America Observed -Why
foreign election observers would rate the United States near
the bottom.
By Robert Pastor
Few noticed, but in the year 2000,
Mexico and the United States traded places. After nearly two
centuries of election fraud, Mexico���s presidential election
was praised universally by its political parties and
international observers as free, fair, and professional. Four
months later, after two centuries as a model democracy, the
U.S. election was panned as an embarrassing fiasco, reeking
with pregnant chads, purged registration lists, butterfly
ballots, and a Supreme Court that preempted a recount.
Ashamed, the U.S. Congress in 2002 passed the Help America
Vote Act (HAVA), our first federal legislation on election
administration. But two years later, on November 2, more than
200,000 voters from all 50 states phoned the advocacy
organization Common Cause with a plethora of complaints. The
2004 election was not as close as 2000, but it was no better
-- and, in some ways, worse. This was partly because the only
two elements of HAVA implemented for 2004 were provisional
ballots and ID requirements, and both created more problems
than they solved. HAVA focused more on eliminating punch-card
machines than on the central cause of the electoral problem,
dysfunctional decentralization. Instead of a single election
for president, 13,000 counties and municipalities conduct
elections with different ballots, standards, and machines.
This accounts for most of the problems.
On the eve of November���s election, only one-third of the
electorate, according to a New York Times poll, said
that they had a lot of confidence that their votes would be
counted properly, and 29 percent said they were very or
somewhat concerned that they would encounter problems at the
polls. This explains why 13 members of Congress asked the
United Nations to send election observers. The deep suspicion
that each party���s operatives had of the other���s motives
reminded me of Nicaragua���s polarized election in 1990, and
of other poor nations holding their first free elections.
Ranking America���s Elections
The pro-democracy group Freedom House counts 117 electoral
democracies in the world as of 2004. Many are new and fragile.
The U.S. government has poured more money into helping other
countries become democracies than it has into its own election
system. At least we���ve gotten our money���s worth. By and
large, elections are conducted better abroad than at home.
Several teams of international observers -- including one that
I led -- watched this U.S. election. Here is a summary of how
the United States did in 10 different categories, and what we
should do to raise our ranking.
1. Who���s in Charge? Stalin is reported to have
said that the secret to a successful election is not the voter
but the vote counter. There are three models for administering
elections. Canada, Spain, Afghanistan, and most emerging
democracies have nonpartisan national election commissions. A
second model is to have the political parties ���share���
responsibility. We use that model to supervise campaign
finance (the Federal Election Commission), but that tends to
lead either to stalemates or to collusions against the
public���s interest. The third, most primitive model is when
the incumbent government puts itself in charge. Only 18
percent of the democracies do it this way, including the
United States, which usually grants responsibility to a highly
partisan secretary of state, like Katherine Harris (formerly)
in Florida or Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio.
2. Registration and Identification of Voters. The
United States registers about 55 percent of its eligible
voters, as compared with more than 95 percent in Canada and
Mexico. To ensure the accuracy of its list, Mexico conducted
36 audits between 1994 and 2000. In contrast, the United
States has thousands of separate lists, many of which are
wildly inaccurate. Provisional ballots were needed only
because the lists are so bad. Under HAVA, all states by 2006
must create computer-based, interactive statewide lists -- a
major step forward that will work only if everyone agrees not
to move out of state. That is why most democracies, including
most of Europe, have nationwide lists and ask voters to
identify themselves. Oddly, few U.S. states require proof of citizenship
-- which is, after all, what the election is supposed to be
about. If ID cards threaten democracy, why does almost every
democracy except us require them, and why are their elections
conducted better than ours?
3. Poll Workers and Sites. Dedicated people work at
our polling stations often for 14 hours on election day.
Polling sites are always overcrowded at the start of the day.
McDonald���s hires more workers for its lunchtime shifts, but
a similar idea has not yet occurred to our election officials.
Poll workers are exhausted by the time they begin the delicate
task of counting the votes and making sure the total
corresponds to the number who signed in, and, as a result,
there are discrepancies. When I asked about the qualifications
for selecting a poll worker, one county official told me,
���We���ll take anyone with a pulse.��� Mexico views the job
as a civic responsibility like jury duty, and citizens are
chosen randomly and trained. This encourages all citizens to
learn and participate in the process.
4. Voting Technologies. Like any computers,
electronic machines break down, and they lose votes. Canada
does not have this problem because it uses paper ballots,
still the most reliable technology. Brazil���s electronic
system has many safeguards and has gained the trust of its
voters. If we use electronic machines, they need
paper-verifiable ballots.
5. Uniform Standards for Ballots, Voting, Disputes.
The Supreme Court called for equal protection of voters���
rights, but to achieve this, standards need to be uniform. In
America, each jurisdiction does it differently. Most countries
don���t have this problem because they have a single election
commission and law to decide the validity of ballots.
6. Uncompetitive Districts. In 2004, only three
incumbent members of Congress -- outside of House Majority
Leader Tom DeLay���s gerrymandered state of Texas -- were
defeated. Even the Communist Party of China has difficulty
winning as many elections. This is because state legislatures,
using advanced computer technologies, can now draw district
boundaries in a way that virtually guarantees safe seats.
Canada has a nonpartisan system for drawing districts. This
still favors incumbents, as 83 percent won in 2004, but that
compares with 99 percent in the United States. Proportional
representation systems are even more competitive.
7. Campaign Finance and Access to the Media. The
United States spent little to conduct elections last November,
but almost $4 billion to promote and defeat candidates. More
than $1.6 billion was spent on TV ads in 2004. The Institute
for Democracy and Electoral Assistance in Stockholm reported
that 63 percent of democracies provided free access to the
media, thus eliminating one of the major reasons for raising
money. Most limit campaign contributions, as the United States
does, but one-fourth also limit campaign expenditures, which
the Supreme Court feared would undermine our democracy. In
fact, the opposite is closer to the truth: Political equality requires
building barriers between money and the ballot box.
8. Civic Education. During the 1990s, the federal
government spent $232 million on civic education abroad and
none at home. As a result, 97 percent of South Africans said
they had been affected by voter education. Only 6 percent of
Americans, according to a Gallup Poll in 2000, knew the name
of the speaker of the House, while 66 percent could identify
the host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Almost every
country in the world does a better job educating citizens on
how to vote.
9. The Franchise. The Electoral College was a
progressive innovation in the 18th century; today, it���s
mainly dictatorships like communist China that use an indirect
system to choose their highest leader.
10. International Observers. We demand that all new
democracies grant unhindered access to polling sites for
international observers, but only one of our 50 states
(Missouri) does that. The Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe, a 55-state organization of which the
United States is a member, was invited by Secretary of State
Colin Powell to observe the U.S. elections, yet its
representatives were permitted to visit only a few
���designated sites.��� Any developing country that restricted
observers to a few Potemkin polling sites as the United States
did would be roundly condemned by the State Department and the
world.
* * *
On all 10 dimensions of election administration, the United
States scores near the bottom of electoral democracies. There
are three reasons for this. First, we have been sloppy and
have not insisted that our voting machines be as free from
error as our washing machines. We lack a simple procedure most
democracies have: a log book at each precinct to register
every problem encountered during the day and to allow
observers to witness and verify complaints.
Second, we lack uniform standards, and that is because we
have devolved authority to the lowest, poorest level of
government. It���s time for states to retrieve their authority
from the counties, and it���s time for Congress to insist on
national standards.
Third, we have stopped asking what we can learn from our
democratic friends, and we have not accepted the rules we
impose on others. This has communicated arrogance abroad and
left our institutions weak.
The results can be seen most clearly in our bizarre
approach to Iraq���s election. Washington, you may recall,
tried to export the Iowa-caucus model though it violates the
first principle of free elections, a secret ballot. An Iraqi
ayatollah rejected that and also insisted on the importance of
direct elections (meaning no Electoral College). Should we be
surprised that the Iraqi Election Commission chose to visit
Mexico instead of the United States to learn how to conduct
elections?
Robert A. Pastor is director of the Center for Democracy
and Election Management and a professor at American
University. At the Carter Center from 1986���2000, he
organized election-observation missions to about 30 countries,
including the United States.
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