Editorial: Voting/Flaws need federal attention
November 14, 2004 ED1114

Despite the cries about a "stolen election" making the rounds on the Internet, most experts agree that the published vote totals for presidential candidates on Nov. 2 accurately reflect the votes cast. President Bush won, Sen. John Kerry lost, and that isn't going to change. But this was still a very flawed presidential election, which is a big reason why so many people are ready to believe in conspiracies. Over the next four years, those flaws must be fixed. No rational person should ever have reason to doubt the legitimacy of an American national election.

The most egregious flaw was that it took many people hours and hours to vote. At Kenyon College in Ohio, students had to stand in line for eight hours. Waits of four and five hours were common in many urban areas, which, by the way, just happen to be rich pockets of votes for Democrats. Long lines effectively disenfranchise people.

Combine the lines with the widespread use of touch-screen voting machines that produce no "paper trail" for an audit or recount, and it's no wonder many people are suspicious of the results. Add in the widespread dirty tricks and intimidation aimed at suppressing the vote, especially of minorities, and the level of suspicion rises again. Then there were the actual incidents of machine malfunction, such as in one Ohio precinct that reported thousands more votes for Bush than there were ballots cast.

There were other problems as well, ranging from the Ohio secretary of state's outrageous effort to invalidate voter registrations that were on paper that didn't weigh enough to election officials in other places who invalidated absentee and provisional ballots that weren't filled out precisely right.

Americans need to know that their votes count and that the announced outcome is what the aggregate of voters intended. Confidence in that is essential to a functioning democracy. It's also essential to the American effort to promote democracy worldwide, which makes this a matter of some urgency for Congress rather than state legislatures.

After the 2000 debacle in Florida, Congress passed the Helping Americans Vote Act. It now needs to pass the Really Helping Americans Vote Act. The legislation should impose one national standard for all voting machines used in a federal election and provide the money to buy them. No digital systems without paper trails should be allowed. We'd suggest the optical scanners used in Minnesota. They are simple, provide a paper trail and spit out improperly cast ballots immediately so they can be corrected. And there must be enough of them in every neighborhood so that no voter is required to spend more than two hours waiting to vote.

Moving federal elections to a Saturday or Sunday also would help spread the vote out and avoid the current bottlenecks before and after the workday. Specifying a single national standard for identification at the polls also would reduce both delays and opportunities for foul play by partisan officials. And there should be a single standard by which absentee and provisional ballots are judged.

Vote-suppression efforts also need to receive urgent federal attention. While direct threats are illegal under the Voting Rights Act, it's not so clear that more subtle intimidation and disinformation campaigns (such as reminding people to vote on Wednesday, telling them their polling place has moved or warning them of arrest at the polls for outstanding traffic tickets) are prohibited by federal law. They should be prohibited, and violations should be aggressively prosecuted.

This election saw an impressive increase in the number of Americans who wanted to cast ballots. That is a good thing, and most got through the process without anything more aggravating than an hour or two waiting in line. But some voters, especially minority voters, had to put up with quite a lot, and some never did get to vote. That's not right, and Congress should fix it before 2008.