The election standard

The next time the nation’s secretaries of state get together the conversation likely will not be about Florida’s lousy voting system but about how, under the right circumstances, the same election gridlock could occur in just about any state. But Congress could change that, without taking the drastic step of eliminating the Electoral College.

Why, after 224 years of voting, there re-mains no standard way to design a ballot is a function of the very localness, even in presidential races, of the election process. Maine has a single ballot for statewide races, but many states, as Florida shows, leave it up to the county. That makes for hundreds of ways to fill out a ballot, sometimes by pencil or pen mark, paper punch, lever pull or point and click. No doubt most of these variations are adequate to provide for an accurate reflection of a voter’s intent, but some are better than others, with the notorious butterfly ballot falling into the “others” pile.

Kathleen M. Sullivan, dean of Stanford Law School, recently pointed out in The New York Times that while the Constitution, under Article I, gives state legislatures the authority to set the time, place and manner of elections to Congress, there is no similar instruction for the presidential race. Article II tells Congress to set an election day and gives it the power to set a time for choosing electors; she suggests an amendment to Article II that would give Congress powers in presidential races that legislatures have in congressional ones, including the power to set out how disputed elections are to be settled.

It is a worthy idea, and the first step Congress ought to take if it gains those powers is to do what the United States presses developing nations to do: establish a nonpartisan commission to oversee elections. Florida has treated the nation to the sight of a highly partisan Democratic attorney general and a highly partisan Republican secretary of state battling for control of the vote count in a way that destroys public confidence. Election monitors in the Third World wouldn’t certify a vote under these conditions.

One positive end to the Florida vote would be the conclusion that partisanship might get a candidate the desired vote total but it doesn’t provide the power of public trust. For that, the election system needs an authority not beholden to any political party, just as it needs standard ballots all voters can understand.