Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 3, No. 2 | Election Reform: Lessons From 2004, page 4

Other Election Problems
Other problems create additional concerns about voter participation and voting integrity, including accommodations for disabled voters; the choice of election days; the lack of competitive presidential, Congressional and other races; Electoral College campaign strategies that reduce voter choice in “safe” states; and partisan actions by state and local election officials.

While data are not available for 2004, earlier estimates are that voter turnout by the disabled is 20 percentage points lower than the rate for non-disabled persons, according to the Center for an Accessible Society. Physical barriers at polling places, voting machines the disabled cannot operate and difficult voter-registration procedures are factors. Advocates for the disabled estimate that 70 percent of polling places are not wheelchair accessible. In conflict with critics of paperless touch-screen voting, disabled organizations have favored the system because they enable sight-impaired persons to vote (by listening to audible prompts over headsets) more easily and in privacy.

Compared to many Western democracies that hold elections on a Sunday or holiday, America’s election day choice of Tuesday, a work day, creates unnecessary hardships for many voters, especially the working poor, that discourage them from voting. Among registered voters who did not vote in 2000, 21.5 percent said that “they could not take time off of work or school or because they were too busy,” according to a 1998 Census Bureau study.

Lack of competitive races also helps suppress voter turnout. Highly sophisticated redistricting software has enabled leaders of dominant parties to create so many favorable districts that they can ensure large, long-lasting majorities in state legislatures and Congressional delegations. For example, by using such methods after the 2000 census, Pennsylvania’s Republican-dominated legislature created Congressional district lines that produced a delegation of twelve Republicans and seven Democrats in a state with a half-million more registered Democrats than Republicans. California Democrats have long used such methods to increase their hold on legislative and Congressional seats.

As a result, the number of competitive U.S. House districts fell from 136 after the 1990 census to only 45 after 2000, according to The Cook Political Report. This not only suppresses turnout, it provides entrenched political power to incumbent officials and dominant parties with little accountability to voters. “We’ve reached the point where incumbents just can’t lose,” says Mark Gersh of the National Committee for an Effective Congress.

The Electoral College system helped suppress turnout in 2004 by causing campaign efforts to focus on 18 battleground states and not reach out to voters in the 32 other states (and the District of Columbia) considered safe for either Bush or Kerry. This not only deprives voters in those states of the chance to hear directly from candidates, it also produces a debate about issues important only to a few key states.

Finally, the prevalence of partisan elections officials at state and local levels continued to cast doubts on their motives in numerous controversial decisions. Suspect voter purge lists, restrictive voter registration policies, varying quality of voting equipment and poll sites, controversial tabulation and vote validation decisions, secretive electronic voting machine decisions and other activities continued to undermine public confidence in the system’s fairness and integrity.

The Next Few Years: The Push
For National Standards
Continued public concern will provide numerous opportunities for improvements in how Americans vote. Congressional and state legislative proposals are already surfacing to address problems experienced in 2004 and numerous nonpartisan organizations and foundations are poised to help develop those improvements.

Many of the proposals involve establishing uniform national standards for key aspects of the elections and voting system, motivated by the principle cited by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore that Florida voters were entitled to uniform election standards that guarantee equal protection under the 14th Amendment. The Court added, however, that “Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, as the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.”

The Court’s attempt to limit this principle to one state election only has not dissuaded reformers from seeking uniform national standards on a broad front. They note that HAVA has attached certain standards already to a state’s acceptance of federal funding for elections administration. Here are some of them:

Reliable, Secure and Auditable
Voting Machines
Observers from computer scientists to federal and state legislators have renewed their call for voting machines that provide a voter-verified paper trail to be rechecked in contested elections. These could be either optical-scan ballots, which are printed on paper already, or touch-screen systems with printers.

For example, after the 2004 election, California adopted an “accessible voter-verified paper audit trail” standard to guarantee a corresponding paper record for touch-screen systems. One feature allowed by the California standard is a paper copy of each vote displayed under glass or plastic, so that voters can review their vote but not handle the paper. Ohio’s secretary of state abandoned touch-screen voting entirely and ordered all counties to adopt optical-scan voting exclusively for state and local elections in 2005.

Common Cause called on the Election Assistance Commission and National Institute for Standards and Technology to develop a national standard for a voter-verified paper trail. It also urged an open process, which allows access by security experts to voting machine computer codes to strengthen their security and prevent tampering.

Provisional Ballots
Only uniform national standards for the provisional ballot can fully realize its “fail-safe” potential for voters, according to proponents, including Common Cause. They would make such ballots available to virtually anyone who requests them, subject to verification later by professional elections staffs.

The Brennan Center has filed federal lawsuits to have the courts allow provisional votes cast by voters in the wrong precinct as a way to prevent disenfranchisement. “Congress’s intent in enacting HAVA was, in part, to ensure that no eligible voters are turned away from the polls without an opportunity to vote,” the center noted after a federal judge in Michigan ruled that counties there had to honor provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct.

Declare Election Day
a National Holiday
After languishing in Congress before the 2004 election, proposals to designate election day a national holiday are expected to revive. Supporters were encouraged by the recommendation in 2001 for such a holiday by the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, an advisory body led by former presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. The commission recommended merging election day with Veterans Day to “increase availability of poll workers and … make voting easier for some workers.”

Next page: Although HAVA requires all states receiving federal funds (and the District of Columbia) to have statewide voter lists in place by January 1, 2006, reformers worry that federal standards may allow too many state-by-state variations that will affect quality and interoperability.

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5