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Sleight of Hand at the Polls Florida isn't an exception. Reports of abuse--from purged voter rolls to intimidation--abound

This was an Election Day that Dane W. Dingerson will never forget--and not just because of its cliffhanger finish. When the 51-year-old businessman went to vote at Oakwood Manor Elementary School in suburban Kansas City, he saw a Christian Coalition voting guide on a table next to the voting machine. The self-described independent, who backed Republican Bob Dole in 1996, was shocked when his complaints led one election official to tell him: ''God wants you to vote for George Bush. God wants Bush to win. [Democrat Al] Gore kills babies.''

Dingerson, who wound up voting for Gore, is hardly the first American voter to face such annoying interference in the simple act of casting a vote. Although Florida's botched ballot count and other voting irregularities have attracted most of the public's attention, the reality is that electoral misconduct goes on in every American election. The abuses range from minor infractions like Dingerson experienced, to serious offenses such as ballot stuffing and intimidation of minority voters. ''We have a time-honored tradition of vote manipulation and irregularities and larceny bordering on illegalities,'' says University of Texas political scientist Bruce Buchanan. ''You can't design rules that people can't game if they want to.''

The difference this year: The Presidential election is so tight that it has exposed voters to the warts that usually go unnoticed when candidates win by big margins. And another round of questions could be set to explode. As the disputed Florida vote appears headed for the final tally, that state's absentee ballots will play a key role in deciding the outcome. Yet absentee ballots have long been considered one of the aspects of U.S. elections most open to abuse. ''The election of 2000 is no different than any other--except that the Presidency of the United States hangs in the balance,'' say Robert Hogan, a political scientist at Louisiana State University.

Of course, there have been close elections in the past. And American history is replete with tales of election fraud that may or may not have swayed elections. In 1948, Lyndon Johnson won a Senate seat when dozens of dead Texans voted in alphabetical order for their man in one South Texas county. Many historians believe that Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley stole the 1960 election for Democrat John F. Kennedy by stuffing ballot boxes in Cook County. In Louisiana, they bury the dead above ground, the saying goes, so they'll have a shorter walk to the polling place.

This time around, ward heelers worked their toxic magic in a dozen different ways, from unduly influencing voters to manipulating the final count with bogus votes. In Wisconsin, a Gore backer was caught on tape trying to influence voters by offering homeless people cigarettes if they would cast absentee ballots. And in Georgia, Bush loyalists tried to increase turnout by raffling off a gun to those who had voted. A more sophisticated, and potentially far more effective, tactic took place in New Jersey. Millionaire Democratic Senate candidate Jon Corzine gave roughly $100,000 to churches and other politically influential groups through his charitable foundation.

Ironically, many allegations of irregularities made this year are tied to recent changes designed to simplify voter registration and absentee balloting. With each reform--like instant voter registration on Election Day--there is a risk that operatives will try to stack the deck.

BULLYBOYS. No tactic seems more odious than outright intimidation. Civil rights leaders such as the Reverend Jesse Jackson have alleged a Florida Highway Patrol's ''safety checkpoint'' on Election Day 2000 caused traffic tie-ups in a Tallahassee-area precinct with a substantial minority population, resulting in a lower turnout. It wouldn't be the first time such tactics have been used to depress minority turnout. In 1988, Orange County (Calif.) Republicans posted security guards at 20 predominantly Hispanic precincts. A lawsuit alleged that the blue-uniformed guards were told to ''demand documentation of citizenship'' from ''voters who looked Hispanic'' and to ''take down license plate numbers of the vehicles of Hispanic voters.'' The result: lower turnout in those precincts and the narrow election of a Republican state assemblyman. GOP officials later apologized and settled the case for $400,000. California law now bars uniformed poll watchers.

A far more common, if less egregious, violation of election law is overt partisanship within polling places. One Milwaukee voter, Francisco Rios, said a Democratic precinct election judge told him he was not permitted to split his ballot between Republican Bush and Democratic candidates for House and Senate. According to the retired school security officer, 67, the election official ''took my ballot...cut it into pieces and threw it in the wastepaper basket.'' Rios eventually got to cast his ballot--voting a straight Republican ticket. But Wisconsin GOP officials say thousands of other voters also encountered Democratic election officials who tried to improperly influence votes inside polling places by urging voters to back Vice-President Gore.

Another favorite gimmick of political partisans is to ''purge'' the rolls of political opponents, usually voters who haven't been to the polls for several years. Such tactics were behind the Election Day chaos this year in St. Louis, as thousands of citizens with valid voter registration cards found themselves missing from the official rolls. Most were Democrats, and nearly 200 won court orders permitting them to vote. When a Democratic state judge extended poll hours, Republicans accused the other party of trying to steal Missouri's close Senate and gubernatorial races. Similar problems with ''purged'' voters were reported from Florida to New Mexico this year.

Heard enough? Then consider this as Election 2000 finally draws to a close: Analysts say the fastest-growing area of vote fraud is manipulation of absentee ballots. Unlike ordinary ballots, absentee tallies are filled out in private and far from the watchful supervisory machinery in normal precinct polling places. In 1998, a Florida state court overturned the Miami mayoral contest after finding that backers of Xavier Suarez submitted absentee ballots on behalf of nonresidents and dead people.

The Miami race was hardly an isolated event. A study by the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement found six other cases of absentee ballot fraud since 1988. Nor is the problem confined to Florida. Last year, a court in Alabama reversed the outcome of a sheriff's election because the victor benefited from illegal absentee ballots. ''Most of the reported cases of election fraud in contemporary times involve absentee ballots,'' says James R. Sutton, former general counsel for the California Republican Party. ''If you want to stuff a ballot box, this is the way you do it.''

NEW RULE. Absentee ballot manipulation often occurs at nursing homes, where staffers or local pols ''help'' voters fill out forms. ''There's a definite potential for mischief,'' says Commissioner Bob Rackleff, of Leon County, Fla., which now limits helpers to witnessing no more than five absentee ballots.

Will the Florida debacle spur solutions? ''If there's any silver lining to this episode, it would be a nationwide movement to update voting procedures,'' says Claremont McKenna College political scientist John J. Pitney Jr. Among the likely reforms: new state laws--or even possible federal guidelines--on the counting and recounting of absentee ballots. Also, more states are likely to require voters to present positive ID before registering or voting. And election veterans predict that punch-card voting is on the way out. Such changes might make American elections a bit cleaner, but don't expect much. Political shenanigans are as American as apple pie."

By Richard S. Dunham in Austin, Tex., with Ann Therese Palmer in Chicago, Dan Carney in Tallahassee, Jennifer Merritt in West Palm Beach, Fla., and Mike France in New York

-- Ken Decker (kcdecker@att.net), January 22, 2001

Answers

Nobody reads all this stuff Ken.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), January 23, 2001.

Your own stuff stands a better chance of being read.

Seriously, C&P is a drag. We can all read and generally know where to find what it is we WANT to read.

Don't think you can save us here...padre.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), January 23, 2001.

Nobody reads all this stuff Ken. Yes they do Carlos

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), January 23, 2001.