Justice Department criticized for poorly documented voter complaint logs

With polls showing the possibility of another tight presidential election, government auditors criticized the Voting Section of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division last week for not being prepared to handle what could be an onslaught of complaints after the Nov. 2 presidential election.

After the 2000 presidential election, the Voting Section received about 11,000 telephone calls, but according to a new Government Accountability Office report, the agency was not able to reliably record or document the complaints. GAO's analysis of the call logs found that the nature of the calls were not specifically documented, contact information was not included, and calls from Arkansas, Kansas, Montana and North Dakota were not recorded.

The Voting Section is responsible for enforcing the 1965 Voters Rights Act and the 2002 Help America Vote Act. By monitoring Election Day activities, the organization investigates possible irregularities; in 2000, the Voting Section took up 88 investigations. GAO auditors concluded that if the Voting Section does not note the specifics of complaints and the department's subsequent activity, Congress and the public cannot be sure appropriate actions were taken.

Fearing a repeat of the 2000 presidential election in which complaints about irregularities affecting access to the polls inundated the Voting Section, Reps. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Henry Waxman, D-Calif., wrote a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft recently questioning what the Justice Department has done during the past four years to resolve those issues.

"Preparations for the 2004 elections should have been a top priority for the Justice Department," the letter stated. "Yet GAO found that your department was unable to provide clear, detailed plans for how the Justice Department will fully document reports of unfair or discriminatory voting procedures and Justice Department actions to address them."

In a written response to the report, Bradley Schlozman, deputy assistant attorney general, argued that GAO auditors did not take into consideration the fact that the telephone logs they reviewed were taken over the weekend by an independent contractor hired to take calls when the offices otherwise would have been closed. Schlozman also wrote that the shortcomings in the agency's logs were not likely to influence future investigations and that a majority of the calls were from non-Florida residents complaining about the situation in Florida.

Schlozman wrote that the Voting Section had effective methods for tracking phone calls, and a draft version of the report overlooked call logs kept by Voting Section employees.

Though GAO noted the Justice organization had improved phone logs for the November 2002 election cycle, the report recommended the agency do a better job of precisely categorizing allegations and actions taken. If a contractor is needed to handle a deluge of calls, GAO said its employees should be better trained to handle claims.

"If the Voting Section collects more precise information about voter allegations, it is in a better position to assure the public that it has addressed allegations of voting irregularities," the report stated.

According to William Jenkins, director of homeland security and justice issues at GAO, the report's recommendations were based on an analysis of logs used in the 2002 election, which indicated Justice still had no clear plan for accurately recording a large number of phone complaints. Justice spokesman Eric Holland said the Voting Section had implemented GAO's recommendations for this election.

According to Holland, about 1,000 federal workers will be dispatched Nov. 2 as observers and monitors, and 39 Justice Department attorneys-an increase of eight from 2000-will be on hand to field voter complaints.

For the 2000 election, 516 observers were sent out; for the 2004 primaries, more than 700 monitors were deployed.