As New Rules Take Effect, Voters Report Problems in Some States

Some longtime voters in Texas reported on Tuesday that they were refused a ballot because they lacked newly required photo identification. In North Carolina, voters who showed up at the wrong precinct were unable to vote, reflecting a new policy. And in Georgia, hundreds of frustrated people called a hotline to say they were unsure if their voter registrations had been processed, some of the thousands of would-be new voters who reportedly faced uncertainty.

In many cases, the accounts seemed to reflect concerns raised by civic groups and civil rights leaders that new photo identification requirements in several states and cutbacks in early voting and same-day registration in others would deter significant numbers of people from participating in the elections.Most of the new policies were adopted by Republican legislatures in the name of electoral integrity, even though evidence of voter fraud has been negligible. They are opposed by Democrats who say tighter rules are aimed at discouraging minorities, poor people and college students, groups that tend to prefer Democrats, from voting.

Many of the changes adopted in recent years “will make it harder for millions of Americans to participate,” said Wendy R. Weiser, director of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “But the problems of disenfranchisement don’t show up in a visible way,” Ms. Weiser added. “It’s people who don’t show up, or someone’s who’s turned away.”

Because so many factors affect voting decisions, and because the turnout in midterm elections is low to start with, scholars will long debate the impact of the tighter voting rules.

Republicans say the charges are overblown.

“We believe these claims are made for partisan purposes to rile up the Democrat Party base,” said Michael B. Thielen, executive director of the Republican National Lawyers Association in Washington.

The battles over election rules have partisan roots, said Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the editor of Election Law Blog. “One lesson learned from Florida in 2000,” he said, referring to the counting fiasco in the presidential contest between George W. Bush and Al Gore, “is that in close elections, the rules matter a great deal.”

Both parties, Mr. Hasen said, assume that restrictions like photo ID requirements and the elimination of same-day registration most often deter less-engaged voters who are more likely to vote Democratic. “So unsurprisingly, Democrat-led legislatures have passed rules making it easier to register and vote, and Republicans have done the opposite,” he said.

There were problems at a number of polling places around the country that did not appear to be related to partisan agendas. In Florida’s Broward County, for example, technical malfunctions and voter confusion about polling sites led to delays and an emergency request by Charlie Crist, the Democratic candidate for governor, for a two-hour extension of voting hours. A Florida judge denied the request.

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Countering this year’s trend, the Democratic-controlled government of Illinois loosened the rules, permitting same-day registration, extending early-voting times, ending photo ID requirements in early voting and making it easier for college students to vote. Calling the changes a pilot project, the Legislature adopted them for this election only.

Mr. Thielen, leader of the Republican lawyers’ group, called the temporary imposition of the measures “outrageous” and a transparent effort by Democrats to seek advantage in this year’s races for governor and other offices in Illinois.

While several of the new laws have been challenged or ruled unconstitutional by lower courts, the final limits remain to be sorted out by the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court allowed disputed changes to take effect for this election in Ohio, which cut early voting on a Sunday that was popular with black churches; in North Carolina, where early voting was curbed and same-day registration abolished; and in Texas, which adopted the country’s most stringent photo identification rules.

At the same time, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked a new photo ID law in Wisconsin. The common thread in the rulings, it appears, was a desire to avoid last-minute changes that would confuse voters.

Last year’s Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, ending direct federal oversight of voting laws in regions with histories of discrimination, allowed Texas to proceed with its photo ID requirement. A federal district judge — noting evidence that more than 600,000 registered voters in the state, mainly poor, black and Hispanic, did not have the specified documents — struck down the law, calling it the modern equivalent of a poll tax.

But that decision was stayed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the Supreme Court allowed the requirement to take effect.

In North Carolina, extended early voting and same-day registration had greatly increased voter turnout in recent elections, especially among minorities, said the Rev. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina State Conference of the N.A.A.C.P. The recent cutbacks were blocked by a federal appeals court, but the Supreme Court reversed that order.

Mr. Barber’s group had engaged in two and a half weeks of barnstorming across the state this year, aiming to educate and mobilize voters.

In Georgia, the N.A.A.C.P. and a group called the New Georgia Project conducted extensive voter registration drives this year, resulting in more than 100,000 new applications, many from young African-Americans. The groups charged in a lawsuit that some 40,000 of the new registrations had apparently not been processed by county election officials, discouraging many people from voting and forcing others to file provisional ballots.

A judge in Fulton County, Ga., said last week that officials were complying with the law and that voters not yet on the official roster could file a provisional ballot. The secretary of state, Brian Kemp, said, “The counties have processed all of the voter registration applications that they received for the general election.”

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But civil rights groups hotly disputed that, and their concerns about voter confusion deepened on Tuesday morning when the website of the secretary of state, which tells people if they are registered and where to vote, crashed for several hours. That led to a flood of calls from uncertain potential voters to Election Protection, a national hotline.

“We’re concerned that a lot of voters will end up with no choice but to cast provisional ballots that have a low chance of being counted,” said Barbara R. Arnwine, the executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which helps run the hotline.

Diamond Walton, 18, was originally on that list of apparently unprocessed applicants. She registered in Muscogee County in August, but then did not hear back from officials for many weeks. Ms. Walton finally received a registration card in October, but on Tuesday, when she arrived at her assigned polling place, she was not on the rolls and was told to fill out a provisional ballot.

Instead, Ms. Walton called a lawyer from the New Georgia Project who, after numerous calls to officials, found her name on a “supplemental” list. With the lawyer’s help, she finally could cast her ballot. “It was pretty discouraging,” she said.