In anticipation of the complexity of vote counting in next week's presidential election, the campaigns of President Bush and Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry are prepared with teams of lawyers to confront problems if they arise.
In response to the vote-counting problems in the 2000 presidential election and the closeness of this presidential race, lawyers from both campaigns are prepared to fight over votes.
\The year 2000 clearly demonstrated that you can't necessarily take results as accurate on their face when they first come out. This means that people are going to be more prepared to challenge votes,"" said UW-Madison political science Professor G. Donald Ferree.
The moving of very few votes could shift the overall outcome of the election, giving each party a very strong incentive to do what they can to ensure each of their votes is counted and that no more of their opponents' votes than necessary are counted,"" Ferree said.
Contesting votes is certainly not unique just to recent elections, however, according to University of California at San Diego political science Professor Samuel Popkin.
""The history of democracy is the history of who controls the ballot box. There's always a percent or two of legitimately contestable votes,"" he said.
Provisional ballots are also a potential point of contention for lawyers from both the Bush and Kerry campaigns. Congress passed a law in 2000 requiring that people showing up at the polls claiming to be registered must be allowed to vote using a provisional ballot whether or not they are actually registered. The votes are later examined individually to determine if they will be counted.
""There are going to be hundreds of thousands of provisional ballots in this election. It is not only possible, it is highly plausible that at least in one state the outcome will depend on how many of those provisional ballots are deemed to be valid,"" UW-Madison political science Professor Howard Schweber said.
Determining the validity of provisional ballots may prove to be difficult, since they were only introduced in 2000. Ferree said there are no standards for counting these ballots.
Even without problems, it may take a long time to examine all the provisional ballots. Potential problem of vote counting in next week's election increases the possibility of a winner not being announced immediately after the election.
""I think there's a reasonable chance we won't know on [Nov. 3] who won,"" Popkin said.
