Rendell wants electoral changes
He plans panel to look at early voting, mail-in ballots, a new primary date.

By John M.R. Bull
Of The Morning Call   14 December 2004

HARRISBURG | A new task force formed by Gov. Ed Rendell will study instituting early voting and voting by mail in Pennsylvania.

On the day that the state's Electoral College finalized last month's election results, Rendell said he wants to make sure that the intense voter interest in the last election doesn't fade.

Rendell said he wants a 13-member task force to examine the possibility of early voting, such as that done in Florida where early voting and new ATM-style voting machines were instituted to avoid the problems encountered in the 2000 presidential election.

Two dozen states now allow early voting.

Also to be considered is voting by mail, as is done in Washington state, even though it took more than a month to count the vote there.

And Rendell wants the task force to think about apportioning the state's Electoral College votes based on the percentage of the popular vote received by each candidate. This is being done in Maine and Florida.

''I'm in favor, generally, of anything that increases voter turnout,'' Rendell said in announcing the creation of the Capitol's sixth election reform task force since the 2000 presidential elections ended in turmoil.

Rendell noted that last month's election divided the nation, but sparked intense voter interest that skyrocketed voter registration and escalated turnout on Election Day.

Turnout was almost 69 percent of the registered voters, the ranks of which increased by more than 800,000 this election, Rendell said.

Rendell also said he wants the task force to consider extending the deadline for overseas absentee ballots to be counted.

Last month, 944 such ballots were received after the polls closed, and were counted by court order, he said.

And Rendell on Monday repeated his often-made call to move the primary date forward in the calendar year. It's a suggestion that has been made for years in the state Capitol, to no avail.

Rendell said it doesn't make sense for the state's primary to be held in April or May, after earlier primaries in other states have already decided the nominees of each party.

Lawmakers have heard that argument for years, but have refused to move the primary date. Doing so would inconvenience them.

The entire House and half the Senate stands for re-election in presidential election years, and moving the primary date to February or March would force lawmakers to circulate their nominating petitions over the Christmas holidays, something they don't want to do.

An earlier primary date also would leave less time for them to campaign for re-election after the holidays.

An hour after Rendell made his task force announcement, the Pennsylvania Electoral College officially finalized the most divisive election in a generation.

Politicos gave speeches and issued formal proclamations, and Electoral College members voted themselves to a variety of positions ? president, secretary, parliamentarian and the like ? that they would briefly hold.

After an hour of this, the actual casting of the votes to elect the president and vice president of the United States was anti-climatic.

It took less than a minute, with another two minutes to count and recount the ballots. With that, to no one's surprise, Democratic candidates John Kerry and John Edwards won the votes of all 21 of Pennsylvania's Electoral College, comprised entirely of Democrats.

The pair won the popular vote in the Keystone State last month, and as a result won all the state's Electoral College votes.

The 55th Pennsylvania Electoral College vote, held in the ornate state House chamber, was a formality, but one that added ''another chapter to America's history,'' as Secretary of State Pedro Cortes put it.