Ballot challenges could shift election

ANALYSIS: If John McCain is going to win Iowa, it will likely happen Monday.

And if Barack Obama is going to win Iowa, it’s already happened. Depending on how you look at it, it happened in the past six weeks, or it happened starting two years ago.

Record early voting and Election Day voter registration could increase the impact of ballot challenges on Iowa’s seven electoral votes.

Iowa absentee ballot with outer envelope and secrecy envelope.

Iowa has seen unprecedented levels of early voting since ballots became available Sept. 25. Through Saturday, 553,669 voters had voted early or requested ballots by mail, and 481,179 ballots had been returned. Democrats held a roughly 100,000-voter edge in total ballot requests.

Early voting continues through Monday, the day absentee ballot boards start the work of processing ballots, opening envelopes, and dealing with challenges.

Republicans, as part of their “voter integrity” program, issued an unprecedented number of absentee ballot challenges in 2004, concentrating on urban and academic counties. In liberal Johnson County, over 2,000 ballots were challenged for mistakes such as bad addresses and missing signatures. Of the challenged and provisional ballots that were counted, John Kerry won 77 percent — better than any Election Day precinct in the county.

Should McCain or the GOP make a similar attempt to challenge ballots this year, it would happen Monday.

But Democrats took note of the Republican ballot challenges in 2004, and, after taking control of the state legislature in 2006, they passed election law changes making ballot challenges more difficult. Each challenge must now be presented individually, rather than as a group or “blanket” challenge, and the law restricts challenges to a few items such as citizenship, felony status, and residence.

A voter cannot be challenged for registering or changing address on election day. Challengers must provide a name, address and phone number, and are subject to misdemeanor charges for frivolous challenges.

In another legal change, auditors are directed to open the outer, “return carrier” envelope of absentee ballots when they arrive in the mail and check the inner “affidavit envelope” for problems like missing signatures. The change gives voters a chance to fix their own mistakes. In 2004, the outer envelopes weren’t opened till the day before the election.

The Democratic Party also adapted to the 2004 absentee challenges by targeting precincts with especially mobile populations, like college towns, later in the campaign. That way, fewer voters will have moved after having requested a ballot from an old address, thus subjecting themselves to a potential challenge. Democrats also steered voters toward more in-person early voting and less voting by mail.

The trend toward heavier early voting may produce some anomalous precinct results. With so many Democrats out of the Election Day voting pool, Republicans may “win” some precincts they haven’t before. Polk County saw the dynamic a few years back in a Democratic supervisor primary, where Gene Phillips won every Election Day precinct, but John Mauro had an exceptional early voting program and won 80 percent of the absentee vote to win the nomination. He lost the Election Day vote because his people had already voted.

That happened at the presidential level in 2004. John Kerry led the Iowa absentee vote by 70,000 votes, but George W. Bush carried election day by 80,000 to win the state by 10,000.

After all is said and done, some Republicans may look at the Election Day results, compare them to the absentee vote, and cry foul. They may already be laying the groundwork for that with the national attention to problem voter registrations collected by the ACORN community organization. But in Iowa, we’ll be able to look at the details. For the first time, absentee results will be released by precinct, rather than lumped into one county-wide “special precinct.” Political numbers geeks will be able to look at absentee results and Election Day results side by side to check the effectiveness of their absentee ballot programs in minute detail.

Casual election watchers Tuesday night may see Iowa’s vote totals narrow as the votes come in. Absentee totals, which will favor Democrats, tend to be released earlier. The Election Day precincts, which will lean Republican because Democrats disproportionately voted earlier, will trickle in later.