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(SARASOTA, FL, Jan 8, 2004) - Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent returned to Sarasota this week from Washington, D.C. where she participated in a two-day “Elections Retreat” organized and funded by the non-profit Election Center and its affiliated National Association of State Election Directors (NASED).

The two days of meetings, attended by the members of the newly appointed, bipartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the secretaries of state from Colorado, Minnesota, Nevada and New Mexico; the NASED Executive Committee, the Election Center Board of Directors, and selected local elections officials, focused on a number of issues including the new Help America Vote Act (HAVA), voting systems standards, and issues related to voter identification, statewide voter databases, provisional balloting, and voting accessibility for disabled and language minority voters.

Attendees also discussed issues of potential voter conflict, including the disconnect between registration and voting, the disenfranchisement of voters through ballot or registration errors, and poll worker education and sensitivity training.

Ms. Dent sat on the panel on accessibility issues with elections officials from Los Angeles, Chicago, Sacramento, Washington and North Carolina, and was the only local elections official from the state of Florida invited to attend the meeting. The retreat convened primarily to give the newly-appointed U.S. Election Assistance Commissioners an insight into a host of nonpartisan elections issues facing elections officials across the country.