As most people have heard by now, there is a potentially explosive combination of conditions brewing this election year that could boil over in some places on election day. The convergence of close elections, tremendous political ramifications, new voting machines and new voting rules could mean major problems both at the polls and after they close. What everyone wants to know is this: where are the biggest fires most likely to break out?

It’s impossible to predict with certainty where a major conflagration will occur—ask any election administrator anywhere and he or she will tell you of dark fears of being the "next Florida" or the "next Ohio." But there are some election administrators who should be losing more sleep than others tonight.

Maryland: Maryland's September primary was nothing short of a disaster. Because an elections worker forgot to include a necessary part to activate the voting machines, numerous polling sites were completely unable to operate for several hours.  The state was totally unprepared, causing some voters to simply walk away without voting, and others casting provisional ballots on backs of envelopes and even campaign literature!  This has led to the Republican incumbent governor encouraging people to vote absentee. Hence, a rush for absentee ballot requests that election administrators cannot keep up with and the possibility of thousands of flawed or late ballots and tons of paper that workers will have to count through the night.

All that in itself might not have gotten Maryland a spot on the front runners list, but a manual for poll watchers distributed by the GOP did. The manual tells watchers that challenging voters' right to vote at the polls is their most important job on election day, and gives them precise instructions on every conceivable way they can try to stop people from voting.  It instructs them to tell poll judges who resist their challenges that they are committing a criminal act by doing so.   

Ohio: Ohio once again will be at the epicenter of this election, given that there are several close elections happening there.  In addition, Ohio will for the first time have a voter identification requirement.  It has been demonstrated in court in Ohio that different counties have been implementing the identification rules completely differently from one another due to the vagueness of the new law. They have been interpreting "current" utility bill differently, some saying it has to be less than 30 days old, others saying 120 days; some have said "government issued" identification must be from the state or federal government, while others have accepted other government ID; some have accepted military ID with current addresses, some have not.  This all led to a temporary suspension of the law by the Ohio courts until the parties agreed to an order regarding statewide standards.  But this naturally begs the question of whether poll workers or voters will have any idea what is acceptable identification.

Moreover, given the problems counties in Ohio have had with their voting machines in the past, including this year's primary, and the likely strong turnout, Ohio observers are expecting long lines to be a problem again. In 2004, Ohio elections workers were so unprepared in some places that they had woefully insufficient numbers of voting machines to accommodate the turnout, and there are indications this could happen again in 2006. 

Missouri: Missouri has the closest senate race in the country.  Its legislature also passed one of the most draconian identification bills in the country.  After the Missouri legislature passed their misguided law, the state spent $680,000 on a campaign to tell voters they had to bring government issued photo identification to vote this year. Then, correctly and predictably, the courts held the law unconstitutional. So now voters do not need government issued photo identification to vote. As I pointed out in an earlier note, this is a very positive development—but do voters and poll workers know about the change? Or will poll workers be asking voters for photo identification? Will voters, who do not have such identification, believe they need it to vote, and therefore not go vote?  And given how important the race in Missouri is and the allegations of fraud that have perennially (often inaccurately) been made in St. Louis, it would not be surprising to see aggressive poll watchers at the polls.

Indiana:  Indiana is of huge concern for one very simple reason: voter ID. Indiana is the one state actually going forward with a rule requiring every voter to present government issued photo ID at the polls in order to vote.  There is no question there will be eligible voters who are unable to vote as a result of this law.  It is only a question of how many.  We may never actually know the answer to that question since some voters without the ID may simply not show up.  Indiana also engaged in some rather questionable purging of its voter registration list, leading to the possibility that some voters who think they are and should be registered will go to the polls and find themselves left off the list.  At the same time, with at least three very close House races, these disenfranchised voters might be the difference in control of Congress.

Florida: Florida is not on the list just because it's Florida.  There are new reasons for concern in Florida this year.  First and foremost is the fact that Florida's voter identification law is now almost as scary as Indiana's.  The only difference is that voters without ID can vote a provisional ballot (one-third of which historically are not counted), and the validity of that vote will be determined after the election.  There also have been ongoing, numerous machine problems in Florida, and a tremendous amount of controversy over the fact that the electronic voting machines there have no paper back up system.  And because Florida has no system for ensuring that sufficient numbers of voting machines are operating in the right places, there is a real possibility of long lines again.  Finally, Florida had a law fining civic groups for late submission of voter registration forms; the fines were so big that they put a complete halt to voter registration drives until the law was held unconstitutional by a judge.  These civic organizations are the heart of getting people, especially in poor communities, registered to vote.  Are there people who would have voted in Florida this year but for the time in which these rules were in effect?

Arizona: Arizona is home of some of the worst voting laws in the country, thanks to Proposition 200 passed in 2004.  Prop 200 required that voters prove their citizenship in order to vote, leading to the rejection of thousands of voter registration applications from perfectly eligible voters. When the new Arizona law first went into effect, election officials in the state's largest county rejected 75% of registrations. Although the rate has improved given two years of intense voter education, county officials still rejected 17% of new voter registration applications in 2006. Election administrators there have said that they think most of these registrants are eligible citizens who simply could not provide the necessary documentation. Are there thousands of voters who wanted and were eligible to vote but never made it through this registration process and now cannot? Are there voters who think they are registered and who will go to the polls only to find they are not on the list?

Prop 200 also requires all voters to present either photo identification or two forms of approved non-photo identification in order to vote. After a series of court battles over this new law the Supreme Court ordered the state to proceed with this very dangerous new rule. So just as elections officials, poll workers, and voters were preparing to go forward with the election under the rules Arizona had always followed for years prior to this new restriction on the right to vote (except for a low turnout September primary), the Supreme Court, in the name of avoiding voter confusion, two weeks before the election turned everything upside down again. Will we be surprised if voters and poll workers are totally unclear about what they have to do to gain access to the polls?

On top of all this, with nineteen ballot initiatives, Arizona is going to have perhaps the longest ballot in the country. Voter ID problems, registration problems and long ballots easily add up to long waits to vote—which some people, especially with jobs and kids they need to get to, will not be able to deal with.

As I said at the beginning, problems could crop up anywhere.  I have a whole second tier of hot spots that include Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia.  We'll know more tomorrow.

To keep you up to date, I’ll be blogging from Election Protection Headquarters, the home of 1-866-OURVOTE, where volunteers will be assisting voters with voting problems all over the country. Check The Century Foundation Web site at www.tcf.org or our election site at www.reformelections.org throughout the day to find out if and where voters are encountering trouble and democracy is in jeopardy.

Tova Wang is a Democracy Fellow at The Century Foundation.