Non-Problem.  When assigning variables with blanks in them, NO QUOTES ARE
NEEDED.

$ a="a b c d"
$ echo $a
a b c d
$ b=$a
$ echo $b
a b c d

-> no problem here, even though $a contains whitespace.

(Besides, the bug report mixes wildly different types of scripts - new_fax and
coverpg are
used in different surroundings.  If a user calls coverpg with broken environment
variables,
and it executes arbitrary programs with his access rights - so what, he can
execute them
anyway)

White spaces are OK, 
but line feed (as I mentioned in the report)
and some other symbols are not
example:

---- file x
a="`echo -e \"A\nB\"`";
if [ $a == "x" ]; then
 echo Y
else
 echo N
fi
------

sh x
x: [: too many arguments
N

if you replace
if [ $a == "x" ]; then
to
if [ "$a" == "x" ]; then
everything is fine

sh  x
N

This type of behavior exactly specified in bash manual