Accelerating toward November’s presidential election, specters of the 2000 controversy in Florida threaten to transform into poltergeists. Rebecca Mason and six other University of Wisconsin law students, starting with today’s Milwaukee Democratic primary, are working as observers with the Election Protection Project to proactively avoid a noisy sequel this election year.

“Tuesday is a test-run program — a smaller version of what we will be doing in November,” Mason said.

Working in conjunction with Marquette law, students will be on hand at 24 precincts around the city of Milwaukee.

The non-partisan project came out of the People for the American Way Foundation. UW law students are playing a minor role in the project.

“Basically, we’re going to be making sure that the polls open on time and that the process of voting runs smoothly while the polls are open,” Mason said. “[We will be] making sure that there aren’t unnecessarily long lines, things like that. Wisconsin has historically been a pretty clean state.”

The project’s role will not be adversarial, according to Wisconsin Legal Coordinator Stan Woodard.

“Especially in Wisconsin, where we’ve worked closely with state and local officials, law students are there as trained observers who know what the regulations are and if there is something wrong,” Woodard said.

The National Headquarters of the Election Protection Project will make legal professionals available Nov. 2, who “will then have the ability to take individual cases to court if necessary,” National Legal Coordinator Alma Henderson said.

One of the most complicated areas in 2000’s court-contested Florida race was the vote of former convicted felons. State by state, the laws governing felons’ ability to vote differs. In Florida, according to Henderson and Alexis Highsmith, liaison between the UW Black Law Student Association and the Project, felons can only have their voting rights reinstated by governor’s pardon or by a clemency process.

“Problems in Florida mainly arose with people who had convictions in other states where a convicted individual’s right to vote is not taken away,” Highsmith said. “In Florida, people were told they could not vote even though their conviction was in another state.”

Highsmith and others involved in the project, including national partner organizations to the project such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, believe the atmosphere around these tactics contributes to voter disenfranchisement.

These groups say they are concerned that Republicans may try to “challenge voters this year based on race,” according to NBC affiliate WNWO in Toledo, Ohio.

Others have referred to the mobilization as a “SWAT team.”

Highsmith said their participation is facilitated by a personal commitment to civil rights and voting, but in a less alarmist tone than the public conversation that produced WNWO’s statement.

“Historically, people have put their life on the line for this right and as an African-American female, it’s my duty to continue,” Highsmith said. “We are essentially poll monitors.”

One common problem at the national level is the problem of voters producing proper identification at the polling place, according to Henderson.

Woodard said this is also an issue in Wisconsin.

Persistent problems in Florida elections that reflect the legends of four years ago, particularly the Aug. 31 primary in the state where polls in primarily Spanish-speaking districts had no Spanish-speaking poll workers, put the worst-case-scenario role of the project front and center.

“I’ve talked to a lot of election officials around the state — in Madison [and] Kenosha — and they all feel that this is important,” Woodard said. “A lot of folks, from both parties, want to maintain the integrity of this election. It may seem like we have a lot of cooks in the kitchen but if people are hesitant, we want to take that factor out of the equation.”

Operation Big Vote is one of the Wisconsin “get out the vote” efforts that the Election Protection Project is working in conjunction with to insure congruency between voter-turnout efforts and smooth sailing at the polling place.

“I’ve spoke around the state about what we’re doing. We’ve put out yard signs leading up to the election and when people come to the polling place they’re going to know who we are because we’ll be wearing black shirts with white lettering that say ‘You Have the Right to Vote,'” Woodard said.

Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, has been influential in crafting Republican policy on urban matters. Urban voter turnout is not on its agenda. However, Manhattan Institute scholar and author John McWhorter said viewing Florida as a racial situation is shortsighted.

“Unfortunately, once again, this election is going to come down to race,” McWhorter said. “The black political class [doesn’t] get it. People don’t work to suppress the vote because they are racist, they do it out of peer pragmatism.”