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Article (Journal or Newspaper)
Federal Government
Comprehensive Change, Information Technology, Innovation,
Internet
Citizen involvement/civic participation, Civic Education
May 13, 2001
By Neal R. Peirce
WASHINGTON -- Have we learned nothing from the ugly, extended disputes of the 2000 election? Are Congress and the state legislatures incapable of reform? Despite a reform bill just passed in Florida, are many states doomed to repeat Florida's carnival of vote counting errors?
A spate of April press stories, noting zero congressional action and few state reforms, bemoaned an apparently golden moment of opportunity lost.
Sharon Priest, president of the National Assn. of Secretaries of State, warned: "Unless there's a real uprising on the part of people in this country who will call their congressmen and senators and say, 'Elections are important to us and democracy comes at a price, and we're willing to pay that price-do something!' then I'm not sure, running into budgets now, that anything's going to get done."
But there's another way to scope the situation -- that we need to act, but only with care.
Take Internet voting. Just after the election, I wrote suggesting we consider it. But people I respect -- among them Mario Morino, who runs a Northern Virginia-based think tank on technology -- wave a red flag. The Internet, they note, is a global communications system susceptible to hackers and vote fraud efforts. Conclusion: the Internet is too risky as a voting tool until dramatically more effective safeguards are invented.
As for polling-place machines, we know what's worst -- the chad-prone punchcards that Florida made infamous. Paper ballots and mechanical lever machines are falling into disfavor. But they're still used in many areas. And now there's a question -- which class of newer voting equipment -- touch screens or optical scanners, for example -- should local officials choose as the least likely to be obsolescent soon?
Touch screens, which operate like automated teller machines, cost more but seem especially promising. They can be programmed to tally votes online to a central server while preserving their results on disk or cartridge for security assurance. The screens are already being used at some polling stations with solid success-- Riverside, Calif., for example, starting in the 2000 elections. Abroad, they've provided high security and instant results in such countries as Brazil, Italy and Costa Rica.
What's attractive is the screens' flexibility. After they're proven at poll places, there's the option to place them as well in kiosks, libraries, community centers -- still maintaining control of election officials and thus immunity from the Internet's virus and Trojan horse threats.
Georgia has led the post-2000 reform wave with a bill requiring touchscreens in every precinct by the next presidential election. Maryland is on track to replace its mish-mash system with a uniform, touch-screen system. It's also ordering a statewide voter registration system that allows provisional ballots for voters whose names can't be found on registration lists.
Florida has just passed legislation outlawing punch card ballots and requiring that its counties, at a minimum, install optical scanners. The legislation goes a step farther by setting procedures for recounts in close elections and creating a way for people to vote even if their names aren't immediately found on voter roles.
Some Florida counties -- including Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, epicenter of the '00 nightmares -- are going for touch screens. The issue's money; Tallahassee's paying just a part of the cost and Florida would love the feds to pay part of the bill.
Mention money, and you've hit a critical issue: What is the federal interest in election integrity, efficiency, reliability? Should a cash-rich federal government contribute at least some part of the cost? Should it set minimum standards? Should it act as information clearinghouse on all the issues swirling around elections?
One can wish that President Bush, himself elected under a dark cloud of legitimacy, would have led the push for a bipartisan, prestigious national commission to examine that very question. The good news is that some efforts have begun, including the National Commission on Federal Election Reform, sponsored by foundations and universities and chaired by Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford.
Most promising among a spate of bills in Congress may be a Senate measure that would set up a bipartisan federal commission to act as a clearinghouse on election problems and potentials of new technology. Combine that with federal matching grants for states willing to modernize voting systems, says Deborah Phillips, president of the Voting Integrity Project, "and you'd be there."
Doug Lewis, executive director of the Houston-based Election Center, argues even more broadly: "Why should the townships, cities and counties of America be forced to bear the entire burden of elections?" Washington, he argues, should help toward the cost -- maybe $10 or so a voter a year -- "to fund the cost of maintaining voter databases, advertising, staffing, conducting and assuring the integrity of elections, voter education and training, poll worker education and training."
The argument's a sound one: Washington is reliant on the integrity of elections for its own legitimacy. High election standards should be as critical an investment as aircraft carriers or interstate highways.
The issue isn't an absolutely uniform
national system. What we need is clear information that drives
higher expectations and local performance. And federal carrots
to encourage reliable voting methods and vote counts coast
to coast. If the carrots cost us something, we need to pay
the bill.
© 2001 Washington Post Writers Group
Contact Info: Neal Peirce; npeirce@citistates.com
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Source: Neal Peirce Column; Washington
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