Early voting costs a concern

Election officials threw cold water yesterday on a push for early voting in Virginia.

While they like the concept, they don't have the resources to cope with it, registrars and other election officials told a joint meeting of the House and Senate Privileges and Elections committees.

Virginia now allows early voting for any of 17 reasons, such as being out of town on Election Day. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine supports no-excuse absentee voting, and several bills have been introduced to authorize it.

In a briefing on the Nov. 4 election, which produced a record turnout, Nancy Rodrigues, secretary of the State Board of Elections, said the state might as well allow early voting because "the genie is out of the bottle."

More than 500,000 Virginians cast absentee ballots out of 3.75 million votes in the presidential election. Rodrigues suggested that many of those who checked off a reason for voting absentee did not tell the truth.

"If we have open civil disobedience, either we get commonwealth's attorneys to prosecute or we deal with the problem" by allowing no-excuse voting, she said. "By having no excuses, it takes [registrars] less time."

The 17 excuses "allows for a certain amount of mischief," so the excuses should be abolished, said Del. Joseph D. Morrissey, D-Henrico.

Del. Rosalyn R. Dance, D-Petersburg, sponsor of one of the early-voting bills, reacted angrily at the opposition.

She said Petersburg was able to cope with a 2,900-person increase in absentee balloting over the 2004 presidential election, so other voting officials should be able to do the same.

She said opponents of early voting are using the state's lack of financial resources as an excuse to block the legislation. "It all comes down to money, money, money," she said.

Henrico registrar Mark J. Coakley, head of the legislative committee of the Virginia Association of Registrars, said registrars endorse the concept because that appears to be what the voters want. But he said the procedure should not be introduced without a fiscal-impact statement.

Randy Wertz, president of the registrars association, said "we do not have the staff nor the funding" to cope with early voters. Many registrars do not have the space to allow people to come in and cast ballots, he said.

After the meeting, Sen. Janet D. Howell, D-Fairfax, chairwoman of the Senate Privileges and Elections Committee and a proponent of early voting, said "we have some persuading to do, but the public wants it."

In the Nov. 4 election, 321,743 people voted absentee in person.

Contact Tyler Whitley at (804) 649-6780 or .