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Conference examines
election issues
BY MIKE UNGER
Don’t look now, but there are just 16 months until the next presidential election.
While many improvements have been made to the nation’s electoral system since the debacle of 2000, it’s far from perfect. Amid much fanfare, the Commission on Federal Election Reform, cochaired by former president Jimmy Carter and former secretary of state James Baker, issued a report in September 2005 listing 87 recommendations to improve the process. Last month, the bipartisan commission released a progress report on the reforms at a conference cosponsored by AU’s Center for Democracy and Election Management.
“We’ve seen some progress on nearly 80 percent of those recommendations, but still much work remains to be done,” said Robert Pastor, the center’s director and executive director of the Carter-Baker commission.
The conference, entitled “Change the Way America Runs Its Elections,” featured host of legislators and elections experts discussing and dissecting the issue from all angles.
U.S. Representatives Susan Davis of California and Rush Holt of New Jersey were the keynote speakers. The Democrats both addressed election reform legislation they have sponsored in the House.
“So often in Congress we deal with issues where there are fundamental philosophical differences,” Davis said. “But when it comes to election policy, everyone has the same basic goal: to make voting easier and cheating [harder].”
Davis’s bill would bar state election officials from actively participating in political campaigns.
“The reason behind it is so simple and obvious,” she said. “Making it illegal for chief election officials [to take part in campaigns] won’t prevent fraud, but it will prevent much of the legal gray area. In other words, that person could no longer be a player and a referee.”
Davis also is a strong advocate for expanding voting-by-mail.
“Expanding the eligibility pool will not increase the risk of fraud,” she said. “For those who don’t trust voting machines, you do get a paper trail with absentee ballots.”
Holt’s bill would establish a verifiable paper trail and auditing plan for electronic voting machines. He’s pushing for the legislation to be passed by Congress, signed by the president, and enacted before the November 2008 election.
“Some elections officials have expressed concerns about the time frame of the bill,” he said. “I would dread facing the next election without a verifiable voting system. We have a crisis of confidence and a crisis of cynicism about our ability to govern ourselves. We have to take dramatic steps.”
The first of two in-depth panels during the conference, held at the National Press Club in downtown Washington, was chaired by former New York representative Susan Molinari, a member of the Carter-Baker commission. Speakers that included state legislators from Maryland (Washington College of Law professor Jamin Raskin) and Georgia, a reporter, a Wisconsin election official, and an academic discussed the idea of creating independent, nonpartisan bodies to run elections. The second panel was chaired by Sharon Priest, former secretary of state of Arkansas and also a member of the Carter-Baker commission. Its focus was on adapting lessons from abroad.
For more information, log on to
www.american.edu/ia/cdem/usp/np/index.cfm.
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