Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Editorial: America's troubled elections
Commission on Federal Election Reform offers remedies for restoring credibility to system.
From the RoundTable blog
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Elections are "the heart of democracy," wrote former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker. "If elections are defective, the entire democratic system is at risk."
Carter and Baker, co-chairmen of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, called for urgent action in a report released Monday. Congress should heed that call immediately.
The commission's report has several vital recommendations:
n Congress should require states using electronic voting machines to use systems that include an auditable paper trail.
n Elections should be administered by nonpartisan officials.
n States, not local jurisdictions, should maintain voter registration lists and ensure their accuracy. State lists should be connected to weed out duplicate registrations.
n Photo IDs should be required to vote.
These are only first steps toward stopping the erosion of credibility of this nation's elections system.
A voter-verifiable paper trail is the minimum requirement to guarantee the accuracy and fairness of electronic voting.
In addition, manufacturers of machines should be required to make their source code public, which would help identify and weed out potential vulnerabilities.
The commission's call for nonpartisan administration of elections is also essential. In the most controversial states in the 2000 and 2004 elections -- Florida and Ohio respectively -- the official responsible for resolving disputes was a partisan secretary of state also serving as co-chair of that state's Bush campaign.
Such blatant conflict of interest should not be allowed. One can either be an impartial arbiter of an election or an advocate for a candidate. One cannot be both.
Nonpartisan election professionals should run elections.
The American elections system has been in crisis since the fiasco in Florida exposed just how flawed the process can be.
Many of the steps taken since then -- especially the widescale introduction of electronic voting machines whose tabulations cannot be independently verified -- have made matters worse, not better.
The Commission on Federal Election Reform has produced an important report and made many necessary recommendations. Congress must listen.
