Better ballots

If you were appalled by the way votes were counted and recounted in Florida in the last presidential election, you probably don’t know a secretary of state. If you did know one, you would have already known, in the words of Arkansas Secretary of State Sharon Priest, that, “Florida was not a crisis. It was not unexpected. It was a civic education.”

Ms. Priest was commenting earlier this month at a meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State, a group dedicated to, among many other things, “ensuring access, accuracy, and integrity in elections.” The group has agreed on 16 points to improve the current election system, which was exposed in 2000 as an affront to democracy and an embarrassment to the nation. The association is in something of a race with members of Congress, who also want to reform the election systems and are willing to spend generously, even lavishly to do so. The secretaries of state clearly like the money part of the congressional proposals, but they are less certain of the kind of control that might go with the cash.

For instance, just about all bills include a federal commission to study election problems before recommending solutions. But Ms. Priest, who is the head of the association’s task force on election reform, says the problems are obvious to anyone who has been paying attention and that no new studies are needed. What Congress should do, she says, is listen to the association. She is at least partly right.

Some of the recommendations from the group to state and local governments are well-intentioned but seem too general to lead anywhere – “Enhance the integrity and timeliness of the absentee ballot initiative” and “Modernize the voting process as necessary…” Nice, but not meaningful. Others are better, and have support among states. For instance, “Encourage states to adopt uniform state standards and procedures for both recounts and contested elections” and “Provide continuous training and certification for election officials.”

A recommendation several people have made that Congress should consider would keep the polls open nationwide for the same 24-hour period. Not only does this give more time for voters, it prevents television networks from influencing voting in the West once polls close in the East. The number of states, including Maine, currently reviewing and tightening their exit-poll rules would reinforce this provision. After the Florida debacle, it might also be reinforced by the networks’ sense of shame, if any.

Improving the way states or counties or municipalities oversee voting, however, quickly comes down to money. Getting rid of voting processes with high rates of error, like punch-card ballots, means buying new machines. Members of the House Administration Committee are proposing to spend $387 million next year on machine buyouts and another $80 million a year for training election workers and updating registration and voting systems. States want the money if for no other reason than to avoid becoming the next Florida, but they are worried that Congress will attach enough conditions to the funds that they will end up making the local activity of voting a federal process.

Congress should be certain that protections for states are within any funding bills, but they also need to move the money along. A major overhaul of the voting procedures and machinery would take years to put into place and it will not be long before candidates for office in 2002 start knocking on doors. There’s no reason to wait. Congress needs to drop the commission idea, support the widely agreed-on changes in procedure and get the money to the states.