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New York Times
"Progress on Election
Reform"
Editorial
May 15, 2001
The chances for meaningful election reform,
which stalled after an initial round of fervent pledges to repair
deficiencies that surfaced in last November's presidential
balloting, have suddenly improved as the result of an unlikely
compromise on Capitol Hill. Senators Charles Schumer of New York and
Robert Torricelli of New Jersey, both Democrats, will join Mitch
McConnell of Kentucky and Sam Brownback of Kansas, both Republicans,
in announcing today that they will co-sponsor an election reform
bill aimed at providing $2.5 billion in federal funds over five
years to states willing to meet certain standards in upgrading the
way they hold federal elections.
The coming together of these
senators from opposite ends of the political spectrum behind a
commendable proposal could not have happened at a better time. In
recent weeks White House indifference, partisan squabbling in
Congress and simple shortsightedness appeared to blind Washington to
the urgent need for election reform. Now there is a chance for
reforms to be pursued in time for next year's midterm
elections.
Senators Schumer and McConnell had
earlier backed competing bills co-sponsored respectively by Senators
Brownback and Torricelli. Their joint proposal should command the
support of Congressional leaders and a critical mass of members from
both parties. It also stands a good chance of moving to the Senate
floor expeditiously, in light of Senator McConnell's role as
chairman of the Rules Committee, which has jurisdiction over
election procedures.
The bill calls for a 12-member
bipartisan panel to study election issues and to provide specific
recommendations of best practices within six months. A new federal
agency focused entirely on election procedures would then accept or
modify the panel's findings and oversee the $2.5 billion grant
program.
The proposal is skillfully designed
to encourage the 7,000 jurisdictions that administer elections
nationwide to meet uniform standards in all aspects of the voting
process, from the registering of voters to the training of poll
workers and the reliability of machines used at polls, while still
respecting the Constitution's delegation of election oversight to
local governments. Federal mandates may not be possible, but the
bill would use the bait of federal funds to coax voluntary reforms
out of the states.
The bill advances the federal
interest in protecting voters' access to the polls. For instance,
states and localities that accept federal grants to upgrade any
aspect of their election process must show that they have developed
safeguards against erroneous purging of voter rolls. They must also
provide for provisional balloting so that voters whose names are
left off the rolls by mistake can later have their votes counted.
Moreover, any voting machine
purchased in part with federal funds would have to comply with
technical standards established by the government and must permit
voters to correct ballots that would otherwise fail to register a
vote or mistakenly register more than one, thus doing away with the
infamous categories of undervotes and overvotes. This would go a
long way toward ensuring that Americans living in poorer
jurisdictions no longer find their voices diluted on Election Day as
a result of faulty voting technologies.
Safeguarding
the integrity of elections, democracy's most fundamental
undertaking, should transcend partisanship. It is a national
imperative. Mitch McConnell, with whom we have strongly disagreed on
issues of campaign finance reform, appears to have recognized this
by cooperating with his colleagues in advancing this needed
legislation. The party's respective leaders in both chambers of
Congress, as well as President Bush, ought to get behind it.
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