Recommendations for reform: with numerous studies and reports, there is no dearth of advice on how to overhaul the country's election system.

• Author: Rooney, Kate
• Position: Election reform

For the past 12 months, experts and public officials have trained a giant microscope on every aspect of how elections are conducted in the United States. The 2000 U.S. presidential election forced the world's oldest constitutional democracy to examine closely the most fundamental act of its citizens--casting a ballot.

As a result, legislators have an ocean of reports and recommendations to guide them as they seek to guarantee that the 2000 election debacle never happens again. Legislative sessions this year will undoubtedly be awash with election reform bills perhaps exceeding the more than 1,500 pieces of election-related legislation introduced in 2001.

National organizations, special legislative committees, federal agencies and numerous state and local election administrators have produced more than 50 reports containing hundreds of specific reform ideas. These groups met frequently, listened to testimony, gathered research and drafted reports containing guidelines and recommendations on how to improve the election system. So there will be plenty of "grist for the mill" when legislators tackle the problem anew this session. But will voters notice major changes when they cast ballots in the '02 elections? Arkansas Secretary of State Sharon Priest cautions that it could take time to implement the reforms called for by the numerous reports.

"Voters going to the polls in 2002 are going to expect sweeping changes, and those sweeping changes are not yet going to be in place," says Priest, the former president of the National Association of Secretaries of State. "There will be some changes, but even in 2003, legislators still will be working on reforms. In 2004, voters will begin to see noticeable differences."

COMMON THEMES

What kinds of improvements can voters expect? And did the multitude of studies arrive at any common conclusions? Norman Ornstein, an elections expert with the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington D.C., points out that while there are many ideas for reform, the common thread is money. "There's no question that the key to all of this is lots of money," he says.

Ornstein notes that elections are often overlooked at budget time. "Local officials have to decide if they are going to allocate the money to fill potholes or expand garbage collection or for voting reforms. Election administration has been on the deferred maintenance list for too long, and the repairs could be expensive," he says.

All of the reform studies took different approaches, yet they settled on some common recommendations. Ornstein, who led a working group for the Constitution Project, has reviewed all the reports and says there is a broad and clear consensus in several areas.

"There needs to be money so that you have modern equipment and can maintain it. States must centralize and update voter lists. There needs to be enough trained poll workers and machines to make sure that voting is not a 'root canal' experience for voters," he says.

Most of the reports encourage states to make provisional ballots available to all voters, develop a statewide voter registration database, improve voter education and poll worker training, and adopt clear definitions of what constitutes a vote. Several states moved quickly in these areas during 2001 sessions, and many discovered that their statutes are relatively sound and need only fine-tuning. Another repeated message from the national reports is that election administration should remain in the hands of state and local governments as the framers of the Constitution intended.

A STATE AND...