Senate Passes Bill to Clean Up the Nation's Voting Systems

NY Times ^ | 4/12/02 | ROBERT PEAR

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The Senate overwhelmingly passed an ambitious bill today to clean up the nation's election procedures, to help states buy new voting machines and to prevent ballot disputes like those that left painful memories of "butterfly ballots" and "hanging chads" after the last presidential election.

The bill, approved by a vote of 99 to 1, goes to a conference committee of senators and members of the House of Representatives. In December, the House passed legislation with a similar purpose that differs from the Senate bill in many significant details.

Both bills set minimum federal standards for the conduct of elections across the country. Election and voting procedures now vary widely from state to state and county to county.

The Senate bill authorizes $3.5 billion in grants to help state and local governments replace antiquated voting machines, upgrade election procedures and comply with federal standards. The House bill would provide up to $2.65 billion.

The overarching purpose of the Senate bill was described by Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri, who said, "We must make it easier to vote, but tougher to cheat."

The bill passed by the Senate today, like the House measure, would require states to maintain computerized statewide lists of registered voters. But the Senate bill does much more to combat election fraud. Most new voters who registered by mail would have to show identification at the polls.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said: "This, I believe, is the most important legislation we will consider all year. The bill will make voting easier and more accurate, allowing many more people to participate in our democratic process. Just because we are the oldest democracy in the world does not mean that we have to use the world's oldest technology."

The only senator who voted against the bill, Conrad Burns, Republican of Montana, said it imposed too many federal mandates.

President Bush commended the Senate for passing the bill. He said he looked forward to working with House and Senate negotiators to make sure the final product respects "the primacy of state and local governments" and provides "a limited but responsible role for the federal government."

The bill grew out of a bipartisan desire to avoid a repetition of the confusion and irregularities that bedeviled the presidential election of 2000.

"The 2000 election opened the eyes of many Americans to the flaws and failures of the election machinery, our voting systems, and how we determine what a vote is," Senator Bond said. "We learned of hanging chads and inactive lists. We discovered that votes cast by military personnel were mishandled and lost and not counted. We learned of legal voters who were turned away, while dead voters cast ballots. We discovered that many people voted twice, while many people were not counted even once."

The election procedures bill is much less contentious than the measure signed by President Bush on March 27 to overhaul the nation's campaign finance system.

But the voting procedures bill unexpectedly touched off months of bitter debate as civil rights groups complained that the identification requirements might be enforced selectively, making it more difficult for some blacks and Hispanic Americans to cast ballots.

The bill passed today would establish identification requirements. First-time voters who had registered by mail could present a photo identification, a utility bill, a bank statement, a paycheck or a government document showing name and address.

Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, the Texas Democrat who is chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said these requirements were acceptable and would not intimidate black or Latino voters.

Senators from Oregon and Washington persuaded sponsors of the bill to include provisions protecting their election systems, which rely heavily on voting by mail.

The Senate bill is more prescriptive than the House measure, which would give states more latitude in deciding how to carry out federal standards.

The major provisions of the Senate bill include these:

¶If a person wants to vote but is not on the official list of eligible voters, the person must be allowed to cast a provisional ballot. The ballot would be counted if state or local officials confirmed that the person was eligible.

¶Voting places must be accessible to people with disabilities. Disabled voters, including those who are blind, must be allowed to cast secret ballots.

¶A new federal agency would be a clearinghouse for information on election technology and would set the maximum "error rates" for equipment used in counting ballots.

¶Before casting their ballots, voters must have some way to verify their selections, to change their ballots and to correct any errors.

The Senate majority leader, Tom Daschle, Democrat of South Dakota, said lawmakers would continue to work on the voter identification requirements. But he added, "We know that we are not going to resolve the matter to everyone's satisfaction."

Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, the principal sponsor of the Senate bill, said: "There is no requirement here for a photo identification. You can use it, but there is no mandate to use a photo I.D. We provide a rather long list of what can qualify as an I.D. for a first-time voter who registered by mail."

But Cecilia Muñoz, vice president of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino civil rights group, said: "We are still quite concerned about the I.D. requirements. Election officials are likely to apply them in a discriminatory way, asking Latinos for more documentation than they request of other people." The American Civil Liberties Union said the bill, in its current form, would "do more harm than good."

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said he was satisfied that the bill would not disrupt the vote-by-mail system used in his state.

Under the bill, a state could allow a person to establish identity by providing a driver's license number or the last four digits of the person's Social Security number. State election officials would check the data against state records to confirm that the information "matches an existing state identification record bearing the same number, name and date of birth."

If the numbers matched, the person could vote by mail without supplying any more proof of identity. If a person wanted to vote by mail but had not supplied a Social Security or driver's license number, the person could cast a provisional ballot.

Representative Johnson said she preferred the Senate bill because it established stronger safeguards than the House measure. "We want federal elections to be standardized around the country so you won't have the crazy types of ballots they had in Florida," she said.

But Senator Burns, explaining his opposition, said, "This was a one-size-fits-all solution that failed to serve a rural state like Montana."

[First_Salute]

More of the now-typical U.S. Congressmen Self-Empowerment act --- from out of where they are all Lost in Extra-Constitutional Space.