Chaotic vote counting is the lasting image of the 2000 election, but a group of Harvard Law School students say the millions of voters who were wrongly denied ballots was a bigger story. This year, they're trying to prevent it from happening again.

The new group, called Just Democracy, announced its plans yesterday to dispatch at least 1,000 students from law schools across the country to cut through confusion at the polls.

As many as 4 million eligible voters were denied ballots in 2000 because of errors in voter registration databases or polling place problems, according to a study by the Caltech-MIT voting technology project.

A bogged-down bureaucracy or ignorance of the law, not malice, explains most problems, which often can be fixed, said Harvard law student Becca O'Brien, Just Democracy's founder.

The lost votes particularly inflame Democrats, who were on the losing end of the Supreme Court's ruling that gave Florida and the general election to President Bush. But O'Brien said Just Democracy is a nonpartisan group committed only to maximum voter participation.

It plans to send volunteers to every state with a law school (which excludes only Alaska), not just battleground states, O'Brien said. Its volunteers and board of election law experts will also be a mix of Democrats, Republicans, and independents.

"We're not in this for the presidential election," O'Brien said. "We're in this because we believe every vote should count."

O'Brien got the idea at a Harvard Law School forum on voter participation that painted a bleak picture. When someone asked what could be done, a panel member brought up the idea of law student observers.

"I couldn't shake my memory of that comment," said O'Brien, a second-year student. "It was such a concrete answer. . . . I kept thinking, `That's feasible.' "

Poll workers aren't trained in election law and may make mistakes, but a law student can spot common errors before a voter is sent away for good, said Micah May, a member of Just Democracy. For instance, a simple change of address to a new voting precinct has shut people out of voting, but shouldn't, May said. Other examples are improper requirements that voters present a driver's license and polls that opened late or closed early.

© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.

© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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