Election reform step

Though the 36 days it took to resolve the election for president last year felt at the time like an eternity, Congress could easily turn voting reform into a multi-year bickering extravaganza that will make the vote count seem like swift, sure justice. It doesn’t have to, however, and won’t if Congress supports a House bill that may be voted on this week.

In order to offend the fewest members of Congress, the House version of reform by Reps. Robert Ney, R.-Ohio, and Steny Hoyer, D.-Md., is a loosely written, money-driven attempt to entice states to enact improvements. This is not necessarily bad – no state wants to be the next Florida, so the incentive to improve already exists; the Ney-Hoyer bill, co-sponsored by Rep. John Baldacci, provides the means.

Specifically, the bill would give $2.65 billion over three years to buy better voting equipment, create more accurate registration lists, train poll workers and make it easier for people with disabilities to vote. In exchange for the money, the bill requires states to adopt minimum standards for voting, and this is where the arguments begin between those who believe the 2000 presidential election was a miscarriage of justice and want Congress to do something about it and those who think voting reform is strictly an issue for the states. Ney-Hoyer, following the lead of last summer’s reform commission led by former President Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, split the difference.

So, for instance, while providing $400 million to replace the now-reviled punch card ballot machines, it does not require national minimum error-rate standards for the new ones. It requires audible ballots for the deaf, but only in those places that accept federal money. It requires states, but not the federal government, to say what constitutes a vote and allow voters to correct errors before leaving a polling place. These compromises have thoroughly irritated various public-interest groups, but they have also held together enough House members to get something passed. Observes Rep. Baldacci, “Anytime there is the possibility of something getting done, a large number of interests act to stop it while waiting for the perfect.”

Bipartisan compromise to produce a bill both parties could support is rare enough in the House these days for critics to protest carefully. Their hope may be to make enough noise to force changes in conference with a more federally oriented Senate bill, but they should not over-estimate the House, many of whose members wouldn’t mind seeing only the barest reform, if any. The eternally failing campaign-finance reform might serve as a model and a warning in this case.

Ney-Hoyer has the possibility of making substantial improvements in the way Americans vote. Given the intense scrutiny all state polling performances will receive in 2004, incentives already exist for them to clean up faulty voting systems. Florida should do particularly well.