Voices & Choices

tompaine.com | What Baker-Carter Got Right

tompaine.com | What Baker-Carter Got Right
from tompaine.com by Rob Richie and Steven Hill





Remarkably, James Baker, architect of the Bush campaign"s post-election strategy in Florida in 2000, joined Carter in a New York Times oped on September 23rd calling for universal registration. They wrote that the government should "assume the responsibility to seek out citizens to both register voters and provide them with free ID's that meet federal standards. States should open new offices, use social service agencies and deploy mobile offices to register voters."� Once registered, people would stay registered; the report"s goal is that "people would need to register only once in their lifetime."�


Nonpartisan election officials. In the wake of presidential races in which Florida"s former secretary of state Katherine Harris and Ohio"s Ken Blackwell made clearly partisan decisions affecting a tightly fought national race, the commission calls for nonpartisan election officials. This would help rid our elections of the appearance of fraud-and might dissuade actual fraud.

Paper trails. Heeding a rising tide of grassroots activism founded on a mistrust of the privately owned voting equipment companies that run our elections, the commission calls for a paper audit trail that has been verified by each individual voter.

National elections assistance. Challenging the majority view of the old guard National Association of Secretaries of State that in February voted to restore what essentially amounted to the pre-2000 decentralized regime for administering elections, commissioners instead call for ongoing federal funding of elections. They also would strengthen the Election Assistance Commission, established in 2002 to administer some national guidelines.

A revamped presidential primary schedule. The commission supports a dramatic overhaul of the presidential primary schedule. The current system is absolutely bankrupt, with states chaotically advancing their primaries in the hope of gaining candidate attention-but collectively making it even more likely that Iowa and New Hampshire will be the only states that matter. The commission"s recommendation will help boost an alternative dubbed the American Plan, recently supported by the Young Democrats of America.

Although they would bring the United States up to international norms, none of these proposals are the transformative changes that might truly shake up partisan calculations. There"s no call for direct election of the president despite the Electoral College's malfunction in 2000 and the ever-declining number of contested states. Commissioners neglect the potential of instant runoff voting despite recent high-profile elections with non-majority winners and "spoilers."�




The reality is that the number of votes affected by fraudulent activities is dwarfed by voting barriers like lack of universal voter registration. But if a candidate you prefer loses because of fraudulent votes, as some argue happened in last year"s razor-close gubernatorial race in Washington, fraud is a very big deal. Voters certainly demand that politicians "play by the rules,"� and in exchange for universal registration, democracy advocates should agree on what steps to prevent fraud would be acceptable.


But Republican and Democratic leaders are both now unpopular among most Americans, and ignore reasonable steps toward free and fair elections at their political peril. Advocates should make fixing our elections a litmus test of support. As part of a proactive democracy strategy, we should not be afraid to support what"s good in the commission"s report and oppose what"s bad.


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