TER DI S E N F R A N C H I S E M E N T IN T H E 2004

EL E C T IO N S 22.

321

Id. at 23.