Rashmikant Patel of Peachtree

City had every reason to believe he was going to vote in Tuesday's election

when he walked into his precinct's polling place at the library.

But a search through the lists

of voters published by Fayette County found him not listed as a registered

voter anywhere in the county. The Shakerag West poll manager telephoned

the county elections office where an elections officer checked the paper

files as well as a list from the Georgia Department of Motor Vehicles,

to no avail.

When the Patels moved here

from California three years ago, both Patel and his wife, Kalavati, indicated

they wanted to register to vote as they applied for Georgia drivers' licenses.

Kalavati Patel's name made it to the list of voters; Rashmikant Patel's

did not.

This scene was repeated nearly

a dozen times at Shakerag West and many more times throughout the county

and, presumably, the state. Would-be voters were effectively disenfranchised

the Patels, in many cases, two or more members of a family filled out

the same form at the same time, giving it to the same official at the

same DMV site yet one found that he or she was not registered to vote

on Election Day.

County elections manager Carolyn

Combs said motor voter glitches accounted for about half the delays or

rejections countywide. The majority of those affected reported that they

had tried to register at the DMV counter at the Braelinn Kroger in Peachtree

City. A sign there says that, effective in September 2000, licensing officials

would no longer process out-of-state changeovers.

Chief Ronald Johnson, chief

of the state's license renewal department, said he received "hundreds"

of calls on Election Day and during the ensuing days, and patiently told

each caller the same thing:

"We are not registrars.

That's the biggest misconception. This is not a registration process.

We're simply information collectors. If you indicate to us that you'd

like to register to vote, we process that request when we're processing

the rest of the information. It goes in duplicate to the secretary of

state's office one way is electronically filed at the end of the day,

and the other way is through a vender who processes motor voter forms.

"People are under the

assumption that because they got a driver's license, they're registered

to vote," Johnson said. I talked to maybe a hundred people myself,

and their [license application] was clearly marked that they were not

interested in registering to vote. The way the process works, once we

send files to the secretary of state, they send them to the local registrar,

and they send out a registration card.

"If the person didn't

receive that card," he said, "why did they just magically show

up to vote?

"I canít prove

what the person said, and it's possibly an error on the part of the clerk.

We process over two million people a year do the math on 99 percent accuracy

on that. In gross numbers, that's a lot," Johnson said.

A sign at Braelinn Kroger says

that since September, 2000, licensing officials would no longer process

out-of-state changeovers. "Anyone who had a problem can call in,"

Johnson asserted, "and we can look at the transaction. We made every

effort to make sure everybody who expressed a desire to vote in this process

was registered. I want the facts to fall where they may." Johnson

may be reached at 404-624-7450.

Other registration failures

apparently resulted when persons who had filled out registration forms

did not mail them to the elections office in time for the Nov. 7 balloting.

A number of young people especially, eager to vote in their first election,

thought they had registered at their high schools, but were turned away

when their names could not be found on the list.

A spokesperson at McIntosh

High School stated that the school does not register students, but makes

available registration forms which the student is then responsible for

mailing. Jill Kuhns, a member of the library staff in Peachtree City,

agreed that it is a misconception that people actually register at the

library. Libraries, like many other public agencies, make registration

forms available, but it is the would-be voter's obligation to mail them

in.

"We usually advise them

to drop the application in the mailbox when they leave the building,"

Kuhns said. An Election Day phone call from Shakerag West to the county

office authenticated only one motor voter whose name was not on the electors'

list Tuesday. Patel was not that lucky voter.

The mild-mannered native of

India, an American citizen for seven years, accepted rejection phlegmatically:

"It's all right," he said. "But you only get this chance

every four years, to vote for president."