New federal election official finds obstacles to voting reform

ERICA WERNER

Associated Press

 

WASHINGTON - DeForest Soaries has been chairman of the federal Election Assistance Commission only since December, but he's already come close to quitting.

Created in the wake of the 2000 election dispute to help enact voting improvements, the commission was given such a tiny budget it couldn't even rent office space. Lawmakers and administration officials who'd clamored for reform were focused on other issues. Soaries even had trouble getting some of them to return his calls.

At the same time, an increasingly bitter controversy over electronic voting was dividing election officials nationwide. Yet commissioners had no way of conducting research before distributing $2.3 billion to states to buy new equipment.

The former New Jersey secretary of state decided to stick it out, unwilling to make the task even harder for his fellow commissioners. Still, he remains incredulous at the haphazard voting systems that remain in place nearly four years after the 2000 election dispute and at the difficulty of getting money and support for changing them.

"If this were a foreign country with the exact same setup, we'd be highly critical of their understanding of democracy," Soaries said.

Congress created the Election Assistance Commission in 2002 when it passed the Help America Vote Act, which funded reforms that included increasing access for disabled voters and replacing punchcard and lever machines.

The commission wasn't given regulatory authority but was charged with acting as a clearinghouse for election information, making recommendations about technology and other issues, and distributing money for states to buy new voting machines.

Soaries, 52, had never heard of the Election Assistance Commission when the White House called last year asking him to join. But he had recently lost a race for Congress and ended his term as New Jersey's secretary of state. The commission's mission intrigued him.

A Baptist minister and Republican, Soaries was Christine Todd Whitman's highest-ranking black appointee during her second term as New Jersey governor. In New Jersey, the secretary of state doesn't oversee elections. Instead, Soaries acted as an adviser to Whitman on racial and other issues and oversaw certain programs, such as a youth anti-violence plan.

Whitman credits Soaries with having "a lot of common sense and experience."

"He understands the importance of getting out the vote and enabling people in the minority communities that may be intimated by the voting process," she said. "I found him to be very creative and incredibly able to deliver a message."

Soaries started his career as a Democratic activist and organizer for the Rev. Jesse Jackson. He became an independent and then a Republican after concluding that promoting economic empowerment and individual responsibility was more effective for the black community than blaming whites, the path he believed some black Democratic leaders were taking.

Soaries connects with listeners, whether he wears a dark business suit to address an elections conference or white robes to preach at First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in central New Jersey, as he still does most Sundays.

"He has great vision. He's just dynamic," church member Phyllis Reddick said before a recent service at First Baptist, which recently moved into a new building to accommodate a congregation that has more than tripled to 7,000 members under Soaries' leadership.

It may take all Soaries' powers of persuasion to get the Election Assistance Commission the money and influence it needs to make meaningful changes in states' voting systems.

Soaries and the three other commissioners were appointed only in December, nine months late. Of a $10 million budget authorized for 2004, the commission received just $1.2 million.

"These things make it very frustrating, because I know what's going to happen," Soaries said. "When the media really starts getting on this issue, they're going to start calling us and looking at us. ... I plan to let the world know that we're doing our best with what we have, we've stated our case to Congress, and anything that does not happen in November, don't blame it on us."

Some lawmakers with oversight of the committee are worried that a lack of money and time will prevent it from being effective.

"I have to confess to a lot of chagrin about what has happened," Rep. Vernon Ehlers, R-Mich., told commission members at an oversight hearing Thursday. "If your background work doesn't get done right, and you don't have the resources to do it, we're throwing several billion dollars down the drain and we'll come back to the same problems."

Many of the reforms in the Help America Vote Act remain years from reality.

Forty-one states have received two-year waivers of the 2004 deadline to create voter registration databases, and three-quarters of Americans will vote on the same machines in 2004 as they did in 2000. The punch card and lever systems vilified four years ago remain in wide use.

There remains no accurate way to calculate a nationwide voter turnout figure because 10 states produce no such figure themselves, nor is there any way to know the error rate of a particular voting system.

One of the hottest topics among elections officials nationwide is the use of electronic voting machines and whether they should have voter-verifiable paper ballots.

Critics say the machines, which will be used by about 30 percent of the electorate in November, are dangerously insecure and vulnerable to hackers and mechanical malfunctions, like the power surge that made the wrong screens appear on at least half of San Diego County's touchscreens in the March California primary.

But some local election officials and advocates for the disabled defend the machines as voter-friendly and reliable.

With both sides looking to him for answers but no time or money to research a definitive solution, Soaries recently concluded it was premature to recommend that the machines be retrofitted to produce paper ballots. He did call for other security measures, including asking vendors to share their source code with election officials they do business with.

With sweeping reform out of reach, Soaries has set more modest goals for the November presidential election. For example, he has urged corporations to allow employees Election Day off to serve as poll workers.

If the commission's funding improves, Soaries said commissioners can implement their Help America Vote Act mandate in the years to come.

"I certainly think it is Mr. Soaries' intention to get a lot done," said California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, a vocal e-voting skeptic. "Now whether or not he's able to achieve it in that dysfunctional world of Washington remains to be seen."