Justice Department Unprepared to Handle Problems at Polls, Report Says

The nation's leading law enforcement agency is not prepared to handle the avalanche of complaints that is expected to come from voters on Election Day, a new government report says. The Justice Department "lacks a clear plan" to record and track complaints in a manner that would allow monitors to quickly detect patterns of abuse and take corrective steps, according to the Government Accounting Office (GAO). The report was released by U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), and in a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft, the lawmakers said that findings "raise questions about what the Justice Department has been doing for the last four years." "In what appears to be another razor-thin election, the Justice Department appears woefully unprepared and once again has left us vulnerable to another crisis in democracy. The fundamentals of election protection are not being met," Conyers said in a statement. [more ]

• Some 40,000 Miss. voters will be asked for ID at polling sites [more ]