Wreaking HAVA

Yet anecdotal accounts of primary day, from both Republicans and Democrats, paint a less than encouraging picture. (For more on those voting snafus, see Robson, p. 8.)

Meanwhile, Kiffmeyer says she is not worried.

"We have been using this system since the middle of June," she says. "It is in operation and it is working."

She denounced the testimony of a software expert at a hearing in August as uninformed because he hadn't personally inspected the system.

That's not surprising, says Schultz. For the past five and a half years under Kiffmeyer, he claims, Minnesota's voting system has grown steadily less inclusive. Registration cards and ballots continue to be written only in English, despite Minnesota's influx of nonnative English speakers. There is a stringent system in place to ensure that ineligible felons don't vote, but there is no follow-up system to inform former offenders when their voting rights have been restored.

In the wake of the 2000 Florida debacle, Congress passed HAVA in 2002 with the goal of providing more uniform voting standards. The act provides $2 billion for training, voter education, and new equipment that will eliminate punch-card and lever voting. It's also supposed to make voting easier for non-English speakers and wheelchair users.

The potential for problems might seem less pressing if it weren't for one other complicating factor: With Minnesota in a virtual dead heat between Bush and Kerry, as little as a .5 percent failure rate could turn the election, Schultz predicts.

"If you throw out .5 percent of voters because of people [not voting because of problems], that's potentially enough to move the results from one candidate to another," he says. "These voting procedures could subversively affect the outcome of the race in Minnesota."

"There's the potential for huge disaster," agrees Morillo-Alicea.