"Instead
of making reasoned choices with the purpose of expanding turnout and
assuring equal protection, our system leaves democracy to chance,"
writes Nichols. (Fil)
President Obama’s
second inaugural address
touched on the reality that the United States has a dysfunctional
election system. Describing the nation’s progress, as well as the ways
in which the nation needs to progress, the president declared, “Our
journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to
exercise the right to vote.”
Obama drew knowing applause when he spoke that truth in January 2013,
as he did in November 2012, when just hours after his re-election the
president noted that millions of Americans had “waited in line for a
very long time” to vote. Then, in an ad lib that got more attention that
his prepared remark, the president added: “
By the way we have to fix that.”
On Wednesday, the process of fixing the problem—and of moving America a few more steps toward democracy—accelerated. A little.
The bipartisan
Presidential Commission on Election Administration that Obama appointed last year released a report that
recommends:
1. Modernization of the registration process through continued
expansion of online voter registration and expanded state collaboration
in improving the accuracy of voter lists.
2. Measures to improve access to the polls through multiple
opportunities to vote before the traditional Election Day and the
selection of suitable, well-equipped polling place facilities, such as
schools.
3. State-of-the-art techniques to assure efficient management of
polling places, including tools the Commission is publicizing and
recommending for the efficient allocation of polling place resources.
4. Reforms of the standard-setting and certification process for new
voting technology to address soon-to-be antiquated voting machines and
to encourage innovation and the adoption of widely available
off-the-shelf technologies.
These are relatively tepid proposals. But they move in the right
direction on several fronts. It is important to make it easier to
register and vote; modernizing registration procedures and expanding
early and absentee voting programs, can help with this. So, too, can the
improved allocation of resources and technology to assure that every
voter in every state has a roughly equal chance to cast a ballot in a
timely, respectful and efficient manner.
So the president was pleased with the report. He received it with much fanfare and described the recommendations as “
eminently glittering.”
Obama says that he and his aides
will
“reach out to stakeholders all across the country to make sure that we
can implement” the commission’s report.” The president brings to this
work a sense of urgency that is appropriate,
reminding Americans
that “one of the troubling aspects of the work that they did was
hearing from local officials indicating that we could have even more
problems in the future if we don’t act now.”
But no one, including the president, should imagine that what the
commission has produced is a cure for what ails American democracy.
The commission’s report relies on technical repairs, and a faith in
newer technologies. That’s not a fresh approach.
After the 2000 fiasco in Florida,
and the resulting intervention of the United States Supreme Court to
prevent a thorough recount—and a thorough review of the failures and
abuses of voting systems in the state—there were reports, and
recommendations and allocations of resources for new technologies.
But there was not a shift in the mindset of the country regarding
voting and elections. Indeed, those who would restrict and restrain the
franchise stepped up their activism. And after the 2010 elections put
Republicans in charge of the statehouses sacross the country, we saw a
wave of new initiatives—many, though not all, of them crafted by
the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council—to impose restrictive
Voter ID requirements, to limit early voting, to eliminate same-day registration.
The problems that inspired the president’s “we need to fix that” line
were not necessarily technical or technological. They were often
man-made. And the men who made them are still at work; in 2013,
according to
the Brennan Center for Justice, more than eighty bills restricting the right to vote were introduced in more than thirty states.
That figure serves as a reminder that the core challenges with regard
to voting in America is not necessarily technological. Americans could
vote on
paper ballots quickly and efficiently, as do voters in
many other countries. And if they did they might well be more confident in the count.
The core challenge has to do with an insufficient level of commitment
on the part of local, state and federal agencies to creating the
infrastructure and the mindset that fosters high-turnout elections.
The United States has an
exceptionally low level of voter participation
as compared with most developed democracies. In the parliamentary
elections of European countries, it is not uncommon to see turnout
levels surpass 70 percent, even 80 percent, of the voting-age
population. In America, off-year congressional elections attract
under 40 percent of the voting age population, and high-stakes presidential elections
don’t get to 55 percent.
Why? Because the United States makes it hard to vote.
Unlike other countries that actually try to achieve maximum voter
participation, the United States retains a separate-and-unequal
electoral infrastructure that rests authority over voting and elections
with individual states. Instead of making reasoned choices with the
purpose of expanding turnout and assuring equal protection, our system
leaves democracy to chance.
To wit:
1. This country schedules elections on Tuesdays, rather than weekends.
2. This country does not make Election Day a holiday.
3. This country does not have a universal system for registering every citizen before his or her eighteenth birthday.
4. This country does not have a universal system for alerting all
eligible voters that an election is coming, or for letting them know
where and how to vote.
5. This country does not have universal standards for whether those
convicted of crimes can vote, or for when and how those who have served
their sentences will have their voting rights restored.
6. This country does not have universal standards for who can vote in
a primary election, or for whether a run-off election will be held, or
for how recounts will be conducted, or for how inconclusive results are
to be addressed.
7. This country does not have universal standards for ballot design,
or for how to deal with mismarked ballots, or for how to assure that
ballots that have been cast are protected against tampering.
8. This country does not have universal standards for the distance
one must travel to vote, or for the hours polls are to remain open, or
for the set-up and operation of polling places, or for the availability
of voting machines and other equipment, or for verifying that votes have
been accurately cast and will be accurately counted.
The list of gaps in the structures of American democracy is long.
The recommendations made by the president’s commission address some of those gaps. But they do not begin to address all of them.
That does not mean that the commission’s report should be neglected.
The recommendations should be used to encourage a process of improving
the voting systems of the United States.
Wendy Weiser, the director of
the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center
is right when she says, “The Commission’s recommendations are a
significant step forward. They make clear that nationwide our voting
systems have common problems, which can be fixed with common, national
solutions. Especially important is the consensus that we need to
modernize voter registration, make early voting available to all
Americans, and put systems in place so no one waits longer than 30
minutes to vote. These will be the new benchmarks against which future
elections will be judged.”
The recommendations of the commission ought not, however, be seen as the “end of the journey” to democracy.
If we are realistic about the challenge of remaking America as a
nation with high-turnout elections and truly representative democracy,
what the commission has produced is barely a beginning.
A report is not enough. Recommendations are not enough.
What’s required is a teaching moment, led by the president and
serious members of Congress, by reformers and academics and media and
citizens of good will. And it ought to have as its goal a reshaping of
how the United States understands voting and voting rights.
The truth is that, on too many levels, the United States does not
respect the right to vote, to have votes counted and to have the results
of voting genuinely reflected in the governance of communities, states
and the nation.
Too much is left to chance. That has been made obvious in recent
years, not just by the myriad state-based battles over restrictive Voter
ID laws but by
the US Supreme Court’s mangling of the Voting Rights Act.
More than a report is needed, more even than
a new version of the Voting Rights Act—although
the proposal made recently by Congressman John Conyers, D-Michigan, and
James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisconsin, and Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont,
is a reasonable and needed step in the right direction.
What is ultimately required is an absolute guarantee of the right to
vote and the right to have that vote counted. That affirmation should be
added to the United States Constitution, in an amendment along the
lines of the
one proposed last year by Congressman Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, and Congressman Mark Pocan, D-Wisconsin.
Supported by groups such as
FairVote and
Color of Change, the Ellison-Pocan “Right to Vote” amendment
simply declares:
SECTION 1: Every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting
age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election
held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.
SECTION 2: Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation.
These are proper benchmarks. When the right to vote is guaranteed,
when it is constitutionally established as fundamental, that is a strong
place of beginning for establishing the infrastructure of genuinely
functional and genuinely representative democracy.
“The right to vote is too important to be left unprotected,” explains
Pocan. “At a time when there are far too many efforts to disenfranchise
Americans, a voting rights amendment would positively affirm our
founding principle that our country is at its strongest when everyone
participates.”
© 2014 The Nation
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