Preserving American Values

In 2000, Katherine Harris was both the Chair of George Bush’s campaign in Florida and as Florida’s Secretary of State, the person responsible for supervising the election process and insuring its integrity.  Likewise in 2004, J. Kenneth Blackwell was both Chair of George Bush’s campaign in Ohio and that state’s Secretary of State.  The conflict of interest is obvious, the potential for abuse stunning.  

This is not a limited problem.  In all but 11 states, (see attached table) the supervision of elections is in the hands of a partisan elected or appointed official, and thus is capable of being driven by partisan politics if ethical standards do not hold sway.  

In innumerable ways large and small, from the voting systems used to who is stricken from the voting lists to how many machines are given to various precincts, the decisions made in supervising an election can result in influencing the outcome, whether because votes aren’t counted properly or people are denied the right to vote.   But beyond preventing such tampering with the election process, elections should be administered in a way that avoids even the appearance of impropriety.  

People must have faith in the voting process and that their vote will be counted.  While voting machines can be made accountable, valid, and secure, and other parts of the process improved, the more basic problem of potential abuse inherent in the currently prevalent system can only be solved by removing the supervision of elections from partisan politics.  

This is neither a recent nor novel idea.  Some states, such as Illinois, have bi-partisan election commissions/boards with an even number of representatives from both parties.  Other states, such as Virginia, have bi-partisan boards, but the winning party in an election has the majority in the next-appointed Board.  At the Federal level, of course, the Federal Election Commission is an independent bi-partisan regulatory body of six commissioners, with no more than three from any party.

States’ rights activists will say that the election process is one for the states to determine.  However, because insuring valid, fair elections and full access to the ballot box is so critical to the functioning of our democracy, federal law has on occasion either prescribed or proscribed state action to achieve those ends.   Examples are the Voting Rights Act and the Help America Vote Act.  But although the latter was meant to deal with the various problems that arose in the 2000 election, it is silent on the issue of who oversees the election process.

I therefore suggest that the Help America Vote Act be amended to provide that:

* All states must have their elections supervised by an independent election agency headed by a board or commission composed of an equal number of representatives of the two major parties, including the chair. I would thus reject the example of commissions with a majority made up of the most recent winning party … I see no rational justification for such a composition. How the states select the members may be left to the states. 

* Further, rules should prevent anyone on the board/commission or employee of the agency from actively engaging in a partisan campaign.

With such a system in place, no more will we see a repeat of the type of problems that arose in both 2000 and 2004 that will forever raise questions about whether President Bush was truly the people’s choice, even through the distorted process of the electoral college.  Public trust in our democratic process is essential to the health of our democracy, and maintaining (or restoring) that trust demands that the administrative system be made scrupulously bipartisan.