[Senate Hearing 107-69] [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office] S. Hrg. 107-69 FEDERAL ELECTION PRACTICES AND PROCEDURES ======================================================================= HEARINGS before the COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION ---------- MAY 3 AND 9, 2001 ---------- Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs FEDERAL ELECTION PRACTICES AND PROCEDURES For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpr.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800 Fax: (202) 512�092250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402�090001 73-391 PDF 2002 S. Hrg. 107-69 FEDERAL ELECTION PRACTICES AND PROCEDURES ======================================================================= HEARINGS before the COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS UNITED STATES SENATE ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION __________ MAY 3 AND 9, 2001 __________ Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee, Chairman TED STEVENS, Alaska JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine CARL LEVIN, Michigan GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire MAX CLELAND, Georgia ROBERT F. BENNETT, Utah THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware JEAN CARNAHAN, Missouri Hannah S. Sistare, Staff Director and Counsel William M. Outhier, Investigative Counsel Jana Sinclair, Associate Counsel Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Democratic Staff Director and Counsel Cynthia Gooen, Lesser, Democratic Counsel Darla D. Cassell, Chief Clerk C O N T E N T S ------ Page Opening statements: Senator Thompson............................................. 1, 67 Senator Lieberman............................................ 3, 68 Senator Bennett.............................................. 6 Senator Carnahan............................................. 8 Senator Durbin............................................... 17 Senator Levin...............................................47, 110 Prepared statement: Senator Levin............................................. 115, 116 Senator Cleland........................................... 117, 118 WITNESSES Thursday, May 3, 2001 Hon. Christopher S. ``Kit'' Bond, a U.S. Senator from the State of Missouri.................................................... 9 Hon. William Lacy Clay, a Representative in Congress from the State of Missouri.............................................. 19 Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins, Ph.D., President, League of Women Voters of the United States.................................... 27 Ralph G. Neas, President, People for the American Way and People for the American Way Foundation................................ 29 Deborah M. Phillips, Chairman, The Voting Integrity Project...... 31 Larry J. Sabato, Ph.D., Director, The Center for Governmental Studies, University of Virginia................................ 34 R. Michael Alvarez, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Political Science, California Institute of Technology.................... 51 Daniel B. Perrin, Executive Director, Committee for Honest Politics....................................................... 53 Gary McIntosh, State Elections Director, State of Washington..... 55 Hon. John T. Willis, Secretary of State, State of Maryland....... 57 Wednesday, May 9, 2001 Arturo Vargas, Executive Director, National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, Educational Fund.............. 70 Hilary O. Shelton, Director, Washington Bureau, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.............. 72 Stephen Knack, Senior Research Economist, The World Bank......... 76 Hans A. von Spakovsky, Member, Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections, Fulton County, Georgia............. 79 Hon. Sharon Priest, Secretary of State, State of Arkansas, on behalf of the National Association of Secretaries of State..... 90 R. Doug Lewis, Executive Director, The Election Center........... 92 Conny B. McCormack, Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk of Los Angeles County, California..................................... 95 Samuel F. Wright, Co-Chair, Uniformed Services Voting Rights Committee, Reserve Officers Association of the United States... 99 Alphabetical List of Witnesses Alvarez, R. Michael: Testimony.................................................... 51 Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 166 Bond, Hon. Christopher S. ``Kit'': Testimony.................................................... 9 Prepared statement........................................... 123 Clay, Hon. William Lacy: Testimony.................................................... 19 Prepared statement........................................... 131 Jefferson-Jenkins, Carolyn: Testimony.................................................... 27 Prepared statement with an attachment........................ 137 Knack, Stephen: Testimony.................................................... 76 Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 224 Lewis, R. Doug: Testimony.................................................... 92 Prepared statement........................................... 286 McCormack, Conny B.: Testimony.................................................... 95 Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 290 McIntosh, Gary: Testimony.................................................... 55 Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 199 Neas, Ralph G.: Testimony.................................................... 29 Prepared statement........................................... 152 Perrin, Daniel B. Testimony.................................................... 53 Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 191 Phillips, Deborah M.: Testimony.................................................... 31 Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 157 Priest, Hon. Sharon: Testimony.................................................... 90 Prepared statement with an attachment........................ 284 Sabato, Larry J.: Testimony.................................................... 34 Prepared statement........................................... 162 Shelton, Hilary O.: Testimony.................................................... 72 Prepared statement........................................... 218 Vargas, Arturo: Testimony.................................................... 70 Prepared statement........................................... 212 von Spakovsky, Hans A.: Testimony.................................................... 79 Prepared statement........................................... 278 Willis, Hon. John T.: Testimony.................................................... 57 Prepared statement with attachments.......................... 203 Wright, Samuel F.: Testimony.................................................... 99 Prepared statement........................................... 310 Appendix Article entitled ``Constitution: Voting reform requires federal help,'' The Atlanta Journal Constitution, dated March 28, 2001. 120 Article entitled ``Technology Slashes Detroit Voting Error, `Second Chance' Scanners Allow Correction,'' by Ellen Nakashima and Dan Keating, The Washington Post, dated April 5, 2001...... 121 Hon. Cathy Cox, Georgia Secretary of State, prepared statement... 314 Hon. Bill Jones, California Secretary of State, prepared statement...................................................... 319 James C. Dickson, Chair, Disabled Vote Project, prepared statement...................................................... 325 Federal Election Commission, prepared statement with attachments. 328 National Council on Disability, prepared statement with attachments.................................................... 347 The National Federation of the Blind, prepared statement......... 398 FEDERAL ELECTION PRACTICES AND PROCEDURES ---------- THURSDAY, MAY 3, 2001 U.S. Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Washington, DC. The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Fred Thompson, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. Present: Senators Thompson, Bennett, Lieberman, Levin, Durbin, and Carnahan. OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN THOMPSON Chairman Thompson. Let's come to order, please. Good morning. Today, we began two hearings on election reform. Pursuant to the voters' decision to make us 50-50 in the Senate, Senator Lieberman and I agreed that we would work together to have a certain number of hearings of his suggestion, and try to schedule those on a regular basis. He has been extremely cooperative with me over the years, in scheduling hearings that we have scheduled, and I have tried to be just as cooperative pursuant to that arrangement, and this is the first hearing we have had pursuant to that arrangement, pursuant to Senator Lieberman's suggestion. During the first hearing, we will discuss issues involving access to the polls, including problems with registration and voter rolls. On May 9, we will have a second hearing regarding problems people encountered at the polls, including problems with equipment, instructions and various irregularities. The subject of election reform has been studied at great length over the last few months. There has been some criticism that this issue has not received adequate attention, that it has fallen by the wayside. I cannot agree with that. Already the Senate Rules and Commerce Committees have conducted hearings on the issue, and I believe both have more scheduled. The House Administration Committee is holding hearings. The House Democratic Caucus Special Committee on Election Reform has held public hearings and plans to hold more. The NAACP has conducted public hearings in multiple States on problems encountered in the last election, some of which have been carried by C-SPAN. The National Commission on Federal election reform has been organized with such distinguished members as former Presidents Carter and Ford, Lloyd Cutler, Bob Michel, Slade Gorton, and many others. That commission is also holding several public hearings and will issue a report later in the year. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held hearings and received testimony. I believe the Center for Governmental Studies at Virginia and Larry Sabato, one of our witnesses, has been holding public symposia on the issue and will release a report later this year. The League of Women Voters has also held public forums on the subject. I believe there are over 30 bills that have been introduced in Congress, and NBC has reported there have been some 1,200 introduced in State legislatures, which are also holding hearings on the subject. So I think almost all of our witnesses today have participated in at least one of these various panels. So I do not believe the subject has been deprived of attention, especially as far as the factual allegations are concerned. Perhaps we can concentrate on solutions and decide maybe what we ought to do about this factual record that we have heard time and time again. The fact of the matter is it is perhaps not as simple as a lot of people thought it would be, in arriving at correct solutions for these problems. In the first place, we have to decide what is or should be the Federal role in all of this. Under the Constitution, the Constitution has delegated to the States substantial authority in this regard, time, place, and manner and so forth, unless Congress chooses to act. Congress has acted to a certain extent. The question is should it go further now and step into these roles that have heretofore been the province of the States, or is it a matter of money, and if we are going to start sending money to the States to help clean up this process, should we direct it in a particular provision? In other words, should it be targeted, because we have decided better than what the States have been able to decide what the problem is and here is where the money ought to go. So those are pretty tough decisions. Plus, I think, we are becoming more and more aware of the fact, those of us maybe-- who were not as aware of the history on it as perhaps we should be--is that what we are seeing now probably, in my opinion anyway, is an example of what goes on in every election every year. We are going to have at least one witness talk about the legacy we have in this country. Unfortunately, over the years, we have had substantial problems and cause for both Democrats and Republicans and Independents and Whigs and everyone else, I guess, to complain at one time or another. So we have thousands and thousands of locales in every major election where these potential problems arise. The big difference here, of course, is that this last election--we had an extremely close election and it was a Presidential election. So it is justly getting more attention, but it is not like these problems just started, by any stretch of the imagination. So that has to be figured into the equation, too, and I think Congress is rightfully not leaping in with something that changes something that has been a problem with us for a long time, and evidently one in which we have felt, up until now, that it is best to expose those problems and get the localities in which they exist, some year after year, in some cities in America, presumably--to get them to do something about it. So those are the issues, as I see them, that we are confronting, and they are not easy issues to deal with. Congress has received a great deal of testimony already describing how individuals were denied the opportunity to vote because their registrations were not processed in a timely fashion; they were mistakenly purged from the voter rolls and for other reasons. Clearly, that is a problem that needs to be remedied. People who register honestly should be able to vote. However, it should be noted that voter fraud can be just as damaging to the electoral process as other registration problems. When people vote multiple times or under fictitious names, it dilutes the single vote of the honest individual. There are safeguards that I hope we will hear about today, that could be put into place to deter and prevent voter fraud, such as requiring identification at the polls, tightening rules on absentee ballots and putting in place a computer system that makes maintaining voter rolls easier and more efficient. I think also one of the problems we have is that it is so easily turned into a partisan debate, one side saying you do not want people to vote and the other side saying you want people who are not entitled to vote to vote. But it appears to me that in the end, we all want the same thing, and that is we want those that are properly registered to vote to be on the rolls on election day. On the other hand, we want to protect the integrity of our elections by deterring and preventing voter fraud. Perhaps today we can continue the ongoing dialogue on these goals and come to a better understanding of how to ensure the integrity of our electoral process. Senator Lieberman. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, thanks for an excellent statement, and thanks also for agreeing to hold this hearing today and a second one next Wednesday, as you indicated, because the subject that we are about to explore could not be any more important to our national values, and I think could not be more directly related to the jurisdiction of this Committee which is, as you know, of course, in our rules, gives us jurisdiction over intergovernmental matters; and that, in one perspective, is exactly what the organization of elections is about, certainly national elections in which we delegate the rules and the administration of the process to State and local governments. So I think this Committee has a very strong interest in this matter. Talking about interest in the matter, Mr. Chairman, you may remember that I had some personal involvement in last year's election. I hope you remember, anyway. [Laughter.] Chairman Thompson. Good to have you back. That is all I will say. [Laughter.] Senator Lieberman. Thank you. I was thinking, when you were talking about the multiple voting, that I am grateful that the people of Connecticut voted for me twice, legally, last year, which enables me to have the honor of returning as your colleague on this Committee. But while I obviously would have preferred a different outcome to last year's election, that is not at all what this hearing is about. It is not about the outcome. It is not about Florida. I dearly believe that what this hearing is and should be about is the much larger problem that we came across on Election Day 2000, that you spoke of, concerning our national voting processes; and, of course, we came across this problem because of the extreme closeness of the election, certainly in Florida, where, whichever point of view you take, it was virtually a tie. The fact is an enormous number of Americans, as we discovered last year across the country, were disfranchised. Many were denied access, as you said, to the polling booth because of a breakdown in the registration system; others cast ballots that were simply never counted. Either way, these problems strike at the heart of who we are as Americans, and I think call on us in Congress to try to do something to make sure that these problems never occur again, certainly not to the extent that we discovered they occurred last year, and presumably, as your statement indicated, have been occurring in elections for quite a long time. Our Nation was founded upon and continues to flourish according to the essential principle of self-government. The authority of our self-governing democracy derives from the right of our citizens to vote. When that right is compromised, the strength and integrity of our democracy is diminished. As the majority wrote in a 1964 Supreme Court opinion: ``To the extent that a citizen's right to vote is debased, he is that much less a citizen.'' I would add that to the extent that a citizen's right to vote is debased, we are all that much less citizens. Over our history, and most notably in the modern era, since the 1960's, we have struggled to remove barriers, both legal and practical, that have stood between citizens and their right to vote. The sobering lesson of last year's Presidential election is that the struggle for full voting rights is not over. Difficult as it was for some to believe, American still cannot take for granted that their votes will be counted or even that they will be permitted to cast a ballot in the first place when they clearly have a right to do so. I have seen estimates that say that as many as 2.5 million ballots that were cast around the country last year went uncounted; and, of course, we will never know how many more Americans were denied even the right to vote because of registration problems and questions at the polls. We do have a pretty good idea of all the things that went wrong in different places: Faulty voting equipment failed to record voters' choices; voters received poor instructions or no instructions at all about how to mark the ballot or use the machines; poll workers hassled voters with a supposed 1-minute rule for voting or demanded to see identification from some voters, and here there were particular allegations about that being done to African-American voters, but not from others. In some places, there were no ballots for non-English- language voters. Long lines prevented others with a time clock to punch or children to attend to from voting at all; and some disabled voters faced a disenfranchising lack of access to a polling machine or place. These were the problems confronted by those who made it into a polling booth, but in cities and towns across the country, registered voters or at least people who believe they were registered, were turned away at the polls by workers who could not find their names on the voting lists. These mishaps are troubling, and, of course, have eroded the faith of many Americans in what they had assumed was their right to vote. That is clearly one of the reasons this Committee is holding this hearing and why so many others in Washington and throughout America are exploring ways to reform our voting systems. We must together find a solution to this problem, so that we can achieve our Nation's ideal and restore our Nation's confidence, not only in every citizen's right to vote, but then, of course, to have his or her vote counted. Today, as you have said, Mr. Chairman, we will address the problems voters had in reaching the polls; that is, in getting registered to vote and remaining on the rolls. Next Wednesday, we are going to look at the problems voters had once they got to the polls, in getting their votes cast and counted. In the last century, voter registration was actually the original barrier to the ballot, and according to news accounts last fall from States as far-flung and diverse as Maine, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Florida, and elsewhere, it remains a barrier today. In 1993, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act, or Motor Voter, as it is known, with the intent of broadening the franchise by making it more accessible. The law was meant to make it easier for a potential voter to be added to the rolls, and harder for a voter to be taken off. According to the 1999 Federal Election Commission survey, 75 percent of registration applications were submitted at motor vehicle departments, other State agencies, or by mail. That was a surprisingly large number to me, and impressively so. Voter registration was up 4 percent in 2 years, an addition of more than 7 million voters to the rolls, and I think that is an unequivocally good thing for American democracy. Yet some States are obviously still struggling to keep their rolls clean, and to ensure that applications submitted at agencies like the DMVs are actually sent to the registrar with the necessary information; and the specter of fraud is often used to argue for restricting access to registration applications and for more frequent purges of the rolls. It is not a Hobson's Choice, I think, between open access or widespread fraud. I certainly hope not. Actual evidence of fraudulent voting, as you look at national patterns, is not great. Innovation and planning can help to deter and detect voter mischief, and, of course, we must be persistent and relentless in pursuit of that. We are not a society governed by fear. We are a society governed by openness and freedom, and our ultimate priority has to be encouraging as many people to vote as possible. Local officials cannot and should not shoulder the blame for these problems. Most do the best they can with the resources they have. I think we all have to take some responsibility here. In numerous public opinion surveys, the American people have expressed their support for improving the elections system, and I hope that these two hearings that we are holding, Mr. Chairman, will create some context in which we in Congress can go forward to do our part, and also join with the administration to find the necessary funds to facilitate State and local election reform. Voting is at the heart of our political system. Our political system is also, largely and I suppose too often, a partisan system, and therefore efforts to change the rules or improve by some lights, confused by other lights, the way in which our electoral systems work, can always be touched and, in fact, derailed by partisanship. That seems to have happened, in part, in the House of Representatives on this question this year, thus far. Mr. Chairman, you and I have worked well together over a host of different problems, some even more controversial and potentially partisan than this one, and I hope that we and the Members of this Committee can set a similar tone here, in trying to find problems and correct them. I hope that we can move forward together and prove that even the New York Times was wrong in its recent editorial prediction, that election reform will become, ``merely another partisan battleground.'' I hope not. The integrity of our national policy depends on us making more progress than that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Senator Bennett. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR BENNETT Senator Bennett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I cannot resist making the comment that the New York Times is almost always wrong, at least on the editorial page. Senator Lieberman. You notice the representative of the Times chose to walk in at just that moment. Senator Bennett. Just that moment. That is why I added the comment about the editorial page, assuming this was a reporter. Senator Lieberman. I am going to repeat my kind words. [Laughter.] Senator Bennett. Close elections always bring out the difficulties in our system. When somebody wins by 65 percent, everybody relaxes and says, ``Well, it does not really matter. The election was so overwhelming that if somebody was not allowed to get to the polls or if someone went to the polls and voted seven times, it does not really matter, because the decision was so decisive--the outcome was so decisive that we do not have to look at it.'' This last election, arguably the closest in our history, throws a spotlight on all of the problems, and therefore I think it is appropriate for us, in the aftermath of the last election, to look at those problems. If I could go back in history for just a minute and give you an example of how this happens, we used to have a Senator around here known as Landslide Lyndon, and the history of Lyndon Johnson's being elected to the Senate was that he was actually elected twice before he got to take his seat. He made the mistake in Texas, the first time he was elected, of releasing or allowing to be released the number of votes that had been cast for him, and that meant his opponent had time to scrounge up the necessary votes to defeat him. When he ran for the Senate the second time, he and his operatives made sure they would never release how many votes he had until the other side had released their votes, and it went late into the night, with each side holding back and holding back, until finally the then-incumbent Governor's forces said, ``Well, this is how many votes we have.'' It was kind of like a poker game: ``This is the card we have.'' And then Landslide Lyndon was somehow able to come up with 87 more votes at the last possible moment, having learned his lesson in the previous election, which is you never, ever release your total until you see the other person's total, because you can then go back and create new votes. I think that was one of the most dramatic examples of how the election system in this country did not work properly, and no one will ever know how many votes Lyndon Johnson really got, and no one will ever know how many votes his opponent got. The historians that have looked at that have said, ``Well, both sides were cheating enormously by the votes they were manufacturing, that we really do not know which side was more corrupt.'' I do not think we had that kind of wholesale corruption in this last election, but because it was so close and because we were fighting for an electoral victory that turned on a single vote, it has thrown a spotlight on the whole question of who did not get to the polls and would that have made a difference, who went to the polls multiple times and did that make a difference, that we are having this hearing today; and I think it is appropriate that we explore all aspects of that. One other comment; Senator Lieberman has mentioned Motor Voter. I am not expert in how Motor Voter has worked in other States. I talked to the people that administer Motor Voter in the State of Utah, and they consider, basically, it has been, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a disaster; that it has not increased access to the registration rolls on the part of those who really want to vote. It has, in fact, cluttered up the rolls as some aggressive folks have gone after welfare recipients and said, ``You will not get your welfare unless you register to vote,'' and the people who thus registered say, ``What is this all about?'' They have no interest in voting, and then somebody else may try to vote their names. Now, fortunately, we have sufficient bipartisan poll watchers in the State of Utah, that has not happened; but at least in my State, the Motor Voter law has not contributed in any positive sense to increasing access to the election. One other comment; as we deal with this question of getting people into the polls, I note that we now have a Federal mandate, for which I voted, against some criticism, that says you have to present photo ID before you can buy cigarettes, and yet you do not have to present photo ID before you can vote. You have to present photo ID before you can get on an airplane, but you do not have to present photo ID before you can vote. The days when all of your neighbors knew you, which is when our voter laws were written in the State of Utah; so that you showed up, the poll watcher took one look at you and said, ``Yeah, I know who you are; go ahead and vote,'' are over. We now have so many people showing up at the polling places that, I think, to add to the confidence in the outcome that Senator Lieberman talks about, we ought to consider some kind of mandate for a photo ID for people showing up, so that the arguments over who is this person and did this person really have the right to vote and so on, all disappear. You can present a photo ID the same way you do when you buy cigarettes. It can be checked off, the name can be recorded, and there can be no suspicion anymore that anybody is trying to do something that they should not do. With that, Mr. Chairman, I will be happy to hear the witnesses. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Senator Carnahan. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARNAHAN Senator Carnahan. Last November, when Missourians walked into the voting booth, a majority of them did something they had never done before. They voted for my husband, though he had perished in an airplane accident 3 weeks earlier. It was a defiant act on their part. It was a bold statement, but that is the way voters speak: ``We will not be defeated. We will be heard,'' and that was the clear message that they wanted to convey. You see, a vote is a voice. By itself, it is just a soft whisper; but combined with others, it becomes a thunderous roar. It is reported that the children of Israel, standing outside the city of Jericho, shouted with a great voice and the walls fell down. Well, the voice of voting Americans has leveled many walls of repression and injustice during the past 227 years of our Republic. The 15th Amendment gave African-Americans a say in our government. The 19th Amendment gave the same right to women; and the 26th Amendment ensured that Americans considered old enough to give their lives for their country were counted old enough to vote in our Nation's elections. Yes, the voice of voters must be augmented, not diminished. We must continue to look for the most reliable ways to make the will of the voter known. For that reason, I join with those today who call for electoral reform; and I want to say to those urging us to eliminate voter fraud and to punish those who abuse the system, that I agree with you most heartily. But far too many States and local registrars are handicapped by insufficient technology, so we must work harder to put systems in place that will help us maintain accurate voter rolls, and we must educate our citizens to understand what steps they should take to register properly; and we must make sure that poll workers are properly trained in their duties, making them better able to deal with potential problems that might arise on Election Day. To those who say we must live up to the promise of the Constitution and bring more people into the process, I say that I agree with you, as well. The struggle for suffrage has been too long and too costly to be sacrificed in the voting booth. Any barrier to the exercise of this hard earned right diminishes us as a free people. There are several ways that we can make sure that we promote and not impede the voting process. We should implement uniform, statewide standards; modernize the voting process, including voting machines and other ballot technologies; and we should protect the voting rights of our Nation's military personnel. I look forward to the testimony today, including that of the testimony of two distinguished Missourians, Senator Kit Bond and Congressman Lacy Clay, as well as to hearing from others who want to strengthen our democracy by reforming the electoral process. But as we listen today, I urge you to heed the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who said, ``Let us never forget that government is ourselves, and not an alien over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not the President or Senators or Congressman or Government officials, but the voters of this country.'' Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. It is difficult to pursue these matters without talking about specifics, and it is difficult to seem like you are singling some situations out and leaving out others, but some have received quite a bit more publicity than others. One of those situations has been St. Louis, Election Day, and we do have with us a distinguished Senator and a distinguished Representative, to discuss those matters as to what may have happened, what happened, and what we might constructively do about it? So we are delighted to have leading off today Senator Christopher Bond. Senator Bond, do you have a statement? TESTIMONY HON. CHRISTOPHER S. ``KIT'' BOND,\1\ A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI Senator Bond. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, distinguished Ranking Member, my colleagues from Illinois, from the State of Missouri, Delaware and Utah. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify today. No one wants their State to be the poster child for a problem. No one wants their home town to become a laughingstock, so it is with much dismay that I come before you today, to describe what has gone on in the City of St. Louis, and what is going on with some reforms that I think are vital. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Bond appears in the Appendix on page 123. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Over the past months, many Americans saw for the first time how actual vote counting is done--or not done. We have had a real-life civics lesson, and those of us in positions of responsibility need to fix what needs fixing, reform what needs reforming, and prosecute where actual wrongdoing has occurred. Voting is the most important duty and responsibility of a citizen of our Republic. It should not be diluted by fraud, false filing in lawsuits, judges who do not follow the law, and politicians who try to profit from the confusion. At the same time, voters should not be unduly confused by complicated ballots, voting rosters, or confounded by inadequate poll lines or voting booths or other facilities, in an effort to vote. Mr. Chairman, I want to make one simple point as I begin. Vote fraud is not about partisanship. It is not about Democrats versus Republicans. It is not about the north side of St. Louis versus the south side of St. Louis. It is about justice. As has already been said by the distinguished panel, vote fraud is a criminal, not a political act. Illegal votes dilute the value of votes cast legally. When people try to stuff the ballot box, what they are really doing is trying to steal political power from those who follow election laws. The Missouri Court of Appeals recently wrote: ``Equal vigilance is required to ensure that only those entitled to vote are allowed to cast a ballot. Otherwise, the rights of those lawfully entitled to vote are inevitably diluted.'' St. Louis City Democrats had this to say over the past few months, my own friend, State Representative Quincy Troupe: ``There is no doubt in any black elected official's mind that the whole process has discouraged honest elections in the City of St. Louis for some time. We know that we have people who cheat in every election. The only way you can win a close election in this town, you have to beat the cheat.'' St. Louis' outgoing Mayor Clarence Harmon: ``I think there is ample, longstanding evidence of voter fraud in our community.'' Eleventh Ward Alderman Matt Villa: ``Who knows who did it, but it is apparent they are trying to cheat and steal this election.'' What we have seen in St. Louis over the past few months has been nothing short of astonishing, and that's why I say a laughingstock. We have had dead people registered, and, yes, even a dog, Ritsy Meckler. Ritsy was on the poll list for 6 years--do not know how many times she voted. We have had fake names registered. We have had people registered from addresses which are vacant lots and voter rolls with more names than there are people of voting age in the City of St. Louis. A city judge violated State law by providing extended voting hours just for a few selected polling places with an overwhelming dominance of one party; and allowing voters going to the polls to vote, even though they are not registered. We have discovered in our ongoing review another major problem in St. Louis. The voter rolls are so clogged with incorrect or fraudulent data that legal voters are shortchanged. St. Louis City actually has more voters listed on its voter rolls than the voting age population in the city, over 100 percent registration rate. That is amazing, but not surprising, if you have dogs and dead people registered. Equally amazing, we discovered, in the City of St. Louis, 1 out of every 10 registered voters is also registered somewhere else in the State. In fact, over 24,000 people are dual- registered in St. Louis City, as well as somewhere else in Missouri. My staff reviewed almost 17,000 multiple-registered names, found that 12,420 had moved out of the city and registered at new addresses; 487 voters were actually registered twice in the city itself; 285 voters were registered three different places, and of these, 285 were actually registered three times in St. Louis. Three voters were registered at four different places in this State. It gives you a real opportunity to participate in an election. It is painfully clear that the registration system is broken and desperately needs repairing. We have seen all kinds of illegal registration schemes. A city grand jury in St. Louis is now investigating 3,800 voter registration cards dumped on the election board on the last day to register before the March 6 primary. Press reports noted that at least 1,000 were bogus registrations for people already registered, and, of course, some were the deceased public officials. Now a Federal grand jury investigation is underway as the FBI recently issued a subpoena to the St. Louis Election Board for all records pertaining to any person who registered to vote between October 1, 2000 and March 6, 2001; it also requested all records of anyone who cast absentee ballots or regular ballots during that period, as well as anyone turned away from the polls and barred from voting. Mr. Chairman, I think it is obvious there has been brazen fraud with these bogus voter registration--dead people, fake names, and phony addresses. The system is being abused. Because nearly all of these fraudulent registrations were mail-in forms, I would urge the Committee to make real reforms in the Federal law in this area. At a minimum, States need to be given the authority to require on a mail registration form a place for a notarization or some other form of identification. Current Federal law prohibits States from including this safeguard. That is one area where Federal law is an impediment to anti-fraud efforts. In addition, election boards need time to review cards, as they are most likely to be brought in on the last days of registration. Given what we have seen the past months, same-day registration would be an absolute invitation to fraud. As the Missouri Court of Appeals wrote when they shut down the improper efforts to keep certain polling places open on election night in November, 2000: ``. . . Commendable zeal to protect voting rights must be tempered by the corresponding duty to protect the integrity of the voting process. . . . Equal vigilance is required to ensure that only those entitled to vote are allowed to cast a ballot. Otherwise, the rights of those lawfully entitled to vote are inevitably diluted.'' As I noted earlier, I believe it is our duty to fix what needs to be fixed, reform what needs to be reformed and prosecute where necessary. Criminal investigations are ongoing. I hope if criminal violations are found, they will be prosecuted, but we must get a handle on voter rolls. People who register and follow the rules should not be frustrated by inadequate polling places, phone lines or confused, out-of-date lists. At the same time, we must require voter lists to be scrubbed and reviewed in a much more timely manner, so that cheaters cannot use confusion as their friend. States should be permitted, when voters come in after having registered by mail for the first time in a Federal election, to present a photo ID, as my colleague from Utah has said, to indicate that they are who they say they are; that they are not a dog; that they are not dead; that they do have a real, physical presence. I do not want the City of St. Louis to continue to have a lasting regulation as that described by Representative Troupe: ``The only way you can win a close election in this town, you have to beat the cheat.'' Unfortunately, some of the provisions in Federal law make it difficult to ensure honest elections. We have had investigations by the outgoing Secretary of State in Missouri. The newly-elected Secretary of State in Missouri is continuing those investigations. I believe the Missouri General Assembly will be acting on recommendations for State improvement in voting procedures, and I think that is where much of the reform needs to be done, but we at the Federal level must be sure that our Federal requirements do not impede the ability of State and local officials to ensure that the election process is honest, that all eligible voters are allowed to vote, and no one is allowed to vote illegally. I thank the Chairman. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much, Senator. You mentioned the Federal prohibition on States providing for a place for a notarization on a registration. Is that what you referred to? Senator Bond. Yes, sir. Chairman Thompson. Are there any other Federal provisions you think would bear revisiting, that present a problem. It seems to me like most of the things that you have listed still remain under the purview of the local election officials. Senator Bond. Well, one of the things that makes it more difficult is when you have inaccurate voter registration lists if you have registered, and it is a mail-in registration, the election authority, the local election authority, sends out a notice to the voter, and under the Motor Voter law, if that notice is returned as undeliverable, then you cannot remove that voter from the list until they have not voted for two elections. It would seem to me that States should be given some greater leeway. The States should not be hampered in their ability to clean up the rolls. That is one of the most important things I think is needed, and I would require before a voter casts a vote in a Federal election. If they have voted by mail--if they have registered by mail, they should be required to vote in person and show a photo ID when they come in to vote. That would at least get the dog off the rolls. Chairman Thompson. Would that be in any way prohibited under Federal law as it now stands, in your opinion? Senator Bond. Well, there is some question about what Federal law would permit or prevent. I think the requirement should be a Federal requirement, if we have required that voters be allowed to register by mail, I think we ought to build some safeguards into it. The City of St. Louis, after the tremendous attention focused on the voting in the general election of November 2000, required photo IDs; and they found that the system worked surprisingly well. There was great concern about fraud, because it was really an important election. It was a mayor's primary election. It was not one dealing with Presidents and Governors and Senators and Congressman. It was about jobs in St. Louis City. So they took that very seriously. Chairman Thompson. In the general election, there was a lawsuit filed, as I recall, to keep the polls open. That was upheld by the local Federal District Judge, as I understand it, and overturned by the Court of Appeals. What was the nature of that lawsuit and the circumstances surrounding that; and what was the significance of that lawsuit with regard to this election? Senator Bond. That is an old-time Missouri custom. Prior to my election as Governor in 1972, there was an anomaly in 1940. A Republican was elected, apparently elected, Governor of Missouri. Challenges went on until March of that year. He was finally seated, but he was the only one between the Depression and 1972. In 1972, I ran for Governor against Mr. Dowd, a leading official in the City of St. Louis. And we found on election afternoon an order was issued keeping the polls open in the City of St. Louis, and they stayed open and they stayed open. Finally, after midnight on election night, November 1972, when enough votes came in from out-of-state to give me a margin greater than all the voters in the City of St. Louis, the polls were allowed to close. So this time around, we were very interested when we read in the paper the morning of the election that there were plans to keep the polls open. I asked that lawyers be prepared to go in to challenge that, and sure enough an order was entered on the election afternoon. The Gore-Lieberman campaign filed a lawsuit on behalf of Robert D. Odom, who claimed in court that he has not been able to vote and fears he will not be able to vote because of long lines at the polling places and machine breakdowns. His attorney said Mr. Odom is here and prepared to testify. He was denied the right to vote based on the allegations of the petition. We found out a little problem: Robert D. Odom had passed away 2 years previously. His lawyer then came back and said that our team was just wrong; we cannot even keep the voters straight. What they really meant was that it was Robert M. Odom, who is known as Mark Odom. Well, it turns out that Mark Odom had already voted before the lawsuit was filed. So he probably would have a tough time testifying truthfully that he was afraid he would not be able to vote. About that time, recorded calls, which had been prepared by Reverend Jesse Jackson, started coming in to the City of St. Louis, saying you can vote until 10 o'clock, the polls will be kept open, and if you want to vote as late as midnight, you can go to the city election board. It strikes me--it strikes one as perhaps having been planned. There was a charge that, somehow, the St. Louis City Election Board, which was democratically appointed, although it is supposed to be bipartisan, approved by the Democratic Senate in a city, the City of St. Louis, which is 4-1 Democratic, that the election board was somehow taking steps to deny Democratic voters the right to vote for Democratic candidates. It seems to me that one does not pass the laugh test. This was a major effort consistent with what had been done in the past. Fortunately, the Missouri Court of Appeals overturned the Missouri trial judge's order and closed the polls within about 45 minutes; but we found the other evidence, as we looked at the election, of questionable registrations, some 30,000 voter registration postcards were dropped in a month before the election, right on the close of the registration, and we understand that some 17,000 of those people voted. We do not know all the details, but there was a major effort, I believe, to change the will of the people as it had been expressed by those lawfully voting as eligible voters during the time when polls were supposed to be open. Incidentally, a similar suit was filed by Gore-Lieberman in Kansas City, to keep polls open there. That application was denied by the court in Jackson County. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. My time is almost up. Senator Lieberman. Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I do not know enough about the situation that Senator Bond describes in St. Louis to get into the details, but I do want to try to draw from it a few lessons for our concern, because it does highlight some of the choices we have to make. Obviously, if I heard you correctly, Senator, there were more names on the registration lists in St. Louis than there were voters of voting age. Senator Bond. That is correct. Senator Lieberman. So, as I believe you said, obviously, the first thing necessary there was to clean up the list. Senator Bond. That is correct. Senator Lieberman. In other words, the number of voters shows that there is clearly a problem, but not inherently that there is fraud, based on that list, because a lot of people continue to move. Young people, minorities, etc., tend to move more frequently. Is there any indication on the record in St. Louis why the lists were not cleaned up? Senator Bond. One of the things is that Federal law makes it difficult to clean them up. You have to, if they mail a notice to you and it is returned, you cannot take voters off the rolls until they have not voted in two consecutive elections. So the city election board, the State, cannot develop more effective means for cleaning up the election rolls; and there is evidence, I believe, before the grand jury about possible abuses of the votes. But, again, that will await final determination by either the circuit attorney or the U.S. Attorney relying on the work of the FBI. I do not have any--I cannot give you a specific example of any crime that was committed there. Senator Lieberman. I must say that the more I get into these kinds of cases, the more I get focused--because of the difficulties on the voter registration lists--on what we can do at the polls to make it easy for people to, if they come, to vote, and the photo ID is one possibility. I know that there has been criticism or concern expressed about that, because not everybody has a photo ID, and I believe there is a court case--I think it might have been Louisiana-- where is says you can require a photo ID, but in the alternative, if a person does not have it, they have to sign an affirmation under penalty of perjury that they are who they say they are. How would you feel about that combination? Senator Bond. If there is a means of identifying that person through affirmation and a notarized application--if there is a means for the election board or the election authority and the prosecuting authorities to follow up on it, then that would seem to work. If, however, you are engaged in a wholesale vote scam, it may be difficult if people have been brought in from other areas. Of course, you can also manufacture a phony ID. For every better mousetrap, there is a smarter mouse. But we need to have, at least, some decent mousetraps in place that would make it more difficult and threaten the wrongdoer with some kind of criminal activity--punishment. Senator Lieberman. Part of the balance here I think we are all dealing with is you obviously do not want to tolerate voter fraud. In fact, you want to punish it and deter it by any means you can, but you do not want to do so much that you are ending up discouraging or making it harder for people who have a legitimate right to vote, to vote; and that is the balance, I think, we are looking for. Whenever I heard the numbers that came out last year nationally, that as many as 2.5 million people cast votes that were not counted, not to mention those who did not get to vote when they came to the polling place, my guess is--and this is a totally unscientific guess--that the number of those who may be voting fraudulently, which is unacceptable, is much less than the number of those who are coming to vote and not getting to vote or having their votes counted, and we have got to find a way to balance that. One of the ways that people have talked about is either provisional registration or same-day, election day, registration, which exists in--each of those ideas exist in some other State. Provisional registration is somewhat similar to the affirmation we have talked about, where you show up at the poll, you sign your name, you affirm your citizenship, your age, your address, and you sign a document, again under the penalty of perjury. If, afterward, as the registrars have the chance--in other words, when you are challenged, you can resolve the challenge quickly and vote by provisionally registering right there, and then it is understood after that, there will be an investigation by the registrar. Your vote will not count until that investigation is completed, or the other, of course, is same-day registration, which existed in at least one State. I have forgotten which one right now. What would you think about those two ideas? Senator Bond. I think they are open invitations to fraud. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to clean up the registration rolls when we have a month between the close of registration and actual voting day. There are instances, I believe, too many instances where people have voted twice and they have never been prosecuted. That is against the law right now, but it is difficult, after the election is over, to get people to go out and make the investigations. I think we ought to do a better job of prosecuting where these fraudulent activities have occurred. There is information that we have turned over, where it appears that a number of people may have voted twice. Generally, this is not regarded as a serious crime. Voting twice is just showing a healthy appetite for participation in the electoral process. I do not think it is a healthy appetite. Senator Lieberman. I am sure all of us agree with you. Senator Bond. I think it is one that is a crime, and same- day registration or provisional registration, I think, would increase the number of people attempting to vote numerous times. Senator Lieberman. I look forward to asking some of the expert witnesses on the panels that follow about that, because I believe that has not been the case in the places where it has been tried. I do not have any further questions. My staff just handed me a copy of an article from the St. Louis Post Dispatch, January 6, 2001, which reports on an investigation of this election that you refer to in St. Louis, by the former Secretary of State, Becky Cook, and this is in regard to the polls being kept open after 7 p.m., that apparently fewer than 100 people actually voted after 7 p.m., when the polls were kept open because of a court order, which was not enough to sway any of the elections being held there. So, thank you, Senator Bond. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Senator Bennett. Senator Bennett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You talk about Missouri. One of the books I have read in my lifetime was the biography of Harry Truman, by his daughter, Margaret, and you trigger a memory here. In that book, she is somewhat defensive of her father's good friend, Tom Pendergast, and describing one of his elections, she goes on at great length about how corrupt things are in St. Louis, where another political boss, whose name I cannot remember, was running up a huge anti-Truman majority, and it was clearly fraud, because there were 89 percent, 90 percent of the voters in St. Louis in this Democratic primary voting for Truman's opponent, and that kind of thing could only be achieved by fraud. But, she says in the book, good old loyal Tom Pendergast did his best, and in Kansas City, they got 91 percent and Truman got elected, and I thought, now, wait a minute, that is the way politics is played, and you have given us an indication that Missouri does have some of that history. I want to raise with you this possibility and get your reaction to it. As we talk about voter fraud and, frankly, voter problems, the access problems to which Senator Lieberman referred, they seem almost always to come in big cities. This is where anonymity is. Again, you go back to my district in Utah, when I walk in there, everybody knows me. We do not get that concerned, because we do not have the kind of anonymity that comes in what the social scientists call the Lonely Crowd. I hear anecdotes, do not know how true they are, about Chicago. We do know, in the 1960 election, there were more votes cast than there were people living in some districts, and the ballots were destroyed within 24 hours of having been counted. So there was no way to go back and deal with it. The story is told in Boston about the election official. The press approach him and say, ``Do you own that triplex at such-and-such an address?'' And he said, ``Yes.'' They said, ``According to the voting registrar, there are over 300 voters at that address and there are only three apartments, 300 voters. How do you explain that?'' He said, ``Very simple. Haven't rented out the third floor yet.'' I have been told that, in Philadelphia, they do it differently than the way you have described in St. Louis, and in Philadelphia there are some precincts where, at 8 o'clock, they close the doors very promptly, and then they go to the back of the machine, open it up, find out how many votes short of registered voters have been cast, go back to the front of the machine, grab the favored lever, and pull it 75 times or 87 times, or however many necessary to bring the vote up to the established number of registered voters. It seems to me, as I think about these examples, the problem arises from the fact that in many of these precincts there are not, in fact, poll watchers for the other party. If you have one party running the poll, absolutely, even if you have photo ID in place, even if you have the laws in place, the opportunity to do what I have just described is always there because there is no one watching. In contrast, in Florida, there were lawyers for both sides, watching every single dangling chad, so that nobody could really get away with anything. Indeed, even better than that, the television cameras were there. As I talked to some of the people that were monitoring what was happening in Florida, they said the results changed, whether the television cameras were there or were not, that one candidate would surge when the cameras were turned off, and then would not do so well when the cameras were turned on. This kind of sunshine exposure seems to me to be the solution, both to too long of lines. If lines are too long and the people cannot vote, the party that thinks, ``Gee, we are being disadvantaged by that,'' will be the one that will speak out, accurately and proper. But if there is only one party there and they can say, ``Well, we are going to go do what we do in court or whatever, and nobody is watching us,'' that is where you get the difficulty. First, I would like your response to that, and then assume that you agree with me that accurate poll watchers of both parties will help solve both the fraudulent problem and the access problem. How do we do it from the Federal level? Are we talking about funding federally-paid poll watchers, things of that kind? I have not thought that one through, and I would appreciate your reaction. Senator Bond. I would agree with you on the importance of sunshine and full disclosure and coverage. I would agree with you that true partisans representing both parties or more than two parties, if that is the case, are essential. I do not think the Federal Government is going to be able to go out and select poll watchers. The voting mechanisms are basically controlled by the States. The States are the entities responsible. The local election boards--we have boards in St. Louis City and County, and Jackson County. We have county clerks in other parts of the State. They have to be responsible. I think it is incumbent upon the parties to make sure that they have bona fide representatives of their parties available at every polling place and, to some extent, there have been instances, I know in Missouri, where there have not been, where the Republican Party has not put up good poll watchers. I would agree with you, as I said, that having coverage is vitally important. I believe the coverage resulting from the questions raised about the November election may have made the mayor's primary in St. Louis, Missouri, in 2001, perhaps the cleanest election it has ever had. I hope they might like it and continue to try it in the future, but I think the scrutiny of the media and the media in St. Louis, with help from other media around the State, have focused attention on it, and that is one of the best disinfectants, is to publicize the wrongdoing. I would say with respect to lengths of polls, there are areas where--Republican areas of the State--friends of mine waited an hour and 45 minutes, 2 hours, anecdotal. This is unacceptable, whether it is in a Democratic area, a Republican area or an evenly divided area, and that is something that the Missouri Secretary of State, the general assembly, the local election officials, must look at to make sure that you have adequate polling places and adequate equipment, so that everybody who is an eligible voter who presents himself or herself for an election, has the opportunity to vote in a reasonable time. There were cases where people I know had to go to work and left the polls after an hour or so, because they were still too far away to vote, and those people were not able to vote, and this is a problem. This is unacceptable, whether it is a partisan area or a bipartisan area. Senator Bennett. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Senator Durbin. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR DURBIN Senator Durbin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am glad you are having this hearing. There cannot be a topic that is of more importance and more timely than to talk about how elections are run in our country and whether they are fair. I still think, as we travel around, that we find a lot of people are harboring anger and resentment over what happened last November. I think we have an obligation, both parties have an obligation, to try to make this system better. But I think it is worthwhile at least for a moment or two, to reflect on the history of this debate and this issue, and I see that Ralph Neas is going to be making note of some of this in his testimony. But after the Civil War and Reconstruction, what happened across America, particularly in the South, was something which was reprehensible. It was a coordinated effort to make certain that people of color did not have a chance to vote, and it worked. It worked effectively, with poll taxes and literacy tests and, ``cleaning up the rolls,'' they virtually disenfranchised African- Americans in this country. In the 1960's, as part of the civil rights debate, one of the most important elements was our decision to really put an end to that practice, and to say that wherever you lived in this country, black, white, or brown, you had a right to vote as an American. That Voting Rights Act, I think, really spoke to some basic values in this country, and values we should not forget. In 1993, we updated that earlier Voting Rights Act, to try to make it easier for people to have a chance to vote in this country. I do not disagree with Senator Bond's suggestion of a photo ID. I think there are ways we can deal with that, and I hope we will. I hope, during the course of this conversation on our elections, that we will try to get rid of some of the haphazard procedures that are used for registration across our country. How in the world can we countenance all the obstacles we throw in the paths of people who just want to exercise their right as Americans to vote? How can we explain to them that when they come to the polling place, they are going to face voting machinery that is virtually antiquated? Over 120,000 voters in Cook County did their civic duty, took off time from their job, went into the polling place, cast their votes, and they were not counted because the machinery there is so bad. What a coincidence that the worst voting machinery in America happens to be the voting machinery used the most by minorities. That is a fact. But there are other problems in the system, too. Thousands of voters in Republican DuPage County were disenfranchised because the Motor Voter rolls and the regular rolls in that county were not reconciled. Good, strong Republican voters, Senator Bond, were turned away. They did not get their chance to vote, either, and we should be ashamed of that. At this time in our history, when we have the technological capability to not only register people and do it effectively, and give them a means to vote effectively, it is disgraceful that we are ignoring it. I think of some of the people that have taken the time to meet their civic responsibility, who must be so angry and frustrated at what they ran into in the November 7 election. I hope that we can do something about this, and I hope we can do it on a bipartisan basis, and I can tell you from the experiences in your home State of Missouri and my home State of Illinois, the State legislatures are not giving us much hope that they are going to address it at all, not at all. Now, here is our challenge. If this is truly a national value and a national right and a national principle, can we really surrender all jurisdiction to the maintenance and coordination of the elections to local and State officials, and expect anything other than the haphazard results we have seen? If we want to purge the rolls of any people who should not be on them, and I certainly do, who are illegally and dishonestly trying to vote more than once or vote when they are not entitled to, then frankly we have to talk about national standards. We hate to do that. We like to leave all this authority at the State and local level, and look what you end up with: People who are conscientiously trying to exercise their right to vote, trying to figure out what in the world is going to meet them if they turn up at the polls to vote. One last point I want to make: 24 million Americans are illiterate. Tens of millions of Americans have limited skills. They walk into a polling place once every year or 2 years. They are handed some instructions and a piece of machinery with a long line behind them and told quickly vote and let's get going. They are trying to do their best, and we ought to be able to create a process in this country where a person with a limited education, limited experience, still has a chance to be a full-fledged American. I think that is part of what our mandate should be as a result of these hearings. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Senator Carnahan. Senator Carnahan. No questions at this time. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much, Senator Bond. We appreciate your being with us today. Senator Bond. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee. Chairman Thompson. We will now proceed with Representative Lacy Clay. Welcome to the Governmental Affairs Committee, Congressman; appreciate your being with us today. Please proceed with your testimony. Your written remarks will be entered into the record in their entirety. TESTIMONY OF HON. WILLIAM LACY CLAY,\1\ A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MISSOURI Mr. Clay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Lieberman, and distinguished Members of the Committee. Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to detail the election problems that occurred in the City of St. Louis during the November 2000 Presidential elections, and to add my voice to those calling for meaningful and comprehensive election reform. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Clay appears in the Appendix on page 131. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last November's general election in the City of St. Louis exposed a voting system that is riddled with serious election procedural mistakes, major deficiencies in poll worker training, obsolete and inadequate equipment, and gross errors in maintaining accurate voter rolls that resulted in the disenfranchisement of thousands of qualified voters in my district. These factors led to an election conducted amid widespread voter chaos at polling places throughout the city, the result of a record voter turnout and the arbitrary and capricious removal by the St. Louis Board of Elections, of over 50,000 qualified voters from the city's active voter rolls. When these voters, most of whom were African-American, arrived at the polls to cast their votes, they were told by election officials they were not on the active voter list and that they would not be allowed to vote at their normal voter precinct. Due to inadequate communication between polling precincts and the central election office, election workers were unable to verify the eligibility of these voters. Additionally, poll workers did not receive training for dealing with these situations, so they ultimately directed all of the affected voters to go to the central election board office downtown, to verify their status. The resulting confusion at the central election office led to a near-riot as thousands of eligible voters attempted to cast their vote, some to no avail. To make matters worse, while the election board was clearly unprepared for the massive voter turnout, they were also slow to react to the growing voter confusion they created as the day progressed. Equally troubling was the election board officials' resistance to reasonable remedies designed to ensure that every qualified voter be afforded the opportunity to cast his or her vote without obstruction. Clearly, such a situation cannot and must not be tolerated. Such conditions not only create confusion among voters, they also threaten the integrity of the electoral process itself. It is imperative that Federal, State and local officials join in a common effort to reform how we conduct our elections. The Nation should never again be subjected to the voting travesty of the last Presidential election. The system is broken and it is time that we admit it and work toward common sense solutions. First, we must take legislative action to provide the necessary funds for modern, state-of-the-art, uniform voting equipment, paying particular attention to lower-income communities that have long been burdened with outdated and obsolete voting equipment; and to the maximum extent possible, we must mandate uniform ballot designs and eliminate the current 40-year-old punch card system. We must also require that local election officials develop comprehensive training standards for their workers, and hold them accountable for implementing such training. Last, and most importantly, we must mandate election procedure reform to ensure that qualified voters are not arbitrarily or inadvertently removed from active voter rolls. This was a major failure in the City of St. Louis, and I suspect the situation is widespread across the country. Voters should not continue to suffer disenfranchisement because election officials are unwilling or unable to safeguard their fundamental right to vote. If we fail to act now, we will not only inflict further damage to the democratic process, we will also fail in our sworn duty to protect and defend the fundamental rights of every citizen.Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I will yield for any questions at this time. Chairman Thompson. Thank you, Representative Clay. The 50,000 voters you were talking about, are those voters who showed up at the polls and were determined to be--or later it appears that they were inactive voters, and the people at the polling places only had lists of active voters, they had no lists of inactive voters? Mr. Clay. No. The inactive voter list was compiled illegally by the St. Louis City Board of Election Commissioners. Now, under the Motor Voter Act, there is a method of compiling and purging voters from the rolls. The St. Louis City Board of Election Commissioners, if you go to the Cook report, the former Secretary of State's report, in Exhibit B, it will tell you that the St. Louis City Board of Election Commissioners illegally compiled this voter list, did not follow NVRA, did not follow the Voting Rights Act, and so, therefore, they compiled an arbitrary list and did not distribute it properly to poll workers, to poll judges. So, when they showed up, they had the list for the entire city, and if your name was on that list, you were told that you could participate. Now, the criteria for making the list was that you had not voted in the last 6 years. Mr. Chairman, because you did not participate in an election in the last 6 years does not preclude you from voting. I am sorry. If you register one time in your life, you are qualified to vote. Chairman Thompson. Well, the law, though, provides for a purging after a certain period of time; does it not? Mr. Clay. Yes, it does. Chairman Thompson. Then you are not on the list, and then you cannot---- Mr. Clay. No, then you are actually purged. However, in this case, the city election board did not follow Federal or State statutes to actually purge the voter. They had an arbitrary list that was there to more or less discourage voter participation, but not to actually purge those voters. Chairman Thompson. You actually think those local election officials there in St. Louis were trying to discourage people from voting? Mr. Clay. That was the ultimate use of the list, and what happened on Election Day was that those people sought to exercise their constitutional right to vote, and so they follow the judge's instructions, to go to the central office downtown. They went downtown, insisting of voting, and there was a near- riot downtown, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Thompson. Well, my understanding is that if there is no activity with regard to a voter in a certain number of years, you are put on an inactive list. You are not purged yet, but you are on an inactive list. You can still vote, and that is where the confusion was. They had an active list, but they did not have an inactive list, and some people were turned away that should not have been turned away. Mr. Clay. That is accurate, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Thompson. You heard Senator Bond's testimony of what appears to be massive fraud or attempts at fraud. Do you generally subscribe to the extent of the problem there with regard to that last election? Mr. Clay. I am very disappointed at the mischaracterization of the election process in the City of St. Louis. Having been on the ballot for about 20 elections myself, I was never taught that you had to cheat to win an election. We do not subscribe to that. I agree with everyone in this room that any fraudulent election activity should be prosecuted to its fullest, and so I am disappointed at the characterization of my hometown and its election process. You do not have to cheat to win, and that is one thing I have always been taught and one thing that we have always followed in our politics. You do not need to cheat to win, you just turn out your vote. You get the maximum number of people out to the polls and beat your opponent. That is what elections are all about. That is what the American process of electioneering is all about. So I am really disappointed at the characterization that I have heard here today. Chairman Thompson. You mentioned, and other Members up here today, have mentioned the problem with regard to the equipment, and the heavy implication, anyway, is that it is more than perhaps a coincidence that faulty equipment shows up in some places or better equipment shows up in other places. I was looking at a study conducted by Dr. Steven Knack, University of Maryland, along with Professor Martha Kroft, from the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and I guess the best way to refer to this is Mr. Knack's statement before the Rules Committee, and he said this: That their study showed first that nationally racial differences in punch card use across the country are negligible; 31.9 percent of whites and 31.4 percent of African-Americans live in counties using punch card equipment. First, controlling for county size and other factors that affect the type of equipment in use, it turns out that a higher percentage of African-Americans actually is associated with a significantly lower probability that counties use punch card voting equipment. Second, African-Americans are more likely than whites to live in counties using electronic voting or lever machines, the two types of equipment in which overvoting is impossible if the equipment is programmed correctly. Third, Hispanics are more likely to live in punch card counties than blacks or whites. This disparity is entirely attributable to the use of punch card voting in Los Angeles County. Fourth, based on Presidential voting patterns in 1996, Democratic and Republican voters across the country were equally likely to live in punch card counties. He further says public resources do not seem to matter much. Counties with punch card systems tend to have higher incomes, higher property tax revenues per capita, and larger populations than do counties with more modern voting equipment. In counties using electronic voting systems, the most expensive type, income and tax revenues are actually lower than in counties using punch card or other type of voting technology. Florida fits this pattern. In Florida, it is the largest and richest counties, with the highest property tax revenue, that tend to have punch card equipment. I was wondering if that is an accurate study, that funds might be better spent in modernizing our registration system. Of course, any comments you might have about that, but do you support setting up a centralized, statewide database, for example, in Missouri? Mr. Clay. On the issue of centralized database, sure, I would support that wholeheartedly. The system should be that if you register in one locale, then you should be purged from the other locale. In order to do that, you would need a statewide database. On the issue of punch cards, we know that is the one voting device that gave us the most difficulty in November 2000, nationally. Having voted myself since 1974, since I was 18 years old, never missed an election, always voted in the City of St. Louis, I have never voted on any type of machine but a punch card machine. So electronic voting, maybe we need to find a uniform system of voting, and maybe it is electronic, because it seems to me that the punch card gives us the most difficulty. It allows for more confusion with the butterfly ballot. So, therefore, I would look for a uniform system of voting nationally. Chairman Thompson. Thank you. Senator Lieberman. Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I was interested in that study you read, and I would actually like to take a look at it, but I do remember that part from where the different voting machines were; that there was a study awhile ago, within the last 3 or 4 weeks, in USA Today, that said that African-Americans in this country had a four times greater rate of uncounted votes cast than other voters. That ought to be a focus of our inquiry here. Obviously, some of it was the voting machines or processes. Some must have been other factors, but that was a stunning number to me when I read it. I appreciate your testimony, Congressman Clay. I am curious as to--there was reference earlier to the March election in St. Louis--whether you saw improvements in that election from last November? Mr. Clay. There were improvements from November because there was so much attention to the process. We were able to press the election board to suspend the use of the inactive voter list. I petitioned U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft to send in Federal observers for the March election, so that they could determine whether the use of the inactive voter list was a direct violation of the Voting Rights Act. You know, when we talk about disenfranchisement and enfranchisement of voters, I always think back to how many people in this country's history have lost their lives fighting for the right to vote. I think about three freedom riders in Philadelphia, and Mississippi back in 1963, who lost their lives fighting for the rights of others to vote. I think about those four little girls in that Alabama church, whose murderer has just been brought to justice this week, and how that whole struggle, the civil rights struggle, was about ensuring the voting rights of all Americans. So I would ask the Committee to proceed with caution about infringing on the voting rights of any American, and the Voting Rights Act has worked pretty well for us, for the last 36 years, and I would hate to see us diminish that in any way, Senator. Senator Lieberman. Let me ask you a few more questions briefly; one is to get your reaction to the idea of provisional voting, which I may not have described quite accurately or clearly when I asked Senator Bond about it, but this is the idea that is available in some States, where if you come to the polls, you believe you are registered, but for some reason your right to vote is questioned; they allow you to cast a provisional vote, in which you affirm that you are who you say you are, and you are eligible to vote, and then you go ahead and vote, but your votes are separated until the registrar can investigate after the election and only count it after that investigation is today. What would you think about that as a way to resolve some of the problems that voters had in St. Louis on Election Day last year? Mr. Clay. That would have been a great solution for St. Louis City and probably other locales throughout the country. When a voter's eligibility comes into question, that may be the way to go, Senator, to hold that vote in abeyance until you can clarify, sometime in the near future, whether that voter is qualified or not to cast that ballot. That may be the proper approach. I like that suggestion. Senator Lieberman. I appreciated what you said earlier about your disappointment with the way the voting system was described in St. Louis; and from your own experience, you were not raised or involved in St. Louis politics to conclude that you had to cheat to get elected. You are still obviously very young, but you have been in it awhile. Based on your own experience, how do you balance what we are dealing with here, which is the clear desire that we all share not to have fraudulent voting, but then setting that against the other clear desire, which is at the heart of our democracy, as you have just eloquently spoken to it, of the right of every American to vote. So how do we put those two together? Mr. Clay. Sure. The way you balance it is you have zero tolerance for voting fraud or any type of fraudulent activity surrounding voting, zero tolerance for that, but you ensure that all Americans have the proper access to voting. You do not set up or allow the establishment of arbitrary and capricious impediments and obstacles to people voting, and that is what caught my ire on Election Day. What Senator Bond failed to mention also was that I was a plaintiff in that suit, and I was not disenfranchised, but I do not have to be disenfranchised, because I witnessed thousands of St. Louisans being disenfranchised. It is my right, my constitutional right, to go for judicial redress, which I did, and we prevailed at the circuit court level. He talked about how polls were left open and radio messages. Well, I got a call at 8:30 p.m. that night, after the St. Louis polls were forced to close, and it was from Springfield, Missouri, which is predominantly a Republican area, and a friend of mine told me that they are still voting down here in Springfield. So it was quite a dramatic Election Day in Missouri, and there were problems throughout the State. Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Congressman. Thanks for taking the time and thanks for the substance of your testimony. Chairman Thompson. Thank you. Senator Bennett. Senator Bennett. Congressman, I am tempted to get into the details of the lawsuit, but I think maybe we better not. I am not sure that it would be productive. I do listen to Senator Lieberman, saying there were only 100 votes cast after 8 p.m., which suggests to me that the lawsuit saying that there are huge lines and thousands of people being disenfranchised does not add up, because if there were thousands of people, there would have been thousands of votes cast. But let's get to the heart of what you are saying. You have given us a stinging indictment of the St. Louis voter election board. What do you think their motive was? Mr. Clay. I do not even care to speculate about motive. What I do know today is that yesterday, our newly-elected Governor Holden replaced the entire election board. He put on what I think are four fine people, two Republicans, two Democrats. So he has asked them to go in and fully reform their procedures at that board, and I welcome that change. As far as motive of the previous board, you have a board set up that is appointed by the Governor. Senator Bennett. So the previous board was appointed by the Governor. Mr. Clay. Yes, two Republicans, two Democrats. The staff is split evenly, 28 Republicans, 28 Democrats. You have two directors of elections, one Democrat, one Republican. So it is supposed to operate in a nonpartisan fashion, and, I guess, ideally that is the way it is supposed to function. In practicality, it does not. Senator Bennett. Yes. OK. You gave us, as I say, a stinging indictment of what they did in the 2000 election, and I want to go to the heart of that. Is it sheer incompetence on their part? Was there a deliberate attempt to disenfranchise African- American voters, on their part? If so, was there some point along the way when someone could have seen that they were going in that direction? You have listed all of their sins, but we need to go behind that and say did the previous governor, deliberately appoint people who would try to disenfranchise African-Americans? Was there a conspiracy here? Was it just sheer stupidity? Was it lack of devotion to duty? They were all out playing golf when they should have been purging lists? Why did we have what you have described? Mr. Clay. It was partly what you described. Part of it was sheer stupidity. Part of it was gross incompetence. Part of it may have been by design---- Senator Bennett. OK. Let---- Mr. Clay. Wait. Let me finish. Senator Bennett. Sure. Mr. Clay. What I base my statements on were my past experiences with that board. Having gone through 10 other elections with them, I knew the system. I knew how they set up these impediments and obstructions, so I knew what was coming. Having seen how they operated in the 1996 Presidential election, I knew what the problems were. As a matter of fact, we even sent about 100 workers down to vote about a week before Election Day, so that they would not have to vote on Election Day, and they encountered problems voting. So we knew what was coming on Election Day, because several of those workers were on the inactive voter lists and they had to jump through all of these hoops in order to vote. We pressed the issue and ensured that they were eventually able to vote, but we had a week's headstart, and so we knew what was coming on Election Day. Senator Bennett. Well, let's go back to your statement that some of it was by design. Incompetence, ignorance, and so on, yes, a new broom sweeps clean and you get people who will be dedicated to their duty. It is a fairly serious charge to say that some of it is by design. We want to know who. Again, I go back to the question of motive. Was there a deliberate design to see to it that African-Americans were disenfranchised in St. Louis, and if so, whose design was behind that deliberate decision? Mr. Clay. Senator, I could not prove that here in this room, but what I can tell you is that with the board being evenly divided, you have to look at the personalities and the players. On one side, you have a Republican director of elections who actually was running the show in a Democratic city. On the other side, you have a very ill-of-health Democratic director of elections who was very rarely at work on a regular basis. You had an assistant director that was well- connected to two other elected officials. So you have to look at the personalities. You have to look at the players in this, and then you draw your own conclusion. I cannot sit here and tell you I have evidence to suggest that this was by design, and then that this was a scheme to disenfranchise African-Americans. No, I cannot tell you that, Senator. Senator Bennett. One last question: Assuming that the new board is going to be diligent in its duties, and you are going to clean all of this up and do it right, would you object to photo ID? Mr. Clay. Would I object to photo ID? I would not make that the single requirement of voting, because what you have to understand in economically-disadvantaged communities, some people do not have photo ID. What is required by State law now are copies of utility bills--mostly any type of ID, because when most of our statutes were written, at the time, it did not necessarily require photos on the IDs; so maybe a combination of both. Senator Bennett. In many States--I do not know if this is true in Missouri--recognizing that many people do not, for a variety of reasons, have driver's licenses, the DMV does issue identification cards that can provide photo ID for those who do not have a driver's license, and thus make it uniformly available. I am a little nervous about utility bills. The dog may have been able to get its name on a utility bill and come in, and a photo ID would see to it that dogs do not vote. So I would just suggest that maybe you talk to the folks in Missouri about making photo ID available to everybody. As I say, we do have Federal statutes saying you have to show photo ID to buy cigarettes, and there are a lot of folks in the disadvantaged communities who buy cigarettes and who find some way to deal with that challenge. Thank you very much for your testimony. Mr. Clay. Thank you for your suggestion. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much, Congressman, for being with us. Mr. Clay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the opportunity. Chairman Thompson. We will proceed to our next panel. The witnesses are Dr. Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins, President of the League of Women Voters; Ralph Neas, President of People for the American Way and People for the American Way Foundation; Deborah Phillips, Chairman of the Voting Integrity Project; and Dr. Larry Sabato, Director of the Center for Governmental Studies at the University of Virginia. Thank you very much for being with us. Dr. Jefferson-Jenkins, please proceed with your testimony. Your written remarks will be entered into the record in their entirety. TESTIMONY OF CAROLYN JEFFERSON-JENKINS, Ph.D.,\1\ PRESIDENT, LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS OF THE UNITED STATES Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Senator Lieberman and Members of the Committee. I am Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins, President of the League of Women Voters of the United States. As we all know, last year's Presidential election called the Nation's attention to the urgent need for improvements in the methods, practices, and technology through which our elections are administered. Voter registration is a particularly important part of this process. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins with an attachment appears in the Appendix on page 137. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Voter registration is the gateway to participation in our electoral system, and the procedural means for preserving a citizen's right to vote. For all citizens, the voter registration process must be accessible and non-discriminatory. It has not always been so, and problems remain. Until the enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and the National Voter Registration Act in 1993, bureaucratic obstacles to voter registration were commonplace. Literacy tests, poll taxes, selectively-applied identification requirements, threats, intimidation and violence successfully disenfranchised African- Americans and others through most of the 20th Century. From the 1970's to the 1980's, restrictive registration practices ranged from requiring notarization of voter registration applications and significantly limiting the times and places for registration to selectively purging voters' names from the rolls and dropping voters from their rolls for failing to vote in one election. The need for voter registration reform was debated for 5 years in Congress. In 1993, the National Voter Registration Act, or Motor Voter law, was enacted, establishing uniform, non-discriminatory standards for voter registration. Motor Voter took effect in most States in 1995. The law provides for convenient and routine access to registration through driver's license agencies, public assistance agencies, and agencies that serve people with disabilities, and through mail-in registration. It requires States to keep their lists up-to-date, but it prohibits dropping voters' names from the rolls simply for not voting. The act establishes uniform, non- discriminatory standards for voter confirmation programs. With safeguards against discrimination, voters may be dropped from the rolls by reason of death, change of residence and a failure to meet voting qualifications under State law. To ensure that registered voters retain the right to vote in Federal elections, the Motor Voter law provides a failsafe provision. Registered voters who have moved within their registrar's jurisdiction and congressional district, but who have not updated their registration, may do so and vote at the new or the old polling place on Election Day, and they can do that through affirmation or confirmation. The National Voter Registration Act has been very successful. According to the Federal Election Commission, nearly 43 percent of all voter registration transactions from 1997 and 1998 were through driver's license agencies; 44 percent of these were changes of name or address. Mail-in registration programs accounted for nearly one-quarter of all voter registration transactions during that period. The problems with the National Voter Registration Act that we have heard about are not problems with the law, but problems with the implementation and the enforcement of the law. Statewide computerized voter registration programs in every State would significantly improve the management of voter registration lists and help identify and eliminate duplicate registrations and other problem areas. A Member of this Committee, Senator Cleland, who is not here this morning, was then-Secretary of State in Georgia, and in a statement for a 1995 House Oversight Committee hearing, he wrote, ``Under our National Voter Registration Act implementation plan, we have produced an improved fraud prevention and detection program for Georgia. With the advent of a statewide voter registration program, Georgia has been able to put in place mechanisms to monitor many areas where fraud could be possible.'' Unfortunately, according to a 1999 survey, only 22 States reported having a centralized State registration list. Even fewer have the type of active program described by then- Secretary of State Cleland. Contrary to the unsubstantiated claims of the law's opponents, Motor Voter does not cause vote fraud, nor is it to blame for the ills and difficulties of election administration. Indeed, statewide computerized list maintenance systems can assist in preventing vote fraud if implemented properly. Other Motor Voter implementation issues include reports of Motor Voter registrants and fail-safe voters turned away on Election Day because they are not on the list provided at the polls. The inability of polling place officials in many locations to check the status of the voters on the official list must be addressed. Solutions such as the low-tech use of provisional ballots and the high-tech use of laptop computers that provide access to the official lists at polling places need to be encouraged. With regard to enforcement, the repeated failure of some driver's license agencies to transmit voter registration applications in a timely manner must be investigated and corrected. The Federal Government can no longer afford to leave the financial burden of administering Federal elections to State and local jurisdictions. In most States, local jurisdictions alone bear this burden. The disparity in wealth and public revenues from county to county are bound to be reflected in a disparity of resources available for election administration procedures and voting technologies from one county to the next. This is not only a question of equity among levels of government, but of the necessity for ensuring that all of our citizens are able to register, vote and have their votes counted in Federal elections with a minimum of administrative error. The League of Women Voters supports S. 379, a balanced, bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Schumer and Brownback. The Schumer-Brownback legislation provides the needed Federal funding, as well as guidance for its use. Today, this country has the technology and the financial means to ensure that our diverse and growing population enjoys the most accurate, accessible, and non-discriminatory voting system in the world, one that every American could have confidence in and be proud of. This Congress has the means and the opportunity to pass legislation that would provide the financial assistance and guidance necessary to achieve that goal. On behalf of the League of Women Voters, I want to thank you for your attention, and with your permission, I would like to submit for the record former Secretary of State Cleland's 1995 statement and the executive summary of the FEC's 1999 report on the impact of the Motor Voter law.\1\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The information submitted by Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins (includes the executive summary of the FEC's 1999 report on the impact of the Motor Voter law and former Secretary of State Cleland's 1995 statement) appears in the Appendix on pages 146 and 149 respectively. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chairman Thompson. Without objection. Thank you very much. Mr. Neas. TESTIMONY OF RALPH G. NEAS,\2\ PRESIDENT, PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY AND PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY FOUNDATION Mr. Neas. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee. My name is Ralph G. Neas, President of People For the American Way and People For the American Way Foundation, citizens organizations with 500,000 members and supporters dedicated to protecting constitutional and civil rights, improving public education and promoting civic participation. I very much appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today and commend you for taking the initiative in having this hearing. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \2\ The prepared statement of Mr. Neas appears in the Appendix on page 152. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Restrictive voter registration laws and practices were introduced in our country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in order to keep certain groups of citizens, particularly new immigrants, African-Americans and other minorities, from exercising their right to vote. Court decisions and enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, perhaps the most effective and most important law ever passed, eliminated some of the obvious barriers to voter registration. I am proud to say that I had a chance to be chief counsel to Senator Edward W. Brooke, who played a lead role as a State attorney general, and then as a U.S. Senator, with the Voting Rights Act. But a complex maze of local laws and practices continue to make it difficult for many citizens to exercise their right to vote. The historic and effective National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), properly known as Motor Voter, took a major step in the right direction. Implementation of the law was slow in some areas, because some States refused or delayed carrying it out. This led to successful legal action by the Department of Justice, People For the American Way Foundation, and many others, to defend the law. Despite the slow start in some areas, however, Motor Voter has been enormously successful. Project Vote recently estimated the law has led to more than 70 million new voter registrations, and has been implemented, as the Congress intended, in a way that has continued to protect the integrity of the electoral process. The NVRA, which includes criminal penalties for voter fraud, specifically requires States to conduct a uniform and non-discriminatory program for removing ineligible voters from the voter rolls. The FEC reported to Congress that over 9 million names were deleted from voter registration lists during the 1997-1998 cycle, and that over 14 million other names were subject to removal after 2000 if they failed to respond to notices or to vote in that election. The FEC's report is based on surveys from the 43 States which are subject to the law and the District of Columbia. While the report contains important recommendations from the States for improving implementation of voter registration list maintenance, what it does not contain is evidence of a problem with voter fraud. Unfortunately, if the 2000 elections proved anything, it is that we have the opposite problem. In States like Florida, registered voters were improperly purged from voter rolls and disenfranchised from participating in our democratic process. I believe strongly that the Motor Voter procedures and requirements of other Federal civil rights laws were violated. Having spent a lot of time in Florida in November, and having participated with Kweisi Mfume of the NAACP in a 5-hour hearing, I must tell you, I said to Mr. Mfume that what I was hearing reminded me so much of what I had experienced while chief counsel to Senator Edward W. Brooke during the hearings on the Voting Rights Act. Thousands of citizens were incorrectly identified as felons in Florida; countless others who had been placed on an inactive status were wrongly denied the opportunity to vote when they showed up at the polls and found their names missing from the rolls; and others were denied the opportunity to vote because of unnecessary voter identification requirements, including being required to present photo identification, even though State law provided alternative identification procedures. The media has reported, and groups like the NAACP have documented, similar problems in other States. I have listed a number of the States, and they are in my written statement, Mr. Chairman. For purposes of time, I think I will skip them in my oral presentation. As requested, I focused on problems with registration, but I must note that, in a number of States, voters also encountered intimidation, disinformation and other tactics designed to keep people away from the polls. And, outdated, inaccurate and broken voting machines inexcusably prevented tens of thousands of people nationwide from casting a vote that counted. Our Nation has made a lot of progress with respect to voter registration and participation, but events in November clearly indicate that we still have a long way to go. Here are some recommendations: First, maintaining and enforcing our existing laws, like the National Voter Registration Act and the Voting Rights Act, is absolutely critical. The idea of erecting new or old barriers to voting in this situation is certainly unfathomable. We, as a country, simply cannot move backwards to the days of discouraging participation by all citizens. The 2000 elections proved there is so much that urgently needs to be done to move forward, to ensure uniform, non-discriminatory, accurate and effective implementation of list maintenance procedures. Congress can play a crucial role in that effort by holding hearings like this one, resisting misguided efforts to weaken our laws, and assisting States and localities in complying with these laws. In particular, some of the problems experienced in Florida and elsewhere could have been avoided with better- trained-and-equipped election officials, voter registrars, and workers. People for the American Way therefore supports the Dodd-Conyers and Schumer-Brownback bills. Officials should prevent and remedy the wrongful purging of voters and ensure, as the National Voter Registration Act does, that all purging procedures are uniform and non-discriminatory. Lists of inactive voters should be maintained at polling places and be just as accessible to poll workers as active lists. Voters should be affirmatively notified of their rights at polling places by posted notice or otherwise, including the rights to assistance, to correct their ballots if they believe they have made an error, and to cast a challenge ballot if there is a dispute as to the registration. Election officials should ensure that no registered voter is turned away because of list maintenance problems. Procedures should be developed to eliminate unfair delays in processing voter registration applications, so that everyone who fills out registration forms on time should vote in the next election. Some have suggested that despite the problems experienced in the last election, there is no real interest among legislators in pursuing election reform. We fervently hope that this is not the case, and I am heartened, Senator, Mr. Chairman, by your comments at the beginning of the hearing, and by a number of the other Senators during this hearing, because this hearing is certainly an important demonstration to the contrary to what many have been saying. We urge the Congress, in a bipartisan fashion, to follow up this hearing with action to help guarantee all Americans the right to cast a vote that truly counts in all Federal elections. Just one point: We certainly would add to this, Senator Lieberman, support for same-day registration. I think it has worked wonderfully well in Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, Idaho, and Wisconsin. There, of course, is no registration in North Dakota. There are plenty of splendid examples that we could use here in Congress to document, the need for the kind of legislation that you have proposed and supported. Thank you very much, everyone. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Ms. Phillips. TESTIMONY OF DEBORAH M. PHILLIPS,\1\ CHAIRMAN, THE VOTING INTEGRITY PROJECT Ms. Phillips. Thank you. I am grateful for the opportunity to appear before you today, to talk about an important subject, guaranteeing and protecting the voting franchise of qualified American citizens. The Voting Integrity Project is a national, nonpartisan voting rights organization. Our right to vote is the glue that keeps our government together. I am here today to talk about the network of laws that are intended to ensure ease of registration and access, but have serious, unintended, and sometimes ironic consequences. I will also offer solutions. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Phillips with attachments appears in the Appendix on page 157. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The National Voter Registration Act has produced an alarming level of deadwood and fictitious names on America's voter rolls. Such cases are now widely documented in State after State, and catalogued by me in previous testimony before the Senate and House. Such names create a source pool and invitation for fraudulent voting. Since a stolen vote dilutes the strength of a legitimate voter's ballot, vote fraud is a voter rights issue. But in election 2000, a new problem emerged. The largest category of voter complaints received by the Voting Integrity Project related to the direct disenfranchisement of qualified voters who, for a variety of reasons, were not on the voter rolls. Many who had registered by mail or through third parties never made it on. Some were removed incorrectly because of faulty data matches and lack of due diligence by election officials prior to purging names. This, too, is a serious voting rights issue. NVRA, or Motor Voter, as it has become known, extended the registration process beyond the control of the local office of elections. Today, virtually anyone or anything can register to vote through the mails without having to show any proof of qualification, identity or residence. The verification process does not even begin until a name is placed on the voter rolls. The current list maintenance procedures are expensive and labor-intensive. NVRA represents a vast, unfunded Federal mandate on the States. To understand the process and appreciate how cumbersome and vulnerable it is, you need look no further than the charts attached to my testimony, taken from the handbook of the Federal Elections Commission's Office of Election Administration. The first illustrates the catchment of voter registrations that includes the Department of Motor Vehicles and other government agencies, the availability of a universal mail-in application via the Internet, and third-party, sometimes paid, collectors of registration. NVRA prohibits removing names solely for failure to vote or change of address within a jurisdiction. As you can see in the second chart, the process for verification and list maintenance is cumbersome and uncertain. NVRA recommends use of the U.S. Postal Service national change of address list to identify invalid registration, yet that will only verify on the basis of residence. It does not reach to identity, citizenship or other qualifications. For that, an election office must obtain death notices, criminal conviction notices, mental incapacity notices, Social Security records, and citizenship records. Such records may not be available and can be problematic, since they may be kept by widely varying formats and schedules. NVRA does permit, but does not mandate, two possible security mechanisms. The first is that States may require voters who have registered via the mail-in process to vote the first time in person. However, because of failsafe procedures, such ID requirements can be easily thwarted. The second available security check is the acknowledgment notice sent out by the election office which, if returned as undeliverable, can trigger a confirmation procedure. However, the first notice, under NVRA, must be forwardable. Invalid registrations may easily go undetected. NVRA requires only that States make a reasonable effort to identify and remove such names. It does not specify procedures for doing so. In many cases, such names are flagged as inactive, but under NVRA rules, remain on the voter rolls for two Federal elections before removal, and if such name is voted in that period, it is reactivated. Even though NVRA requires such removals to occur at least 90 days before a Federal election, most State registrations do not close until 30 days before elections, creating a 60-day window within which new registrations can be lodged, and leaving little time for due diligence. Many States do not have centralized voter registration. Registration is maintained on a local basis. Even those States that do maintain some form of statewide voter roll may not perform routine matching procedures among component jurisdictions. Certainly, there is no mechanism to match records of one State against another. Many voters assume that when they move, their old registration is canceled. This may not be the case even within a State, and certainly not across State borders. Thus, we believe there is an undocumented prevalence of voters who are registered in multiple jurisdictions and multiple States. With the increasing use of absentee ballots, such names can easily be voted. Last, it is important to understand that the cost of current list maintenance procedures is beyond many local budgets. Confirmation mailings must be forwardable under the rules of NVRA, thus they will not automatically yield information for list maintenance purposes. NCOA list matches must be performed through a limited number of commercial vendors, with minimum charges that become very expensive when there is a relatively small volume of records, such as a rural county. The alternative is to perform additional first-class mailings with return address requested. Given the level of mobility of today's society, local and State voter rolls are subject to an unprecedented level of churn. That is why these records are building up to the point where, in many States, registered voters far outnumber voting age populations. For those determined to use invalid registrations for fraudulent voting, it is not at all difficult to identify such names. Sometimes it is as simple as requesting the inactive voters list. Although documented and fully-prosecuted cases of vote fraud are still unusual, that probably has more to do with the fact that only when margins are very close is the issue even raised, and candidate election contests alleging fraud usually do not have sufficient time or resources to build an evidentiary record sufficient for success. Prosecutors do not like election fraud cases because they take precious resources from strained budgets needed for more serious crimes. So what is the solution? VIP believes that it may be time to consider creating a lifetime voter registration with stringent verification procedures. But under the current system, this is not possible. However, if all 50 States adopted central computerized voter registration systems with uniform record-keeping formats, it would be possible to create a onetime registration that would follow the voter through life, regardless of where they live. In such a system, once registered, you would remain registered for life. Registrations could be suspended for a period of time or permanently, but would remain within the database. Even death would not remove the record necessarily, only deactivate it so that no one else could use that name for registration purposes. Such a system would eliminate problems of deadwood, duplicate and fraudulent registrations, and would create a framework for instant verification at the polling place via secure online networks, thus guaranteeing franchise. Utilizing such secure data networks would make it possible for a voter to go to any official polling place and pull down the local ballot and vote. The technology for such a system is available, and I believe this can be done without creating another layer of intrusion into privacy or lead to government abuse. The process of building such a system can begin now with your leadership. Thank you. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Dr. Sabato. TESTIMONY OF LARRY J. SABATO, Ph.D., \1\ DIRECTOR, THE CENTER FOR GOVERNMENTAL STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA Mr. Sabato. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for having me here today. I head up the Center for Governmental Studies at the University of Virginia. We have been conducting a national symposium series since the November election, and I want to say, even though my remarks are focused on voter fraud, my center is producing a report with the help of a number of former Presidential candidates, from Michael Dukakis on the left to Steve Forbes on the right, and Eugene McCarthy, God only knows where, and others who are election experts, suggestions that will strengthen the system and do something about some the problems that Senator Lieberman experienced in November and was discussing earlier, and I absolutely support that, as well. We ought to be able to do that, as well. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Sabato appears in the Appendix on page 162. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- But I guess I disagree with a couple of the other panelists, in that I do believe, having researched voter fraud many years, that it is real. It exists. You can always argue about the extent to which it exists, but it is real. As far as Motor Voter goes, I support many of the provisions of the law. I do not go as far as Deborah does, although I would have to note, if it has been so successful, why has voter turnout declined from 55.2 percent, Presidential election of 1992-- Motor Voter passed in 1993--to approximately 50 percent in both 1996 and 2000. I guess you could argue that it would be even worse were Motor Voter not there, but, that is thin gruel, with a 50- percent turnout. Anyway, that is another subject. I would like to start out by discussing fraud and corruption, which has always intrigued me and which I have written a great deal about, on the sleazy side of life. Fraud and corruption did not start with the 2000 Presidential election. The evidence of corruption spans the entire history of our Republic. In fact, listening to Senator Bond this morning, I pulled out a book that I wrote with Glenn Simpson of the Wall Street Journal, called ``Dirty Little Secrets,'' which has a long chapter about voter fraud, another one about street money, which is probably an even greater scam than voter fraud in American politics. But this was the 1844 election in New York City, and they had at the time a voter registered pool of 41,000. The turnout on that Election Day was 55,000, or 135 percent more than they had registered. One observer at the time said: ``The dead filled in for the sick, and the city's dogs and cats must have been imbued with irresistible civic spirit.'' So the more things change, the more they remain the same in democracies all around the world, and certainly our own, as well. As I am looking at voter fraud and the registration system and the voting process in the United States, it seems that we have to balance two conflicting values, two equally worthy objectives. First, the goal of full and informed participation in the electorate, and you cannot have full participation unless it is informed; and as you all know because you run for office, the level of civic education in this country is abysmal. The second value and goal is the integrity of the system. Now, everybody is in favor of both, full and informed participation and integrity. But to the extent that we keep expanding the participation rate and making it easier and easier for people to register and vote, we almost certainly increase the chances for voter fraud unless we are very, very careful. So in a sense, unfortunately, as is often true in life, these two great goals represent a trade-off. To move completely in the direction of one value as opposed to the other is foolhardy. We have to achieve a balance between these two important democratic values; and currently, I would argue we do not have a very good balance. As election 2000 demonstrated, the problems are numerous. Some are suggesting, as my friend Ralph does, that there is not any real evidence of voter fraud. But I would point to a study by the Miami Herald. They documented, for example, the votes of a 90-year-old woman and a 21-year-old man last November among 2,000 illegal ballots cast by Florida residents in 25 of Florida's 67 counties. They did not review all 67 counties, just 25 of them. Those residents swore they were eligible to vote, but, in fact, they were not. Some of them were not. Now, some of them were not lying. Some of them simply got confused. They thought they were eligible and they were not. Of course, as Senator Lieberman knows better than anybody, it was a Presidential race decided by 537 ballots in Florida, and this is 2,000 illegal ballots in just 25 of Florida's 67 counties. These voters cast ballots even though their names were not on the precinct voter registration list, because all they had to do was to sign an affirmation swearing they were eligible to vote. Even though they were supposed to, the poll workers never checked to see if these 2,000 people were actually registered, in part because they were overwhelmed by the turnout. In addition to these 2,000, there were about 1,200 instances estimated of convicted Florida felons who had been legally stripped of their right to vote, but nevertheless managed to stay on the voting rolls and cast a ballot in the last election. There is also some indication of at least a few people in Florida who maintained two residencies, cast ballots in two different States, one by absentee and the other in person. Similarly, in Wisconsin, which was another very closely contested State last November in the Presidential race, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper found that at least 361 felons voted illegally last November 7, breaking the State law that disqualifies felons from voting until they are off probation and parole. Of course, it does not stop with Florida and Wisconsin, either in 2000 or in earlier years. As I have documented in this book, in our voter fraud study, we have seen extensive absentee ballot fraud in Alabama, hundreds of phony registrations in California, nearly 1,000 illegal votes in New Jersey, including some by people who were unregistered and others who were dead. I prefer to call them life-challenged voters. By the way, one political consultant who has been used by a number of members of the Senate, very well-known, defended this in an off-the-record conversation with me, explaining that many of these people had missed a number of elections in their lifetimes and they were simply making up for the elections that they missed. I suppose that is one argument. Significant absentee ballot fraud in Philadelphia; votes stolen from the elderly and the infirm in Texas, and the list goes on and on. My strong suspicion, based on scores of investigations and also unexplored tips from political observers and interviewees over the years, is that some degree of voter fraud can be found almost everywhere, although some States have cleaner traditions than others, like Oregon, for example, but serious outbreaks can and do occur in every region of the country. Whether fraud is Democratic or Republican, or located in the North or South or East or the West, the effect on American democracy is similar. While electoral hanky-panky may affect the outcome in only a small proportion of elections, mainly in very tight races, one fraudulent ballot is one too many for the integrity of the system and the confidence that people have in the system in this very cynical age. I teach young people in the classroom every day. They are incredibly cynical about the system. They believe, I think incorrectly, that the system is bought and paid for; that most elections are stolen. That is wrong, but we encourage that belief when we allow practices such as vote fraud to continue. No system is foolproof. I think at the very least we could all agree, I hope, that a photo identification card of any sort should be produced by each voter at the polls, and I agree with Senator Lieberman that an affirmation statement is a good alternative if no photo card exists. Enough information has to be given on the affirmation statement so that the registrar can check, obviously. I think voters should be asked at the time of registration to give a number unique to them, whether it is a Social Security number or driver's license number, that can be prerecorded on the voter list provided to each precinct's workers. Every voter should also have to sign his name on the voting rolls at the polls, so that the signature, at least in close elections, could be compared to the one on the registration form to see if they match up. By the way, the computer technology already exists for instantaneous scrolling, which some DMVs use, side-by-side, comparing the poll signature to the registration signature. Also, all potential voters ought to be advised at the polls, whether orally by an election official or by means of a printed statement, of the eligibility requirements for voting and the penalties for fraudulent voting. A similar warning should be prominently featured on all absentee and early voting mail-in ballots. These four overlapping safeguards are not too burdensome for voters and poll workers, but they would go a long way toward discouraging fraud at many precinct stations on Election Day. One other suggestion: No early-voting, mail-in and absentee ballots should ever be separated from their cover sheet or counted until the voter signature has been carefully checked against the registration file signatures. Finally, Mr. Chairman, let me say that if these regulations--even if they are adopted universally and followed to the letter, they will be insufficient if registrars and election offices are not staffed and funded adequately, and that would be a wonderful use for Federal money, if you are going to provide some kind of incentive to the States to improve their voting systems. Also, the statutes have to punish fraud severely. Major felonies are required, not minor misdemeanors. Law-enforcement authorities, as Deborah suggested, do not make voter fraud a priority and they do not press for substantial legal penalties in most cases against those found violating the fraud statutes, and they ought to. Finally, the news media have a role here, too. They ought to begin to look for evidence of voter fraud, a probable prerequisite to their finding voter fraud. A good first step would be for every news organization to establish and publicize a campaign corruption hotline. So, one imperative unites all these cases, in my view. While registration and voting should be as easy as possible, the process should also be as fraudproof as possible. We have to maximize the full and informed participation of the electorate, while preserving the integrity of the system. One can generally observe that our zealous focus on the full, but not necessarily informed, participation of the electorate, may, in fact, challenge the integrity of the democratic process. Increased informed participation must be our goal. For this reason, my Center for Governmental Studies at the University of Virginia has launched the Youth Leadership Initiative. This program has helped thousands of schools and over 70,000 young people throughout America to improve their civic education. It shows middle- and high-school students across America the value of informed participation. Many of you on this Committee and in the Senate have supported us through Federal funding in the past. We appreciate it deeply and we encourage you to continue your support for the Youth Leadership Initiative and other programs like it, that drive young people into the political process and encourage them to look positively at that process. Finally, I believe strongly that a focus on civic education must be a part of any serious effort to combat voter fraud and to revive confidence in our democracy. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Senator Lieberman. Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Neas, let me take you back to your chief counsel days, and ask you to just set the legal context. One of the things that has interested me as I have gone into the documents in preparing for these hearings, and it may be of surprise to most Americans, perhaps even a lot of members of Congress, is that in the exercise of the franchise which has been administered and, in so many ways, defined by State law and local administration, there is nonetheless, both through constitutional amendment, through statute, most notably, and recently the two that we have been referring to, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and then the National Voter Registration Act, Motor Voter, in 1993, there is quite a body of precedent here, is there not for the Congress, for the Federal Government, to set the ground rules for voting throughout our country? Mr. Neas. Absolutely, Senator. I did not know it while I was working with Senator Brooke from 1973 to 1979, but when Senator Brooke was the State Attorney General of Massachusetts in 1965-66, just before he became a Senator, he helped coordinate the State attorneys general all over the country to file an amicus in the Katzenbach case, which, of course, is the case that upheld the validity of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It has been some time since I taught this at Georgetown and the University of Chicago law school, but my recollection is that the Supreme Court stated in language somewhat like this that it was such an extraordinary national problem, that it required an extraordinary remedy, both with respect to Section 2 and Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. I believe Pam Karlan, a Stanford University law professor, has put together, perhaps for the Committee or individual Members of the Committee, an outstanding preliminary legal brief on behalf of the constitutionality of these kinds of efforts and perhaps some legislation that people are looking at right now. Given what I knew as a law student and as a law professor, during my days with Senator Brooke, during the 1975 Voting Rights Act extension, and then coordinating the national effort as executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights on behalf of the 1982 Voting Rights Act extension, and, of course, last year in Florida, I never cease to be amazed that while we have made so much progress in this country, extraordinary discrimination existed and unfortunately still exists. It is not always, of course, purposeful discrimination. I think this is a very important point. The whole battle in 1982 was to make sure that we had an effect standard as well as an intent standard, because so much of what happens really is a consequence of actions that are not necessarily intended to be discriminatory. But I am glad you asked that question, because as I think I said during my testimony, the Voting Rights Act was the most important and effective law ever passed, in my judgment, and was an extraordinary situation that demanded that an extraordinary remedy. Senator Lieberman. Thanks. Let's just talk briefly about a few examples. Am I right that the Voting Registration Act now actually created some ground rules for when voter's names can or cannot be purged from lists, locally? Mr. Neas. I believe that is true, but I might defer to my colleagues. Senator Lieberman. Was that not your testimony, Dr. Jefferson-Jenkins? Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins. There is some legislation, and at this moment, Senator, I cannot put my hands on it, but we will get back to you. Senator Lieberman. That is OK. I actually believe it is law. Let me ask, in terms of this sort of tension between two goals that we share, I presume in listening--actually, as you sit before me, this seems to be a little more attending along the spectrum, Ms. Phillips and Dr. Sabato, toward concern about fraud. Dr. Jefferson-Jenkins and Mr. Neas seem to be more concerned about disenfranchisement. I do not mean that either of you, any of you, is not concerned about the other. How would you draw the line, Dr. Jefferson-Jenkins? In other words, which is the larger concern and where along this spectrum would you draw the line, and put it another way, can we have both? Can we have both a high-integrity voting system and one that does not create barriers to either registration or participation? Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins. Senator, I would agree that my colleagues and I are all talking about integrity of the process; and for the League of Women Voters, where we draw the line is voter fraud is an organized effort to steal an election. What we are talking about today and what we are finding as our 50 State Leagues are investigating what is going on, is that we are talking about implementation and administration flaws, not organized efforts to steal an election. One of the reasons why we are in such strong support of statewide computerized lists, and in support of Schumer- Brownback is that individuals who have the right to vote and are eligible to vote should be able to vote, and it should not be a function of local and State laws that discriminate against them and compromise the integrity of both of the voting rights acts that have been mentioned here today. So if you look at fraud from that perspective, what we are seeing is implementation and administrative issues, but we also believe that if there is fraud, it should be prosecuted, and there are safeguards to do that. There are checks and balances in NVRA and there are opportunities to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, if fraud, is identified. I would caution this Committee, however, that many of the allegations are not evidence, and that we need to be very careful not to confuse the two. Senator Lieberman. Mr. Neas, I would ask you--I know you want to respond, and in inviting you to do so, let me ask you to answer this question, also, which is based on your knowledge, going back to your work with Senator Brooke on the Voting Rights Act, do you have any doubt that if there were the votes here in Congress to require, for instance, national provisional voter policies; that is, as I described them earlier, national same-day registration, Election Day registration, that we could do that? Mr. Neas. Constitutionally, absolutely. I think there is considerable legal authority to support that kind of legislation and support its constitutionality. I do want to clarify the record a little bit, especially with respect to some of my friend Larry Sabato's comments. I do not think we are that far apart. I think, given what the purpose of the hearing was, we certainly did focus primarily on the right to vote and disenfranchisement, which I think are enormously important issues facing us right now, not just in Florida, but in a number of States. But as Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins just said, of course voter fraud has to be addressed. It has been a bipartisan problem throughout our history. I do believe the Motor Voter bill and the Voting Rights Act, and literally hundreds of State and local laws do address fraud. There are laws and we should enforce them. And, obviously, we should look at every possible means of making sure that there is not fraud. Larry Sabato also makes the point about money. We definitely need it, especially in these weeks of debate about how we are going to use the money of the Federal Government. I hope this would become part of the debate over the next 5 or 6 weeks or more. In voter education, as much as I focused on the disenfranchisement issues in Florida, it was not just violations of the Voting Rights Act, disenfranchisement issues or just bungling administratively by State and local officials. We were part of the voter registration and voter turnout effort, and it was an extraordinary success. I think it was about a 50 percent increase, but there is no question that there were a lot of people who were not knowledgeable about their rights or about how to vote. There has to be extensive voter education and civic education, initiatives that we want to be a part of, to make sure that we have an informed electorate, and that a lot of those problems that were due to not knowing the law or not knowing how to vote are eliminated next time around. So I think we can probably get a bipartisan consensus, not only at this table, but elsewhere, to work together on that. Senator Lieberman. I have about a minute left in my questioning time. Let me ask all four of you this question and ask you for a quick answer, or you can defer if you think it is not fair to ask for a quick answer. I think we have all agreed that we obviously do not want to tolerate voter fraud and we do not want to disenfranchise voters in the various ways which we have described today, through registration, etc. My question is which is the larger problem you think our country faces today, the disenfranchisement through registration problems, voting system problems, or the fraud problem? Mr. Neas. In my judgment, this is--I am sorry, Carolyn. Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins. No. Go ahead. Mr. Neas. In my judgment, this is not a hard question. I think, by factor of 1,000-1, it is more important to address the voter disenfranchisement issues and to ensure every American's fundamental and constitutional right to vote, which is not to, in any way, dismiss the importance of addressing voter fraud issues. But I think, without question, it is the voter disenfranchisement issue. Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins. It is a complex issue to prioritize, but from the League perspective, it would be the implementation and administration issues of what is going on in the election reform area. Senator Lieberman. Ms. Phillips. Ms. Phillips. I think that NVRA sets up a natural tension between those two goals. You do not want voter fraud and you do want full enfranchisement. I do not think you can achieve both simultaneously under NVRA. That is why I have moved to the position that I have moved to, that we need to get everyone registered for life. Senator Lieberman. We do not have time today, but I think I am going to ask you in writing to define what the stringent requirements are that you would apply to the lifetime registration, and also the means by which we would make sure, to the best of our ability, that they were equally applied. Ms. Phillips. If I could just respond to that very quickly, the stringent requirements are not employed today, and that is one of the problems with requiring a photo ID at the polls. It is easily defeated, so unless you ensure that the people you are registering are qualified and exist and are U.S. citizens, and residents of the jurisdictions in which they are registering, it is really sort of closing the barn door after the horse has gotten out, to require identification at the polls. Senator Lieberman. You are not willing right now to say whether disenfranchisement or voter fraud is the more pressing problem? Ms. Phillips. I see them both as part of the same problem, which is the dirty voter-roll problem. Senator Lieberman. Understood. Professor Sabato. Mr. Sabato. Senator, as you saw firsthand in November, our system is a mess. I mean, it really is, and not just Florida. There are so many problems in so many States, and I see it as a piece of the whole, all of it, and we need more money, certainly, to do a better job at the State and Federal level, but we also need well-crafted rules to make sure that the money is spent well, and that the elections are run well. Senator Lieberman. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Senator Bennett. Senator Bennett. Thank you. I have enjoyed this hearing, Mr. Chairman, and I have enjoyed this panel, and I have learned a lot. My own sense of things, I guess I come down on Senator Lieberman's question pretty much with Ms. Phillips; that if you solve the administrative question intelligently with technology that is available, you make it possible to solve both the disenfranchise issue and the voter fraud issue. Ms. Phillips. Exactly. Senator Bennett. But let me go back, Dr. Jefferson-Jenkins; you made a comment with which I agree, but I am going to now throw back at you. You were here when I questioned Congressman Clay. Your comment was many of the allegations are not evidence, and Congressman Clay, after his indictment of the St. Louis voter election board, then said, as we got into it, that he had no evidence; he had his own suspicions, but he had no evidence that there was, in fact, a conspiracy in St. Louis to try to prevent people from voting. We will all agree that there is incompetence. We will all agree that people are off playing golf when they should be purging lists. We would all agree of all of those kinds of things. Let me ask you the question, and Mr. Neas, ask you, as well. Do you believe that there was a conscious conspiracy in certain areas, as obviously has historically been the case? I mean, you go back prior to the National Voting Rights Act in the 1960's. Clearly, there was conspiracy--more than a conspiracy. There were clearly established State policy, that we are going to prevent these people from voting. I think we have come away from that legally now, so that there is now no legal opportunity for a State or local group to say we are going to prevent a certain group from voting. But the way the rules are applied, we can create a conspiracy, and either one of you have the feeling that there was a deliberate conspiracy on the part of local officials in various jurisdictions to disfranchise people? Again, your statement, many of the allegations are not evidence. Do you have any evidence? First, do you believe there is such a conspiracy, and second, do you have any evidence? Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins. Well, I would like, Senator, to speak to my statement, and that statement was crafted to address the anecdotal kinds of examples we have been given, and my caution to the Committee was that we not use those as the sole basis for decisions that are made. In terms of the comments by Congressman Clay, at this stage, I cannot speak for his comments or his experience. As we look for moving forward in this process---- Senator Bennett. I am not asking you to speak for that. You have made comments about the 2000 election. Forget St. Louis. Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins. OK. Senator Bennett. Do you have, (a) the belief that there was a conspiracy anywhere--you have studied this. You do not need to listen to Congressman Clay. You have studied this. Do you believe there was a conspiracy anywhere for deliberate disenfranchisement of particular groups of voters, and, (b) do you have any evidence? You can believe there is, as he believes, but he had no evidence, and that is a perfectly legitimate intellectual position to be in. So I ask you those two questions, nationally, from your research. Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins. We are currently--the Leagues are currently collecting that data in their localities and in their States to determine if there is a pattern or a trend that would support any allegations that have been made, and we are still in the process of collecting that information. Once we have that information, we will make it available to whatever sources want it. It is so--I do not want to say disparate--but there is like a mosaic throughout this country of different examples, of different systems, of different implementations; and the one advantage that we have at the League is that we have Leagues in every State, and we are able to capture that data and collect it and comprise it, and look for trends and themes. That is what we are doing right now. We do not have the final information at this point in time, but we will have it collected. Mr. Neas. Senator, I do not know very much at all about the St. Louis situation, except for what I have heard today. I am somewhat more familiar with the Florida situation, having participated in that hearing, I believe I described, with Kweisi Mfume; and we do have 19,000 members in Florida. We were inundated on November 8 with complaints, not just on Voting Rights Act grounds, but on other grounds, and I flew down immediately to Florida on November 8, and we spent a lot of time down there. Senator Bennett. We are familiar with Florida. Mr. Neas. I wanted to share with you that I have some knowledge of that situation in Florida. I know that you are familiar with it, and the Members of the Committee. From what I have observed, listened to, we certainly thought we had enough information to file a suit with the NAACP and the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, that there were violations of the Voting Rights Act. There have been many more hearings since then by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission; and I believe their preliminary report says there has been serious evidence of violations of the Voting Rights Act. Was there a conspiracy? I do not think we have any kind of information to conclusively state that there was any conspiracy. I do believe, as I said in my testimony, there were violations of the Voting Rights Act. There certainly have been published accounts, especially with respect to purging, that perhaps the Governor and Katherine Harris were in violation of court orders with respect to how they handled that purging situation; the private company that came in with so many more hundreds and thousands of names of people who were not felons. But, again, those, I think, are issues that are going to be addressed in the legal process, pursuant to lawsuits that have been filed by us and by others. So, at this moment, I do not think I can look you in the eye and say one way or the other. But I do believe that there have been violations of law. I just do not know the extent yet. But I think that is something we will find out, hopefully in the near future. Senator Bennett. Thank you. Do either of the other two of you want to comment on my question? Ms. Phillips. Well, I would like to comment on the disfranchisement that occurred in Florida because of the poor matches. My understanding is that occurred because there was a change in data format in one of the lists supplied to the vendor. That is precisely why I think we need to have a uniformity of public data formatting in this country that will make it possible to conduct these pristine voter matches. I do not think it was a conspiracy on anyone's part to disenfranchise someone, but it goes to the heart of why it is so difficult to keep clean voter rolls in this country. Senator Bennett. Thank you. Dr. Sabato. Mr. Sabato. Senator, I would just say you cannot rule out the possibility that, in isolated places, there was a conspiracy to produce a certain result or push the election one way or another. My own experience with the systems across the United States is that most of it is just pure bumbling, but there are also very able people in the system. Sometimes they are simply overwhelmed, and the 2000 election was a perfect example, where despite the low turnouts in lots of places, there were other places like Florida, maybe St. Louis, where you had a tremendous turnout that was somewhat unexpected, and they were overwhelmed. That is a lack of money, lack of personnel, but also a lack of rules, well-defined rules that were crafted ahead of the election. Senator Bennett. My time is about gone, but one last comment. Dr. Jefferson-Jenkins, you made the comment, with which I agree, that as far as vote fraud is concerned, there is always a conspiracy. This is a deliberate attempt to steal the election. In the context of what we are talking about here, the question that we have to deal with is whether or not we are going to create a system where it is easy to do that, or should we look for a system where it is hard to do that? I think that should be part, Mr. Chairman, of our ultimate decision here; that in our efforts to achieve the goal we all want to achieve, and there is a great deal of unanimity in this whole debate, which is that every American who is entitled to vote should be able to vote, and without hassle. It is not just able to vote, but it is able to vote without hassle. In our efforts to get to that legitimate kind of goal, do we do it in such a way that makes it easy for those who want to steal an election, to do so? I go back to the example I cited in my opening statement, of Lyndon Johnson and the circumstance in Texas when he first ran for the Senate. Certainly, unless some of the Jim Crow aspects were still there, but assume that they were not. Certainly, every citizen of Texas who wanted to vote, could vote, because they were tremendously lax, and Brown and Root and others were manufacturing votes on the other side, to see to it that the election came out the way they wanted. We do not want objections to people voting, and we, at the same time, want to see to it that the way we do it, to see that everybody gets to vote, does not just throw open the doors, so that those criminals--and it is a criminal act--those criminals who decide they want to steal an election can work the system so easily that it becomes routine, rather than the exception. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much, Senator. I think you highlight the dichotomy we are dealing with here. We could solve these problems very easily; if we wanted to make sure there was no fraud, we just would not let anybody vote. Or if we wanted to make sure there was no disfranchisement, we would accept everybody that came in the door and every piece of paper that came through the mail. But we are not going to do either one of those things, clearly, and we are striving for a balance. It looks to me like, in order to determine where to go, we need to understand where we have been; and it seems to me, sitting here listening, that on both sides of these issues we have a history that we have to deal with. We have a history in some parts of our country, I am sad to say, and some places in the South, of disfranchisement. On the other hand, we have a history in some larger cities not in the South, of substantial voter fraud. We have made, I think, some headway on the disfranchisement problem. Congress has passed legislation. I think things are a lot better than they used to be. On the fraud side, I am not sure how much we can do, but it does not appear to me that we have done very much to address that problem. In fact, in trying to solve the disenfranchisement problem, we have created, in some opinion, a worse potential fraud problem. So we have to ask ourselves, as I think you referred to, not only is it not enough to say that there are laws on the books against voter fraud, but we have to ask ourselves whether or not we need to try to have, as a part of our system, making it more difficult to engage in it, because believe me, from somebody who has tried a couple of these cases, it is almost impossible to prove voter fraud when you get right down to it, and it is a deliberate act. On the other hand, on the disfranchisement, it is a more complex issue. We have attempted through legislation to solve that problem, but it is a more complex issue, it seems to me like. First of all, you have situations where there is deliberate disfranchisement. You have other situations where there is just incompetency on the local election board, problems in the administration of it. We have to ask ourselves, even though we see that time and time again, to what extent can the Federal Government handle the administration of local elections all over the country, and in a Presidential election? Then you have another component, and that is voter mistakes, something nobody has mentioned today. I do not know whether that has been quantified or can be or not, but some people just makes mistakes. When you say they are showing up, and they are in good-faith, the local election officials are in good faith, but they look and something comes in, and it is not signed or not signed properly--so what do you do about that? I think we need to acknowledge there is some civic responsibility to try to do our best, figure out whether or not there are laws on the books about deliberate misconduct. We have to ask ourselves whether or not we can make it somewhat more difficult for voter fraud and for disfranchisement, and then ask ourselves whether or not we need to think about funding some improvement. On making it more difficult, there seems to be some difference of opinion with regard to Motor Voter. We are clearly not going to go back from that. I mean, we have got that and we need to ask ourselves how we can improve it. Again, I mean, you can solve the disenfranchisement problem by not asking any questions of anybody, anybody that sends anything in. I understand that third parties can come and pick up batches of registrations and go out, and people think they are registered. And I think there was a situation with one of the Florida colleges, maybe, where that happened; they did not turn the batch in. It creates all kinds of problems. Ms. Phillips, you have mentioned a nationwide system. Is there anything else short of that or in addition to that, that would allow for Motor Voter participation and registration in that way, but to give people more confidence that it is working the way it was designed to work? Ms. Phillips. That is a really good question, Senator, and I think that there are things that can be done. First of all, I think more resources on the State level, directed toward the cleaning of the rolls; and I really want to underscore the need for uniform formatting of public records and access and cooperation among agencies with those records, because that is a big problem for election directors. If they have the access and they have the resources, they can conduct a fairly good purge. Then it comes down to the problem we have in Florida, of making sure that your local directors perform the due diligence required, because when do a match of multiple records against the voter rolls, all that produces is a number of questionable voters. You then have to go beyond that and ensure that you are not removing legitimate voters who are merely meeting a certain primary test, in a match. The other thing that I think would aid this situation tremendously, as Mr. Sabato suggested, is voter education. There is just a dearth of programs out there. Usually by the time election directors get around to---- Chairman Thompson. Excuse me. But has anybody done any studies as to how many just honest mistakes that voters made? Ms. Phillips. Exactly. No. Chairman Thompson. Excuse me. We will come back to you, Ms. Phillips. Ms. Phillips. No, that is all right. Mr. Sabato. No. I was just going to give you one example in our favorite State of Florida, from November 2000, again, in just 8 Florida counties, 56,000 Floridians spoiled their ballots by voting for more than one Presidential candidate. Most of them did not have the butterfly ballot; 13,700 voters in just those 8 counties voted for 4 or more Presidential candidates; 4,300 voted for 7 or more Presidential candidates. You have to try to vote for 7 Presidential candidates. Chairman Thompson. I believe I have read where nationwide, historically, every election, thousands of ballots are thrown out. Mr. Sabato. That is absolutely correct, and Senator Lieberman may particularly enjoy this. Again, Florida, 537 the difference; 1,367 Floridians in just those 8 counties voted for every Presidential candidate except George W. Bush. Senator Lieberman. I have no comment. [Laughter.] Chairman Thompson. They were on the right track. Senator Bennett. Clear intent of the voter. Chairman Thompson. I may have cut you off, Ms. Phillips. Do you have anything else? Ms. Phillips. That is quite all right. Voter education is a really important element and deserves more resources. We had reports from Palm Beach County, for example, that clearly indicated that in those precincts where there were sufficient poll workers to advise the voters of how to use that funky little ballot, there were less problems. I would say virtually half of the voter reports that come in to us boil down to the voters simply not understanding the technology, or just basic procedures or what their rights are. Once explained, the problem goes away. But there is a larger area, if I can just take 1 minute to explain, that has received no attention whatsoever, and it goes to the issue of technology. That is that all of the technology options available to us today in voting equipment are proprietary systems, and that keeps the prices of this equipment artificially high and defeats competition, frankly. So we would like to see, in this whole debate, some discussion of moving to open architecture systems that would support State-centralized voter registration records and ultimately a national network. Chairman Thompson. Thank you. Any further comments? I am going to call on Senator Levin. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN Senator Levin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have a prepared opening statement which I would appreciate be made part of the record.\1\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared opening statement of Senator Levin for May 3 appears in the Appendix on page 115. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chairman Thompson. It will be made part of the record. Senator Levin. First, on a later panel, Dr. Alvarez is going to make the point that the error rate is significantly-- or the rate of spoiled, uncounted and unmarked ballots is apparently significantly higher with technology of any kind than it was with paper ballots. I think what that means is that technology may have some benefits, but it also has a real downside, just simply in terms of counting ballots and voting. It is an interesting number. The figures that we have are, for instance, there were 3 percent in Georgia, 3 percent-plus ballots were either over-voted or under-voted; 3 percent in Florida. These are margins that exceed the margin of defeat or victory in many States, and it seems to me we have a major responsibility to see to it that simply does not happen again. Now, how we achieve that is a more complicated question, but the stakes here are huge and the technology is not necessarily the answer, by the way. I do not think we can go backward to hand-counting ballots, but we have to, I think, understand what the price is that we have so far paid for technology--we have had experiences in, I think, all of our States. We had some major experiences with punch card mishaps in the city of Detroit back in the 1970's, which, by the way, may have cost my brother an election for Governor. So I have some personal familiarity with punch cards, and fairly painful familiarity with it. I have a number of questions about the system that we have put in place in Michigan. It is called the Michigan Qualified Voter File. It has been cited again by Dr. Alvarez, as the best-practices example. What this is, it is a centralized computer database for all registered voters, and it links election officials throughout the State to a fully automated, interactive, statewide voter registration database. We have it in Michigan. We also have plenty of problems in Michigan; for instance, with students who found that when they got a driver's license, they unregistered themselves somewhere. The law in Michigan is you have to vote--you cannot be licensed in one place with your automobile and vote in another place, one or the other. The education of our voters to that technicality has not been great. So I will give you one example: A student here who had registered to vote in East Lansing in 1998, he went to vote in East Lansing. By the way, that congressional race in East Lansing was decided by 100 votes, 100 votes in a congressional race, and there was a lot of student interest in that congressional race. So this student goes to--he registered in 1998, in East Lansing, but when he went to vote, he was not on the registration list. Why? In September 2000, he renewed his driver's license. When he renewed his driver's license at a place where his family lived or where he had his home base, that automatically wiped out his registration at Lansing; and we do not know how many hundreds or thousands of students, by the way, this happened to. But we had a major problem with this centralized, automated, interactive database. So even that technology, which is a best-practices technology, by the way, is not an answer. I am wondering if any of you have any comments so far--interrupt me. Yes? Ms. Phillips. Well, I would just like to comment on that. That is just a function of how the program is set up, and actually it is a good thing to have someone deregistered to prevent their being registered to vote in two different locations. Senator Levin. Anyone else want to comment so far, because I would like to get into the two locations question, to see just how that is translated into voter fraud. I was not able to get here because I was at the Armed Services Committee, but I missed Senator Bond and Congressman Clay earlier this morning. The one question that I was going to ask of both of them, actually, was this: Senator Bond's testimony, his written testimony, was that there were 24,000 people dual-registered in St. Louis or Missouri, generally, I think his testimony was 24,000. And then he said: I do not know how many voted more than once, but the voter rolls allowed them to do so. Now, I presume it is a crime to do so, but nonetheless, if you are perpetrating a fraud, I guess that fact may not deter you. Senator Bond's staff, according to his written testimony, reviewed 11,826 of the multiple-registered names; and my question is do any of you know how many of those--I would have asked him this question if I could have gotten here--how many of those 11,826 multiple-registered names voted twice? If we do not know, why don't we know? Is it because you cannot find out in Missouri? Is that a matter of privacy? In my home State, you can find out if somebody voted or not. Obviously, you cannot find out who they voted for, thank God, but you can find out whether they voted. Missouri has been apparently the center of some interest in this last---- Chairman Thompson. Excuse me just a minute, Senator. I am told that Dr. Jefferson-Jenkins really needs to leave, and I apologize to you, but unless you have some quick---- Senator Levin. I would ask her that question. Do you know how many of those 11,000 voters---- Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins. I do not know. So that was an easy answer, and I want to thank the Senators for allowing my testimony today and allowing the League of Women Voters' perspective, and if we can provide you any additional information, please do not hesitate to let us know. Chairman Thompson. Thanks for being with us. Senator Lieberman. Thank you. Thanks for being with us. Senator Levin. Thank you. I will ask the other panelists then; with something as visible as that, focused on, and obviously contentious and emotional as that issue is, do we have any idea how many of those 11,000 that Senator Bond's staff looked at, or the 24,000 that were registered in more than one place voted? Is there any evidence that any of them voted in more than one place, first of all? Is there any evidence, period? Do we know? And, if not, why don't we know, with all the interest in that particular campaign? Ms. Phillips. It is my understanding that election is being investigated. So I do not have the answer, but we may eventually have the answer through an investigation. Senator Levin. Is it the press, the media down there? I mean, if Senator Bond's staff can look at 11,800, I presume the newspapers down there can look at them. Have any of you seen any reports? Dr. Sabato. Mr. Sabato. Senator, I do not know whether you can even check. I would assume so. That has got to be a public record, I would just have to assume. It is in almost all States. So I do not know in that case. I can tell you, in other cases I have examined, there usually end up being a few hundred double- voting. Senator Levin. A few hundred in what size? Mr. Sabato. In a State. Generally, they are people who voted by absentee and then may have forgotten, frankly, that they voted by absentee several weeks earlier, and show up at the polls on Election Day. Sometimes, the records are not clear enough; they did not do the background work ahead of Election Day. So a few hundred in a State---- Ms. Phillips. If I could add something to that; it is probably less likely that someone would deliberately vote their own name twice than it is for someone to deliberately identify voters who are less likely to vote, because you can look at the voting history in a voter roll and see who has not voted for the last three, four elections, then use that list to perpetrate fraud. That is what we think happens. If you extended that out to, for example, non-U.S. citizens who wind up on the voting rolls inadvertently, when they get their driver's license, they accidentally fill out the Motor Voter form. We have never found a lot of evidence showing that they have voted illegally, but we believe that others, identifying those names, knowing that they would not be likely to vote, could vote using those names. So it is that sort of mechanic that we think is more often in play. Mr. Neas. Senator, I certainly do not know the answer to your question, and I do think it would be relatively easy to find out, but if Larry is correct, there are a couple of hundred statewide, and you are talking about people who did an absentee ballot and then voted. Of course, they are in the same location. So my guess is that if it is 200 of those kind of circumstances mostly, it would be very few who were in two different locations and voted in two different locations. Senator Levin. My last question is this: Back to the college students; should we allow a college student to vote where they go to college, rather than where their home is, for instance, their driver's license? They come from, let's say, one State and go to school in another State. Should we permit them to vote where they go to school? Ms. Phillips. I think they need to make a choice. Senator Levin. Between a driver's license address and the-- -- Ms. Phillips. Well, of course. You cannot have them voting in two jurisdictions, in a Presidential election particularly. That does not work, but they should be able to choose which is their residence. Senator Levin. Would you allow them to vote in either location of their choice? Would you allow them to select between the two? Ms. Phillips. I think selection is the reasonable answer to that, and what we have noticed on State statutes is that residency is a huge gray area. It has not been clearly defined in election law in many jurisdictions, and it leads to a lot of cases where people believe they have a right to vote and they are prevented from doing so or vice versa. Senator Levin. Other comments? Mr. Sabato. Well, I live in a university community, the lovely town of Charlottesville, Virginia. It is actually a city. I had better watch myself. I can tell you the local jurisdiction there, even though it is all Democratic, opposes students registering and voting there, because they do not pay property taxes, and yet the numbers can overwhelm the residents. So I know that opposition exists in many university communities. Senator Levin. Thank you. Thank you very much. Senator Lieberman. Mr. Chairman, I cannot resist--I know we are running late--a real brief anecdote about absentee ballots and then voting, and that being in my very first election, in 1970, I was challenging the Democratic State Senator in my district in a primary, and it became clear to us a day or two before the election that a particular senior citizen housing project had voted almost entirely by absentee ballot. Since we knew that we had not solicited those absentee ballots, we assumed that they were for my opponent, and I spoke to the immediate former mayor, God bless him, still alive, ailing now, Richard C. Lee of New Haven; and he had built that senior housing project, and he went in on Election Day. He asked me to provide him with three or four vans. This was all legal. Senator Levin. Boy, we were getting nervous. [Laughter.] Senator Lieberman. ``A mistake,'' he said to the folks there, ``A mistake must have been made, come with me and let's vote,'' but the point is that in Connecticut law, they could not be counted twice, because apparently when they voted if, on the record, it was shown they had absentee--that nullified their absentee ballot. That is the point of this story, and the rest is history, because I won by very few votes, thanks to the mayor. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Thanks very much for being with us. This is very helpful. Let's proceed to our final panel. The witnesses are Dr. Michael Alvarez, Associate Professor of Political Science at the California Institute of Technology; Dan Perrin, Executive Director of the Committee for Honest Politics; Gary McIntosh, State Elections Director for the State of Washington; and John Willis, Secretary of State for Maryland. Dr. Alvarez, I will wait till you are seated. Let's try to stick to our 5-minute rule, if we can. Dr. Alvarez, thank you for being with us. Please proceed with your testimony. Your written remarks will be entered into the record in their entirety, all witnesses' remarks will be. TESTIMONY OF R. MICHAEL ALVAREZ, Ph.D., \1\ ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Mr. Alvarez. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Senator Lieberman, and the rest of the Members for giving me the opportunity to participate in this today. I find it particularly exciting that you have allowed some West Coast participation in these debates, and if you pardon my idiom, we are doing some pretty cool things out in California these days, and I hope to talk a little bit about that today. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Alvarez with attachments appears in the Appendix on page 166. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am primarily here because I am a member of the Caltech and MIT voting technology project, and we are doing some quite interesting things; and currently we are in what we consider the first phase of our study, which is really an empirical examination of voting systems, writ large, including registration and ballot counting systems, to try and understand the extent of the probably and try and really document what the problem is. We are looking very closely at machine performance, and by machine performance, I mean accuracy, which has already been discussed today a little bit, cost and also accessibility factors. We are looking at voter registration systems, and I will speak to that in a few minutes. We are looking at absentee, early voting and vote-by-mail systems. We are looking at the issue, the important issue, of standards and testing of all systems. We are taking a very close look, also, at the election industry itself, and it is a very interesting industry and has some peculiarities to it that are worth discussion at some other point, and we are also looking at what we call human factors, essentially the interaction between human beings and these new technologies. We plan to issue our report in the middle of July. I have been asked to talk a little bit about the machine accuracy study that has already been referenced. We put this out earlier this year, the first edition of it. There has been a subsequent revision, which is available on our web page, and has also been provided to the Committee. We wanted to get this out because this is obviously timely information and it was actually used by the Florida task force in their recommendations for what reform should be undertaken in Florida regarding voting machines. What we are looking at here is what is called rolloff, or the residual vote. It is the difference between the number of ballots that were cast and the number of ballots that are counted in Presidential elections going back to 1988 at the county level, across the United States. Those of you who do have a copy of the report, the easiest way to look at the analysis is reported in Table 2,\2\ and what we find there are essentially two clusters of technologies. There are paper ballots, lever machines and optical scans, which have relatively low rolloff rates, around two percent or less. And then there are punch cards, no surprise, but electronic machines, which is surprising, which have significantly higher rates of residual rolloff, usually around 3 percent. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \2\ Table 2 referred to appears in the Appendix on page 182. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The electronic machines, the touchscreen systems, the result here does surprise us, and we have begun to unpack this a little bit, and in the current report in Table 3,\1\ the interesting thing that we find is that as time has progressed, these machines have developed as voter experience with these machines has grown, more important, perhaps, as election administrators' use of these machines has increased, the residual vote rates for the electronic machines has gone down. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ Table 3 referred to appears in the Appendix on page 183. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- So we are concerned about the use of these technologies, but we are hopeful that improvements will continue. Now, one other thing I did want to point out, which is not discussed in that particular report, but we are looking at, are I think what has been termed low-cost or low-tech solutions. There are lots of things that can be done that do not involve new technology to increase the accuracy rates in our elections. One important thing that can be done is precinct-based counting, and that again is what the Florida task force has recommended to the Florida legislature, and I believe is what is going to be implemented in Florida, which is a system of precinct-based optical scan machines where the optical scan machines can be programmed to examine the voter's ballot after it has been cast, to see if there are any errors in it, overvotes, for example, and that is a good thing to implement in precincts throughout the country. Senator Lieberman. And then let the voter know? Mr. Alvarez. And let the voter know that they have cast an erroneous ballot and give them the opportunity to correctly cast a ballot. Some other things that we have looked at are polling place workers. Obviously, putting more people in the polling place, especially paid polling place workers, can help significantly. Also, it turns out that some of the studies we have done in North Dakota recently indicate that just simply allowing the polling places to be open for more hours can help accuracy rates, so that the peak flows can spread out over time of voting. That seems to facilitate more accurate voting. So there are lots of low-tech things we have been looking at, and we are quite hopeful that those can be implemented. Regarding registration, when we first started this project, we were looking primarily at voting systems, but we quickly found out the registration systems were quite problematic in the United States. They are quite complex. We are asking registrars at county levels and Secretary of State's offices to deal with huge quantities of information. The numbers are, in my opinion, kind of staggering. In 1998 and 1999, the FEC reports there were 35 million registrations, 18 million of them were new; 6 percent of them were duplicates; and 44 percent of them were address changes. This is simply a complex system which allows for lots of mistakes to occur. There are mistakes, we think, in each step of the process. There are mistakes that occur when information is provided to voters about whether they can register and what their registration status is. In particular, I went to the Pasadena post office just yesterday before I left town, and happened to pick up the voter registration form, which I have here; and it says right at the very top it must be signed and postmarked at least 29 days before the next election. Well, that turns out to be wrong. In California, it is now 15 days, and it has been that way for about 6 months in California, and we have gone through a couple of election cycles, especially in southern California. This is a mistake. It is something that can be and should be fixed. There are also problems with list maintenance, problems with the Election Day use of lists. In addition to the questions of fraud and accessibility, there are some other criteria that I do think we ought to lay on the table. Registration systems obviously should be accurate and complete. They should be timely. They should be current. They should be accessible and fraudproof, but they also have to be responsive to local conditions. They have to be flexible. They have to acknowledge the fact that what might work in Los Angeles County, may not work in Laramie County, Wyoming. In the materials that I have provided to the Committee, we have identified some of what we call best practices, one of which has already been discussed, the use of electronic databases that are linked across State and local election offices; and the example there is the Michigan Qualified Voter File. Another best-practice example comes from my State of California, where they have facilitated an online registration system. This involves a mail step. There is an actual signature that is required, but it is a wonderful way of providing data and it has been widely-used in California. In terms of list maintenance and list use in the polling places, Orange County, Florida implemented a very interesting system where county workers had laptop machines with Internet connections, and they were able to instantaneously authenticate voters in the polling places, and we think that is an excellent use of technology. There is also a glimpse of the future, which is the Defense Department implemented a very interesting study this particular election, where they allowed for voter registration and voting over the Internet. So there are some interesting ways in which technology can work. Thank you. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Mr. Perrin. TESTIMONY OF DANIEL B. PERRIN,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, COMMITTEE FOR HONEST POLITICS Mr. Perrin. Thank you, Senator, Mr. Chairman, and distinguished Members of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to present these remarks. I want to go back to the issue of encouraging as many Americans as possible to vote. Our committee was active in Florida. We come down more on the side, I think, of the disenfranchisement issue. We made the argument that some votes should not be more equal than other votes, and in that process, we believed that the barriers to voting are probably more substantial than the fraud issue. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Perrin with attachments appears in the Appendix on page 191. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In that regard, the barrier that I am going to discuss today is really more about the quality of public information concerning poll opening and closing times; in this case, in Florida. We were very intrigued by the notion of the early call in Florida and the effect that it had on the panhandle vote, which, as you know, is in the Central Time Zone. We then began looking at the evidence that was public. We came across a couple of studies that showed 3 or 4 percent decline in voting in the panhandle, which, as you know, is a predominantly Republican area. One study said 7,500 to 10,000 votes. In our own evaluation, we probably think it was close to 20,000 total votes, based on looking at the average number of votes per hour per polling place. In an attempt to evaluate the strength of our hypothesis about the early call, we hired some field directors and went out to people that we thought would probably have the best sense of what happened at the polls on the panhandle, which turned out to be the bailiffs and the poll clerks and the poll inspectors, and we did take a number of affidavits. We did scores more of interviews, and I will just summarize two of the affidavits that we have. This is from Precinct Number 23 in Dade County: ``I have been a poll worker since the 1970's. Voting was steady all day until 6 p.m. Between 6 and 7 p.m., it was very different from past elections. It was very empty. The poll workers thought it was odd. It was like, `the lights went out.' We joked with the deputy on duty because there was no one in line for the deputy to be placed behind when the polls closed.'' Another clerk of elections in Ocaloosa County said: ``Between 6:15 and 6:20 p.m., I looked around and said, `Where is everybody?' My poll workers were just as perplexed as I was. I do not think we had more than five people from 6:15 until 7 p.m. We had averaged 80 voters per hour until the last hour.'' Another part of this statement says that 8 years ago in the Presidential election, there were so many people in line that the last voter did not vote until nearly 10:30 p.m.: ``I went outside at the end of the day to tell people to hurry along and found there was no one in the parking lot.'' So this clearly, in our mind, set up a dichotomy between the fact that the networks made their early call at 10 minutes till 8 p.m. Eastern, or 10 minutes to go before the polls closed in the Central Time Zone, and it did not square with what we were hearing from people on the ground. So we went back and looked at the network tapes. What we found was that between 6 p.m. Central and 7 p.m. Central Time, when the polls were still open in the panhandle, every network stated that the polls in Florida had actually closed. We are not talking about an insubstantial number of polling places, although one can argue that any number of polling places would clearly be a concern, even if it was one. In this case, we are talking about 361 polling places. One local network television reporter told me that she was in the control room on election night, and shortly after 6 p.m., there were a number of very angry calls, complaining about this to the network. CBS, in particular, made repeated references to the fact that, in their mind, at any rate, that the polls had closed. So, Mr. Chairman, it is our view that the national news network owe it as a duty to not mis-state on Election Day the fundamentals of the electoral procedure itself. Certainly, this includes not telling voters that the polls are closed when, in fact, the polls are open. I have attached to my written testimony, two documents which I would direct the Committee's attention to: The first one is from the Secretary of State's office in Florida, which simply points out that the polls in the Central Time Zone do not close until 8 p.m. Eastern Time, and that this was released to the local and national media one full week before the election. In addition to that, there is a possible floor amendment language to make it--prohibit any licensee of the Federal Communications Act from falsely stating that polls are closed when, in fact, they are open. In order to give the Committee a sense of the degree of what we are talking about, we have put together a short tape, which we would like to play for you now. Chairman Thompson. Let's wait until the question round, and you can do that on my time. Mr. Perrin. Yes, sir. Chairman Thompson. Mr. McIntosh. TESTIMONY OF GARY McINTOSH,\1\ STATE ELECTIONS DIRECTOR, STATE OF WASHINGTON Mr. McIntosh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Gary McIntosh, and I currently serve as the director of elections in the Secretary of State's office in Olympia, Washington. I am also the immediate past president of the National Association of State Elections Directors, and I would like to begin by thanking the Committee for the invitation to appear here today. I think from looking at the panelists, I may be the only person appearing before you today who has actually conducted an election and actually has had to administer a statewide voter registration system of some kind. So I do appreciate including our perspective in your hearing today. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. McIntosh appears in the Appendix on page 199. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In particular, I want to focus on the methods used to register voters through our Motor Voter program, and share with you some statistical information regarding our program, and finally talk with you a little bit about security provisions and share with you some perspectives as to recommendations that I think you may want to consider. Our State was an early advocate of the National Voter Registration Act. Our former Republican Secretary of State, Ralph Munro, I know testified, I think, about three times before Congress in support of the act. Our State was one of the first in the country to establish a program that allowed eligible citizens a near-automatic method of registering to vote when they applied for or renewed their driver's license. We established our program in January 1992; in fact, a year before the act was enacted by Congress. Our program takes advantage of the fact that almost all the information that we need to register someone to vote is actually already contained in the driver's licensing system; that is, the name, address and age. What we simply do is use that information to flag a record if a person desires to register to vote. We create a new record, a voter registration record, utilizing that information, and then forward that information on to the county. To complete the transaction, the applicant just merely signs the voter registration form, attesting to their qualifications to be a registered voter. In terms of the impact that Motor Voter has had on our voter registration file, I am not going to repeat what I have submitted to you in my written testimony, but suffice it to say that we, despite having now gone through two driver's licensing cycles and two election cycles, we are still registering about 500 new registrants a day through just the Motor Voter program. We are still registering about 1,000 a day through the registration by mail aspect of that program, so we are still getting a lot of transactions. We have done about 2.3 million transactions total since we started the program back in 1992. I would also like to offer a few comments concerning security and voter registration list maintenance. First off, I feel that Motor Voter does bring-- especially the Motor Voter aspect of NVRA--some added features to our voter registration process in terms of security. I think one of the most important advances is the link between the driver's license and voter registration records. By connecting these two systems, our office and local election officials have several new cross-checks and auditing tools to protect the integrity of the registration process. Again, a reminder that under Motor Voter, it is the only form of voter registration that we have where the applicant's picture is taken, and we have actually utilized that in cases where we have had questions regarding a person's eligibility or identity. Second, I would like to point out that our State does not have a statewide voter registration database. I think our job would be a lot easier and more efficient and accurate if we did. We, according to State statute, do require our county election officials to participate with our office in an annual list maintenance program, which is designed to detect those instances where a voter may be registered more than once in the State; and we are hoping to expand that program to twice a year. Of course, as with all of us at the State and local level on this issue, costs are an important factor in our ability to expand our program. The third comment I would like to make is that voters in our State do use mail-in ballots extensively. Over half the ballots cast in our last Presidential election in the State of Washington, about 54 percent, were cast by mail. Mail-in ballots not only help in turnout, but they are also a big factor in keeping our voter registration records accurate, because we can use information from the post office in terms of keeping our records clean. Fourth, as I mentioned in my written testimony, our legislature has recently enacted into law a new provision under the leadership of our current Republican Secretary of State, Sam Reed, which will require licensing examiners to remind voter registration applicants that they need to be 18 years of age and U.S. citizens in order to register to vote, and we believe that this is going to help in terms of preventing the inadvertent registering of ineligible applicants. I also want to just quickly point out, too, that we are a State that does provide provisional ballots. We do not turn away people from the polling place in our State. If you show up to vote in our State and you are not on the list, you are allowed to vote what we call a special ballot on a provisional ballot. We do the research and record searches and so forth on that particular individual registration after the election is over with. We have found that to be a tremendous help in our State, as well. There are some ways that, I think, the Federal Government can help us out. We certainly would like a break in our postal rates, which I think we have mentioned a couple of times to you before. There is a reference in the NVRA about getting first class service at a lower rate, and we think it is essential that take place; and, also, I would encourage Congress that if and when they do decide to make money available to State and local governments, that local election officials be given maximum flexibility as to its use. As we have discussed here today, there is not only a need for new technology for counting ballots, there is also a need for up-to-date voter registration systems that will provide the accuracy and security that our citizens rightfully expect. Again, thanks for the opportunity to testify, and I look forward to answering your questions. Senator Lieberman [presiding]. Thanks very much, Mr. McIntosh. Thanks to all of you for your patience. The first two panels went on a bit longer, I would say, than we expected, but you have been very helpful and I appreciate your coming, particularly those who came from far. We also welcome you, Mr. Secretary, even though you did not come from so far, and I look forward to your testimony now. TESTIMONY OF HON. JOHN T. WILLIS,\1\ SECRETARY OF STATE, STATE OF MARYLAND Mr. Willis. Thank you very much. I hope Senator Thompson, the Chairman, will come back. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Willis with attachments appears in the Appendix on page 203. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Senator Lieberman. He will be back soon. Mr. Willis. My grandfather used to run the general store in Kyles Ford, Tennessee, 100 years ago, and I am sure we might even be related at some point. My wife grew up in Westport, went to high school in Westport; and you and I have some law school colleagues and friends Senator Lieberman. We should have you back before this Committee when we have more time to talk. Mr. Willis. Hopefully, we can do that. I want to commend the Committee for not only trying to endeavor to set a tone, which I think the Committee, in both the Chairman's remarks and your remarks at the beginning of this session, were appropriate. I hope that tone will continue throughout the years, as the Congress deliberates this issue; and also, I think the framework, as it has emerged here, the tensions that both the panelists have presented, as well as the Senators in their questions, have presented, is a healthy framework. It is a good dichotomy that you have drawn, and I think it would be useful for the debate. As I prepared for this hearing, and after listening to the panelists, many of whom I know from other contexts, I was really struggling with how to be constructive to your process and deliberation. We have prepared a written statement, to which would also draw the Committee's attention, because the State of Maryland just went through this entire process. One advantage of being at the State level is we started our process in December, were able to complete that report in about 70 days or so, get it done, introduce legislation and get it passed in 6-8 weeks in the State of Maryland. It will be signed on May 15, be implemented June 1, and we are going to be undertaking reform. Senator Lieberman. My reaction is envy. Congratulations. Mr. Willis. The advantage, as Senator Sarbanes, old friend of mine, said to me one time about Washington versus Annapolis, was the ability to act a little more quickly. As this Committee has well articulated, as well as the other speakers, the administration of elections and the participation of citizens, are topics that have had substantial research. And every one of the Senators has a keen understanding. You are election professionals. I tell people I am coming down to talk to Congress about the election reform issues, and they know my involvement. They know I have written books. They know I teach at the University of Baltimore, and I said this is an audience that understands this issue. If you have not been yourself in a close election, many of your colleagues or friends in this profession have been subject to close elections and to recounts. One story that did not get related today is what the Senate had to do in 1975 in the State of New Hampshire, when they had recounts. The winner on Election Day lost by 10 votes on recounts. All the ballots from New Hampshire were shipped to the Senate and had to be counted by the Senate. The Senate could not make up its mind and sent it back to New Hampshire. These are, as I think Senator Bennett and Senator Thompson said, not old issues that we are dealing with, and surprisingly many of the same machineries were there. I think what I want to urge you to do, and what I want to focus on in my oral remarks, is that I think it is important, critical, essential, that the U.S. Senate and the Congress do something! It is very important that some positive action come out. I think it was Senator Durbin from Illinois who felt that among the populace, there was a certain angst, unsettlement and unease about what happened. I feel that, too, in my public travels. I am no longer the direct election administrator. We have an independent board that does that now. But I am on the Board of Canvassers. I write the ballot questions. I certify the elections. I am involved in the process, obviously, as a practicing political person. But if we do not do something, we are going to further erode public confidence, and the participation levels, which is the bottom line, will suffer if we do not do something. What I think you can do, you can use States as models. The other message I would like to deliver today is that while you are deliberating and you are framing it--and, Senator Thompson, while you were out, I commended both you and Senator Lieberman for setting the framework and the tone. I think you have done an excellent job this morning and I hope it will continue throughout the rest of this session of Congress, because I think it is the appropriate tone and framework. But what I want to tell you is States are doing things; States are going ahead. Local governments that have the ability to go ahead are going to go ahead. Now, I described quickly what Maryland did, but I want to restate it for you. Even before the election was judicially determined, our governor set up a special committee, which I chaired, to look into the voting systems in Maryland. We held our public hearings, just as you are starting now, took about 2 months to do that, and we came up with several recommendations. We got them in to the Mayrland General Assembly. They were passed in 6-8 weeks. They will be implemented. They will be on the ground, and we are going to go to implementing some of the recommendations that have been suggested here, from the League of Women Voters to some of Caltech suggestions. We will be implementing in Maryland provisional ballots. We will be implementing--we actually started in 1998, moving toward a centralized database for voter registration. We will be allowing voters--we had a huge battle. I brought the Motor Vehicles Department and the State Board of Elections into my office. We had hours' worth of meetings, and we reached an agreement between those two entities that we are simply going to transfer electronically information, so we are not losing voters which was the biggest problem in Maryland. When we look at elections, and there is a tendency to do that, everybody looks at it from their own perspective, their own jurisdiction, their own precinct. But we need to take a bigger view. In Maryland, we were somewhat stunned by what happened around the country. We do a good job of counting votes. Two million voters; only 10,553 did not vote for President; 0.518 percent overall; at the polling place, it was only .450 percent. I mean, these numbers that are getting thrown around in other States are just foreign to what our experience is in Maryland. Now, what we have noticed is that technology, the second point, in addition to the fact that States are moving forward, technology can help. We have changed our systems in the last 10 years; 19 out of our 24 jurisdictions have improved their technology. We have reduced our no-vote rate, which was already low--we are among the best in the country--we cut it over half by new technology. Senator Lieberman. What are they using? Mr. Willis. The majority of the counties are using optical scan; Baltimore City went to a DRE, and in contrast to Caltech's studies, and I am interested to see their data, our results were the opposite. They moved from lever to DRE, cut their no-vote rate in half; technology did work in Baltimore City, a very urban area where I vote. You can prevent overvotes. We had one county that has punch cards. It is our wealthiest county, Montgomery County. They had 2,565 overvotes in Montgomery County because they use a data vote punch card central count system. The entire rest of the State of Maryland, had only a couple hundred overvotes. You can eliminate overvotes with technology. Technology can make a difference. My vision is for Maryland to contribute to improved voting system and equipment, and the governor for the first time put State money into voting systems. In Maryland, it has been historically a local responsibility. The governor for the first time said we are going to put State money in. Our new law now says a 50-50 share between the State and local governments for voting systems and equipment. What I would like to urge, and I told the governor I was going to say this, was that the Federal Government join us and that it really be almost a third, third, third; and what I think would be an appropriate level of funding from the Congress is one dollar per person of voting age. That is really less than some of the proposals that have currently been made in Congress. I think that is a concrete proposal that can happen. The issues--I think there is a lot we can do, and as my written testimony indicated, it is the constitutional questions and the citizen participation questions that, Mr. Chairman, both you and Senator Lieberman outlined, that are at the root of this issue in which we need to continue to make progress in this country. Senator I wanted to tell you, my grandfather ran the general store in Kyles Ford, Tennessee, which not very many people know where it is, and my father was raised in southwest Virginia. I can just recognize from your demeanor a little bit of what are some of my historical roots. Chairman Thompson [presiding]. I knew you were unusually perceptive and intelligent, and now I know the basis of it Senator Lieberman. That was that very distinguished demeanor you were speaking of. Mr. Willis. That is correct. Chairman Thompson. You certainly show that attention and leadership is a large part of the solution here, and lack of it has probably been a large part of the problem in other parts of the country. I was going to commend you even before you said that. Mr. Willis. Thank you, sir. Chairman Thompson. Senator Lieberman. Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. This was an excellent panel. As too often happens around here, I wish the room was full and all the media was here right now, but we are being televised, so I am sure some folks have heard. I thank you all for your testimony. I want to ask Mr. McIntosh and Secretary Willis, because you both are administering and overseeing; just to clarify, from your point of view, and I think you pretty much said this, Mr. McIntosh, that the so- called Motor Voter law has been a success, which is that you testified specifically that it has substantially, and continues to substantially register voters, but you have found no substantial increase in fraud as a result of Motor Voter? Mr. McIntosh. No, we have not, not really at all. It is interesting that I can only think of perhaps in the entire history of our doing this, we have had one or two instances of fraud. In both of those cases, we were able to again utilize the records and the pictures and the photos and the IDs from the driver's licensing file as an aid in attempting to get to the substance of that particular situation, and which we would not have been able to do otherwise. So the answer is that we have not had much experience at all with fraud. Senator Lieberman. Secretary Willis. Mr. Willis. Historically, and if Senator Bennett was here, we could go back to examples in Baltimore from the American Know-Nothing days in the 1850's, which predate Utah, but we had our share back then. But recently we have had allegations, but not a lot of substance. We found, and I think that there is much more error on the implementation and administration phase, as the president of the League of Women Voters testified, than there is on the actual duplication or voter fraud. This issue came up during our recently-concluded legislative session, and it was raised in our Commerce and Government Matters Committee, as well, at the State level; and what I said to them is, ``Let's keep improving our technology.'' One is our statewide database for voter registration should be online. Second, we passed a law in Maryland that said if you move within the State, you are simply going to be transferred. You are not going to be dropped and added. We only have 24 jurisdictions, which is an advantage for us. We have large counties. They can all access that same database, and so we are not going to be dropping people from the rolls. The other thing with the voter identification, and we had several bills in our legislature pending that did not pass. They are on hold. My vision is, and it was interesting to hear, both from Deborah Phillips' perspective all the way to the League of Women Voters, that technology can get to this identification issue; and if every polling place can have a PowerBook or access to a statewide database, you can pull up that signature; you can compare it, and if you want to go the other step, you can actually have it compared electronically. We ought to be using the technology that is available in other sectors of our economy for our election infrastructure. We can get to that identification issue without creating all kinds of other problems. Senator Lieberman. I thank you for that. It does seem to me, having listened this morning, that one of the best things we can do, if not the only thing, to reduce voter registration problems would be to have every State computerize their voting lists and have it centralized. Mr. Willis. One point on this is we have shared with other States--we have shared with the District of Columbia. Linda Lamone, our election director, recently or several years ago, compared D.C. with Montgomery and Prince George's County. Most of it was purely innocent duplications between people moving and whatever. The Secretary of the Commonwealth in Pennsylvania, they are starting their State reform process in Pennsylvania. They have 67 counties, and I told Secretary Pitzingrilli, a Republican who with Governor Ridge, is doing a great job up here with his committee--that we will share our database with theirs, because we share a lot of border with Pennsylvania; and I think that some of those suggestions you have heard this morning can go to address that problem. Senator Lieberman. Thanks. Dr. Alvarez, I was interested, although the percentage is only one percentage more, but now that could be significant-- the higher problem rate with what I would call the touchscreens, and I know there are more expressions of that approach. For instance, I have been reading about Brazil and Peru; I think perhaps President Carter and President Ford have been to Peru and were impressed by the small error rates. So if you had your druthers, based on your research--if you were the king, what is the system you would try to--the technological voting system that you would try to implement in every State in the country? Mr. Alvarez. Right now, we are advocating precinct-based optical scanning as the best available technology at this point. Senator Lieberman. These are the ones where you fill out the ballot. Mr. Alvarez. Yes, it is like you are taking the SATs. You fill in a circle or you complete a line, because in those kind of systems, most people find it relatively easy to use the paper ballots. Senator Lieberman. You can organize them or work the machines so that they tell you how you voted, in case there is a mistake. Mr. Alvarez. Exactly, and you might have an opportunity then to correct your mistake; and they also obviously provide a paper trail for auditing in the future. The electronic machines are very varied in their interfaces, and many of them, at this point in time, do not allow for that same type of auditability after the election because they do not generate a paper trail of every single ballot that has been cast. Senator Lieberman. How about on the voter registration question? What would be your counsel? Am I right that the best thing we could do is centralize, have computerized lists in every State at a central place? Mr. Alvarez. Exactly. I would strongly urge you to recommend that every State develop a statewide voter registration database; that be computerized, and that linkages be made between the statewide database and the local election official offices, so that there can be instantaneous updating of those databases. I would also urge that you recommend or somehow facilitate the ability of States to tell voters, to let voters know, what their current registration status is. That is one of the loopholes right now. It is very difficult for many voters to find out if they are currently registered to vote and where they might be registered to vote, and get that information electronically in the polling place, so that, as we just heard, you can have polling place verification electronically. That eliminates, I think, a lot of the potential fraud problems, and I think it also facilitates access, so that if someone, for example, shows up at the wrong polling place, right now, in many locations, the local election officials in the polling place do not know where to send that person to vote. So, again, if they had access to the State electronic database, they could determine if that person is registered and they could tell them where they can go to vote. Senator Lieberman. Secretary Willis and Mr. McIntosh, am I right that you both said that you have provisional voting in your State? Mr. Willis. We just started. We just enacted ours. Senator Lieberman. You just did. You have got it? Mr. McIntosh. We have had it for over 30 years. Senator Lieberman. So far, it has worked well? Mr. McIntosh. Yes, it does work well. I would be remiss if I did not comment on behalf of the local election officials, that provisional ballots can be a real pain in the neck, in terms of giving the results out quickly, because with the substantial number of them that you have, they do require a lot of research and a lot of physical handling, and so they can bog down the process quite a bit, but I think they are absolutely essential, in terms of your Election Day activity, of just getting through your polling place problems. Senator Lieberman. So the basic arrangement is that any voter whose registration status is questioned, and he or she is convinced they are a voter, they make an affirmation, sign a document of some kind, and then go ahead and vote, and that vote is separated and then later investigated? Mr. McIntosh. That is correct. It is put in a separate envelope, a security envelope, along with the information regarding what the question might be. Senator Lieberman. Nobody is turned away? Mr. McIntosh. Nobody is turned away, and people are allowed to vote. We basically have this in two instances where this primarily comes up; one is the person is not on the list at all, or second, they are registered to vote in a district or they are not allowed to vote on a question that they feel that they should be allowed to vote on. It might be a school district measure or something like that. So whatever that situation happens to be, we do let them vote the way they want to vote, and then process the ballot later. Senator Lieberman. Mr. Secretary. Mr. Willis. In the formulation of our bill, we looked at all the other States that had provisional ballots, and the system that you have just described and Gary McIntosh described is what we adopted; so that we are not turning voters away and we are determining administratively the next day or the day after. That was our biggest complaint in the last election, because when people were going to motor vehicles departments, thinking that they had either changed their address or did not intend to change their voting address, but were just simply dealing with motor vehicles--they may have two homes. We have people who live at a home in Ocean City; they have one in the mountains, whatever--and they were suddenly dropped from the rolls. It happened to a voter right in front of me on Election Day. We had to send that voter down to the central office way downtown. That made them late for work. So we decided provisional ballots would, in fact, be a convenience to the voter, as well as protect the security of making sure that voter was registered, because you can determine that administratively. Across party lines in the State, that had very little controversy as it went through our State legislature. Senator Lieberman. Have the numbers been large, in Washington State, for instance, of the use of the provisional vote? Mr. McIntosh. Well, our numbers have been going down, Senator, because we do not have very many people going to the polling place anymore. Most of our people are voting by mail, so we have reduced the number of people that we process through our polling locations. So our numbers, in fact, are decreasing. Senator Lieberman. One quick factual question for the two of you. I have heard references a few times in this to North Dakota, which has no registration. What is going on out in North Dakota? You just walk in to vote? Do you know? Mr. McIntosh. Essentially, they do keep a registration file from election to election, as I understand it, so it is just that there is no ongoing process whereby people sign up to vote. Senator Lieberman. So, essentially, it is a kind of Election Day registration, effectively? Mr. McIntosh. Yes. Mr. Willis. You show and indicate--some indication of residency, and you are allowed to vote in North Dakota. I would say I think there is a certain mythology about urban voters--I live in Baltimore City, near Johns Hopkins University. People in my neighborhood know people in my neighborhood. It is a question, I think, of size and scale more than it is of exact location, because there are tight-knit communities everywhere in this country. Senator Lieberman. Good point. Thanks very much. You have been a really helpful panel. Chairman Thompson. Thank you. Mr. McIntosh, are most people satisfied that going to more of a mail system is a good thing in your State? Mr. McIntosh. Well, our numbers sure indicate that. The registered voters sure love it. In 1996, we had about 35 percent of our ballots cast by mail, and as I mentioned earlier, about 54 percent were cast by mail in this last Presidential election. So the voters seem to favor this type of voting. Chairman Thompson. It takes a little longer to get your election results. Mr. McIntosh. Well, it does, and when you look at a State like ours, there are three factors in that. One is the large number of people voting by mail. The second factor is the fact, as I mentioned earlier, the fact that we have provisional ballots. The third factor is that we have a very late primary, and so we have a very compressed time frame by which we can get all of these ballots processed and get our results out, and that creates a problem, as well. Chairman Thompson. You mentioned your experience with the Motor Voter and people coming in and showing their ID and so forth, and that has worked. Have you had similar problems to other States in the mail-ins, with regard to Motor Voter? Mr. McIntosh. We have not had much in the way of voter fraud in our State at all, and that may be due to our political culture or history or whatever. That is not something we have had a lot of. I would say that what fraud we have had, where we actually have had some successful prosecutions, has been more related to initiative petition signature gathering, where people are paid to gather signatures for initiative petitions. This creates an incentive for them to dummy up---- Chairman Thompson. Paid by the name, maybe? Mr. McIntosh [continuing]. To dummy up some voter registration forms, and then fraudulently put the signature on the initiative petition, so that they can get enough signatures and get more money, essentially. So we have had some instances of that, although normally when we have seen that, it has been fairly well-detected; the initiative petition signatures, for example, we have found to all be in the same handwriting. We found one sheet that all 20 names on the petition sheet were all in alphabetical order. So, obviously, these names they had just gotten out of a phone book somewhere. Chairman Thompson. Kind of like a bank robber I prosecuted one time, and found the money in sequentially numbered bills, and he still got acquitted. [Laughter.] Mr. McIntosh. Our individual was not as lucky. Chairman Thompson. It was in Columbia, Tennessee, by the way. Mr. Perrin, let me see if I understand the situation correctly. The polls in the Central Time Zone were open until 8 o'clock? Mr. Perrin. Eastern. Chairman Thompson. Seven p.m. Central. Mr. Perrin. Yes. Chairman Thompson. The media announced that they had closed at 6 p.m. Central? Mr. Perrin. That is correct. Chairman Thompson. Is that what happened? Mr. Perrin. Yes. Chairman Thompson. You had something to show us, I think. Mr. Perrin. Yes, sir. Thank you. What you are going to see are excerpts of broadcasts between the hour of 6 p.m. Central, and 7 p.m. Central. Senator Lieberman. This will be particularly emotional for me to watch. [Laughter.] Mr. Perrin. I am sorry, Senator. Senator Lieberman. I will try to contain myself. I have relived this night so often. Mr. Perrin. Really, it is a much more clear-cut case than we are dealing with---- Senator Lieberman. Although I think this was the point at which we had won. This was the high point. [Laughter.] Mr. Perrin. Well, Senator, I think there is a part of this tape you will particularly enjoy. [Videotape played in the hearing room.] Mr. Perrin. I did not mean to pile on there. It really is extraordinarily clear, at least from our perspective, from the poll workers, what happened there; and I would just urge the Committee not to take the media at their word. I think they have lost substantial credibility, and there needs to be a prohibition, because I simply do not believe that they will refrain from, in the heat of the moment, doing it again. Chairman Thompson. All right. Well, there have been hearings in detail on that issue over on the House side, and that is for another day, as to what, if anything, can or should be done about that. Perhaps what we are doing here today is the most that we can or should do about it, and that is have some accountability. I mean, we ought to have it. The news media ought to have it. When they look like they get it so badly wrong, and probably discouraging a large number of people from going to the polls, they need to be called on it; and I think it has already had a salutary effect on the media. I may be wrong. Mr. Perrin. I have heard a lot of discussion about the early call. I have not heard a lot of discussion or self- criticism by the media about the fact that they were so wrong and that it affected so many polling places. I am not sure that the media can hold themselves to the standard of: We will police ourselves. Chairman Thompson. Sitting here and listening to this, calling an election is one thing. A voter ought to be on notice that is a projection and may or may not affect--telling somebody their voting place is closed is something else again, and I am not sure there has been much attention or sufficient attention drawn to that. Mr. Perrin. I thank you, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Lieberman, for the opportunity to present it today. Chairman Thompson. I want to thank this entire panel. It has been a very good panel. Thank you, Senator Lieberman, for these hearings. Hopefully, we will contribute to the body of knowledge and some additional understanding about this problem, what we can do about it. Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to next week. Thank you all very much. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. We are adjourned. [Whereupon, at 2 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] FEDERAL ELECTION PRACTICES AND PROCEDURES ---------- WEDNESDAY, MAY 9, 2001 U.S. Senate, Committee on Governmental Affairs, Washington, DC. The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:17 a.m., in room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Fred Thompson, Chairman of the Committee, presiding. Present: Senators Thompson, Lieberman, Levin, and Carper. OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN THOMPSON Chairman Thompson. The Committee will come to order, please. Today, we will have our second hearing on election reform at the request of Senator Lieberman. During the first hearing, we discussed issues involved in getting people to the polls. We focused primarily on registration and the competing interests of increasing voter participation on the one hand and protecting the integrity of our campaigns on the other. We learned last week that voter registration systems in this country have problems, that they are vulnerable to fraud and mistake, and that steps need to be taken to clean and better maintain the voter rolls. Centralized databases, more aggressive scrubbing of the voter lists, and safeguards such as requiring identification at the polls might help. There also appeared to be a consensus on ideas such as provisional ballots which would help ensure the right to vote for some and also help to deter fraud. Today, we will hear about problems with absentee ballots, military ballots, and problems encountered at the polls, and we will delve further into the question of where the less accurate machines are actually located. One witness with us today is Dr. Stephen Knack. You may recall last week that there were some comments made that perhaps it is no coincidence that some of the more inferior machines that are used in this country have been placed in low- income and minority areas. I cited a study by Dr. Knack that found that the more affluent counties are statistically more likely to have punchcard systems. To back that up, John Willis, the Secretary of State of Maryland, testified that Montgomery County, the richest county in the State, is the only one that still uses punchcards in that State. We have other witnesses who will outline problems people encountered voting in the last election and will also offer some solutions for problems such as absentee ballot fraud and the failure to properly count military ballots. There are many who are eager to have Congress spend money on elections, and particularly on new machinery. I think we are learning that there are several problems to be addressed, many of which can raise questions about the integrity of our elections. I hope that as we continue to highlight other problems with our electoral system that we will encourage people to be deliberate on how and where we spend those funds. Incidentally, since our last hearing, the Florida legislature moved in a bipartisan fashion to eliminate punchcard ballots in that State, to establish uniform recount rules, and to set up a statewide registration database. I applaud them for taking an affirmative step that will help ensure public confidence in their elections. Senator Lieberman. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LIEBERMAN Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. First, let me apologize to you, the witnesses, and everyone in the room that I am tardy today. I was on the floor on this vote, and I was brought into some urgent consultations on the education bill that is now before the Senate. Mr. Chairman, let me again express my appreciation to you for agreeing to hold these 2 days of hearings to explore the worrisome problems that we have with America's electoral system. I thought last Thursday's hearing underscoring the problems of voter registration produced some very constructive suggestions. In fact, we already have had such an extraordinary effect that just a day after that hearing, as you said, Florida adopted many of the reforms that were discussed last week. I did notice, including particularly the centralized voter registration database and provisional voting which seems like such a simple idea to deal with a common and most irritating problem, that you wonder why we have not all done it before, which is to say if you come to the voting place and for some reason you think you are registered and your name is not on the list, instead of sending you home or back to work, provisional voting says that you affirm that you are who you say you are, that you sincerely believe that you have a right to vote, you cast the vote. Provisionally, it is separated, and then afterward, the Registrar of Voters investigates to see whether your vote should ultimately be counted. I do understand, Mr. Chairman, that Palm Beach County is selling its punchcard machines on eBay, and I want to announce here publicly that I do not intend to be making a bid on those machines. Anyway, I am confident that today's hearing will prove equally helpful in furthering the national conversation on this critically important issue. Today, we are focused on votes that are cast and whether they are counted. It has been estimated that nationwide, of all the ballots cast last year, 2.5 million were not counted. It is a stunning, embarrassing figure. So that, what happened in Florida because of the virtual tie that occurred there, it illuminated, I think, for the country a much broader national problem that we have to tend to. I hope today's hearing serves to remind us that Americans not only have a right to expect that their votes will be counted. They have an equal right to expect that their votes will be counted. The constitutional promise of one person, one vote, is not just a statement of principle. It is a legal right that every American has, and the first step in making that right a reality is providing all citizens with voting equipment they can count on, voting equipment that will count their votes. Improved voting machines alone will not necessarily fulfill the constitutional promise of one person, one vote. For instance, we have seen some statistics that I find very disturbing that show that people of color nationwide are at least twice as likely to have their votes discounted as white Americans. In Georgia, the Secretary of State found specifically that African-American precincts lost votes at a rate of up to 3\1/2\ times white areas with the same voting machines. So this is not what America is supposed to be about, and I think we have got to all in a very open-minded way work together to find a means to reduce these discrepancies which become inequalities before the next election. As some of our witnesses will tell us today, the problems of our voting system cover a broad territory. Just to name a few, poll worker training and recruitment needs to be improved. Ballot designs need to be clearer. Voter instruction and education, accommodations for disabled and elderly and translation for non-English language voters need to be better. Until now, these problems have largely been the burden of local election officials who typically run elections as only one of their many duties and often manage to do it on very small budgets. One estimate I have seen puts it at 3 percent of the average country budget. But these types of systemic problems, I think become national problems and, therefore, are our responsibility, too. Finally, we cannot stop even at the polls. We must make sure that those voters who cannot make it to a voting booth, the elderly or the infirm also have their votes received and counted, and, of course, our service men and service women deserve exactly the same treatment. Those who would give their lives so that we can all be free, including the freedom to vote, must be able to exercise their franchise without hindrance or hardship. So, as Members of Congress, each one of us swore to uphold and defend the Constitution. That constitutional promise of one person and one vote is our promise to fulfill. The American people expect it. More to the point, they deserve it, and it is our job to ensure that they get it. I hope we will do so through election reform legislation adopted by Congress this year. Again, Mr. Chairman, I think these two hearings will help to provide the factual and legal basis for exactly such action. I thank you. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. I notice we have some young people with us here today. Are you from one school? Where are you from? Audience. San Diego, California. Senator Lieberman. San Diego. Chairman Thompson. All right. Well, we are glad to have you with us today. Senator Lieberman. The voting machines appeared to work very well out there last year. Chairman Thompson. Somehow I am not surprised that you noticed. Do not be voting for a few more years. OK? Our first panel, we have Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials; Hilary O. Shelton, director of the Washington Bureau for the NAACP; Dr. Stephen Knack, senior research economist at The World Bank; and Hans A. von Spakovsky, member of the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections. Thank you, gentlemen. Mr. Vargas, please proceed with your testimony. Your written remarks will be entered into the record in their entirety. TESTIMONY OF ARTURO VARGAS,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LATINO ELECTED AND APPOINTED OFFICIALS, EDUCATIONAL FUND Mr. Vargas. Thank you, Chairman Thompson and Ranking Member, Senator Lieberman. Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today on election practices and procedures. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Vargas appears in the Appendix on page 212. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am Arturo Vargas, executive director of the NALEO Educational Fund, the leading national organization that empowers Latinos to participate fully in the American political process. We achieve this by helping folks become citizens, doing voter education, encouraging people to go out to the polls on Election Day, providing training to people who want to run for office, and providing training opportunities for people who serve in elected and appointed office. Our constituency includes more than 5,400 Latinos in elected and appointed offices nationwide. In examining the issue of election procedures and practices, I would like to offer the Members of the Committee our experiences in promoting Latino involvement in the electoral process. I would like to start by discussing the issue of voting assistance being provided in languages other than English, which leads me to the importance of Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act and the positive impact that it has had on minority electoral participation. The right to vote is fundamental. Yet, there are many U.S. citizens of language minority backgrounds who are not fully proficient in English and cannot effectively participate in the electoral process due to language barriers. Some of these Americans were born here and never had the opportunity to become fully proficient in English. Others are naturalized citizens who because of their advanced stage were not required to demonstrate a knowledge of English in order to qualify for U.S. citizenship. Being unable to read or comprehend in English, voter registration materials, referenda, or ballots can limit many of these voters, and, Senators, even myself born and raised here and schooled in English, sometimes I find it difficult to understand what the referenda and ballot materials say. Imagine the barriers for folks who are learning English as their second language trying to make sense of that language. Congress, recognizing the link between language barriers and low voter turnout, enacted Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act in 1975. This provision requires certain jurisdictions that meet certain population thresholds, not every jurisdiction and every country for every language minority voter, but certain jurisdictions that have a certain number of individuals who do not speak a particular language and where the Census data also show that there are high rates of illiteracy for those certain jurisdictions that they must provide assistance to language minority voters in those areas. Congress emphasized that many minority citizens were not exercising their fundamental right to vote due to high rates of literacy in English and unequal educational opportunities. Congress reauthorized and strengthened Section 203 in 1992. Many of our newest citizens are eager to participate in the political process, and what we have seen over the past 6 to 8 years is that naturalized U.S. citizens, in fact, are turning out, registering to vote and turning out to vote in rates higher than native-born citizens. We think this is a good way to strengthen our democracy, and many of them are the engine that is driving our democracy today. Language assistance at the voting booth helps our Nation's newcomers exercise their rights to vote that they have worked so hard to attain. Consequently, we urge that any changes to Federal election law and regulations complement and strengthen the provisions provided to language minority citizens in Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act. Some folks falsely claim that the language provisions are too costly. This is simply not the case. Again, it is only certain jurisdictions under certain conditions that must provide non-English language assistance. The Voting Rights Act has served as a powerful tool to eliminate barriers that have prevented Latinos and other ethnic groups from voting. The increases in Latino voters and elected officials have given previously excluded Americans an active voice in every elected body in the Nation, save, perhaps the U.S. Senate, and we still are looking for the participation of a Latino or Latina to be among your colleagues. At least one attempt has been made in each of the last five Congresses to roll back the language assistance provisions of the Voting Rights Act. This would effectively disenfranchise thousands of American citizens of Latino and Asian-Pacific descent and others. We must ensure that opponents of the Voting Rights Act do not use electoral reform as a pretense to delude those protections. We are also aware that many proponents of election reform advocate a host of changes to election procedures and voting technology. As you assess these proposals, we would like to provide two recommendations for you to keep in mind. First, there is an urgent need for reliable and relevant research and the impact of these proposals on citizen participation in elections. This research needs to specifically consider the experiences and needs of Latinos and other minority voters. Much of the discussion surrounding the need for reform practices has been about the problem of punchcard ballot systems. Policy-makers have raised questions about whether Latinos and other minority voters are disenfranchised by their use. While we have seen some research indicating that Latinos are more likely to live in counties that use punchcard equipment, this may be largely attributable to the fact that L.A. County uses this system, and L.A. County is home to about 1 out of 8 Latinos in the Nation. It is unclear whether these error rates that we have seen are a result of factors such as poor equipment maintenance, lack of a mechanism allowing voters to ascertain whether their ballots are punched accurately, poor chad removal systems, or low voter understanding about the use of punchcard systems. Thus, it is important for us to get a better understanding of whether technological improvements in and of themselves result in more accessible and accurate voting systems. We recommend that any efforts to reform voting procedures, standards, or technology must be accompanied by a comprehensive program to train and recruit poll workers and to educate voters about the practical mechanics of voting. One of our earliest efforts were to provide a toll-free bilingual hotline so that voters could report incidents of voter intimidation or harassment. However, we found that most of the questions we received were basic questions about voting, where to vote, how to vote, how do I find my polling place, etc. As the Latino population has increased throughout the country in States that are for the first time dealing with large numbers of Latino immigrants and Latino citizens, we believe the importance of voting, of ensuring at the voting booth there are adequate numbers of bilingual poll workers is extremely important, and we encourage jurisdictions to work with community-based organizations and educational institutions to promote recruitment of poll workers. We believe that public-private partnerships with community- based organizations, schools, and others could help recruit the number of bilingual poll workers needed in our counties and cities across the country today. More than anything else, Senators, we believe that what we need is leadership on behalf of the Senate and the President in this respect. We ask that the Senate and the President take a leadership role. The dramatic changes in the growth and distribution of the Latino population revealed by the new Census data presents a prime opportunity for Congress and the President to set the tone for this critical discussion. Our leaders must show the Latino community and the Nation as a whole that the aim of electoral reform is to help revitalize our democracy and ensure that it remains vigorous and responsive to all of our distinctive voices. Thank you. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Mr. Shelton. TESTIMONY OF HILARY O. SHELTON,\1\ DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON BUREAU, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE Mr. Shelton. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Senator Lieberman, and distinguished Members of the Committee. Thank you for the opportunity to come before you this morning on behalf of the NAACP. Our 1,700 branches in 50 States, the District of Columbia, Germany, Japan, Italy, and Korea. I am here in lieu of our president and CEO, Kweisi Mfume who is at this time over on the House side testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on discrimination in the Federal workplace. He sends his regrets as well as his appreciation for your activism in this case. The NAACP is deeply appreciative of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee for convening this hearing to look into the issue of voting irregularities with respect to last year's Presidential election. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Shelton appears in the Appendix on page 218. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- While the situation in Florida obviously received the most national media attention, the NAACP believes that Florida is, in fact, a microcosm of the entire country. We are convinced throughout the United States, millions of American citizens were, for one reason or another, not able to cast their vote or have their vote counted. Furthermore, the NAACP strongly believes that many of the voting irregularities occurred disproportionately in communities of color. So it was ethnic minority Americans who were, in disparate numbers, excluded from having their voices heard. There was, as best as we have been able to determine, substantial, unresolved allegations across the country of massive voter disenfranchisement in African-American, Hispanic- American, Haitian-American, and Jewish-American communities. The election appeared to have been conducted in such a manner that many of those same communities now believe unequivocally that it was unfair, illegal, immoral, and certainly undemocratic. Because the right to vote is the most sacred franchise in a democracy, we must challenge all Americans to focus again on a thorny issue of equal opportunity under law and whether or not a protection was afforded to duly registered voters who went to the polls on Election Day, November 2000. Every survey that we have found that was conducted at the election, regardless of where it was in the United States, has shown that the greater the percentage of black voters in a precinct, the greater was the likelihood that a significant number of the ballots of those voters were never counted. The national response to this has been a flurry of legislative initiatives announced and undertaken by conscientious Members of the House and Senate on both sides of the aisle. If anything, the bipartisan nature alone of the response thus far has been encouraging. However, the real test will be to see what, if anything, of substance emerges and is signed into law under the rubric of voting and electoral reform. In response to the problems that we have identified, the NAACP has developed a set of well-thought-out ideas and recommendations designed to avoid similar Election Day debacles in the future. Before I discuss what the NAACP feels needs to be done to correct the myriad of problems that face our Nation on Election Day 2000, I would like to begin talking about what happened prior to and during the election. The weekend prior to the election, the NAACP began receiving calls alerting us of the fact that a person or persons was making electronic phone calls into predominantly black households claiming to represent the NAACP in support of Republican candidate, George W. Bush. These calls were apparently taking place in key battleground States of Michigan and Florida. Beginning on Election Day and still to this day, the NAACP national staff as well as some of our local branches across the Nation began to receive calls from people who felt that their rights to vote had been violated. Subsequent to the election, NAACP national staff as well as several State conferences and local branches held hearings throughout the country to investigate allegations of voter fraud, voter intimidation, as well as technical and procedural barriers that resulted in a significant number of votes not being cast or counted. As a result of the flood of complaints we received, the NAACP held a series of hearings throughout the Nation to look into the problems faced by many Americans who wanted to vote, but were not able to do for one reason or another. We have also continued to receive complaints through phone calls, letters, faxes, testimonials, and affidavits. Let me list a few of the more egregious trends as well as some of the particularly disturbing accounts that we have heard. If the Committee or any Member would like additional material, I welcome the opportunity to share with them some of the volumes of trends and anecdotes, as well as transcripts from our hearings that our national headquarters has collected. One particularly disturbing trend was the blatant voter intimidation that appeared to occur throughout the Nation. In Georgia, State troopers pulled over a college student who was driving people to the polls. He was told that unless everyone in the van was related to him or unless he had a chauffeur's license, he must immediately cease and desist in driving people to the polls. In several States, including Florida and Missouri, we have received affidavits from African-Americans who were forced to show identification while their white neighbors were allowed access with no problems. NAACP members reported that off-duty police officers and prison guards wearing arm bands and armed with guns were posted outside several polling stations in New York under the guise of ``identifying troubled spots.'' In Missouri, an African-American businessman in suburban Kansas City reported a Christian Coalition voting guide on a table next to a voting machine. Upon complaining to one of the election officials, he was told, ``God wants you to vote for George Bush. God wants Bush to win. Democrat Al Gore kills babies.'' Another very troubling trend that we have identified was the utilization of undertrained poll workers as well as inoperable or malfunctioning voting machines. Again, these trends appear to be more prominent in communities of color across the Nation. The president of the NAACP Arkansas College Chapter reported at hearing that students she had registered were having problems with poll workers not finding their names on rolls, being turned away by poll workers who indicated that their votes would not be counted, that their votes would be thrown in the trash, and being told that the poll workers simply did not feel like looking for any of the individuals' names on the list. In predominantly black Fulton County, Georgia, 1 in 16 votes for President was invalidated. In nearby Cobb and Gwinnet Counties, mainly white counties, only 1 in 200 ballots had been destroyed because of irregularities. In Illinois, more than 50 Cook County precincts reported that on average 1 in 6 ballots went uncounted, while almost every vote was counted in Chicago's outer suburbs. We believe that it is part of our obligation as a non-partisan civil rights organization to insist that all voters be allowed to cast an unfettered ballot and be free from intimidation and harassment as promised in the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The NAACP has, therefore, developed a set of policies and procedures that we are asking every State as well as the Federal Government to adopt prior to the next election. Like most things that challenge our gift of freedom, we must work hard to ensure that our democratic system retains its integrity. Furthermore, it is important that we act now, so as to quickly start to restore the confidence in the electoral process that was lost for so many of our people throughout the Nation, especially in the African-American and Latino communities. Specifically, the NAACP is calling on the Federal Government as well as each of the 50 States to promptly enact laws, policies, and procedures that secure the following: One, ensure non-discriminatory equal access to electoral processes for all voters, including members of the U.S. Armed Forces; two, modernize voting and counting procedures throughout each State, including the utilization of provisional ballots; three, provide necessary and adequate funding and resources to modernize and upgrade all statewide equipment; four, retrain all poll workers and election officials across the State; five, launch an aggressive voter education initiative for new and existing voters; six, expand poll workers' training and recruitment programs utilizing the best practices from throughout our Nation; seven, put into place systems to maintain and easily access correct and up-to-date voter rolls using the latest technology; eight, enhance the integrity and timeliness of the absentee ballot; nine, ensure that every State and municipality are in full compliance with the voting accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993; ten, identify and eliminate practices which might be perceived as intimidating to certain sectors of the population; eleven, establish clear standards for bilingual ballots and interpreters for the language minorities and the disabled; and, twelve, reexamine and simplify and standardize voter reenfranchisement policies throughout the country, State by State. The NAACP realizes that these 12 proposals taken at once may be perceived by some as a tall order, but only by adopting a comprehensive package of voting reforms will we be able to say that we have done all we can do to make sure that our democracy is working. I realize that some of the recommendations that I have laid out for you today go beyond the scope of this particular Committee. I would, therefore, urge you in the strongest terms possible to work with your counterparts on other committees as well as your colleagues in the House to enact an omnibus bill that does address all of the points that I have raised. As such, I would like to bring to the Committee's attention S. 565, the Equal Protection of Voting Rights Act of 2001, which was introduced by Senator Christopher Dodd. Congressman John Conyers introduced the House companion as H.R. 1170. This legislation takes a comprehensive approach to the problems identified by the NAACP and other civil rights organizations in the November election. The entire NAACP organization is determined to follow through on the issue, and we will do everything we can to make sure we do not have the kind of debacle we had in the November 2000 election. While many Americans may decry the fact that some people's rights were trampled on last November, the NAACP is especially outraged and insulted by what happened. These are rights that people marched for and, in some cases, died for only 35 years ago. Our friends and our members today or not too long ago know that it was legal to do these things, and, today, it is not legal, but, in fact, it still happens. Again, I would like to thank the Chairman and Members of the Committee for holding this hearing and for your continued interest and activism in this area. I welcome any questions or comments you might have. Chairman Thompson. Thank you. Dr. Knack. TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN KNACK,\1\ SENIOR RESEARCH ECONOMIST, THE WORLD BANK Mr. Knack. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and Senator Lieberman. I appreciate the opportunity to appear today to testify on voting and election administration issues. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Knack with attachments appears in the Appendix on page 224. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prior to recently moving to The World Bank, I spent 10 years at the University of Maryland and American University studying voting participation issues, including the effects of the Motor Voter bill. I am here today to report on a study on voting technology co-authored with Professor Martha Kropf of the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Following the last Presidential election, a widespread perception emerged that punchcard voting equipment was more prevalent in counties heavily populated by minorities and poorer persons. This perception was based mostly on patterns observed in Florida and in the Chicago and Atlanta areas which were the subject of a front-page story in The Washington Post. As a social scientist, I am always skeptical of generalizations made on the basis of just a few examples. In this case, I was particularly skeptical because the States I knew best did not fit the alleged pattern. In Tennessee, it is mostly the large cities that have the modern electronic voting machines, including my hometown of Memphis where nearly half of the State's African-Americans live. I now live in Maryland, where Baltimore, with the State's largest concentration of poor and minorities, has electronic voting equipment, but, as Senator Thompson noted, rich white people in Potomac and Chevy Chase still vote using a form of punchcard equipment. So I decided to study this issue using data from the entire country rather than citing a few selected examples on one side or the other. We do this by combining county-level Census Bureau demographic data with information from Election Data Services on voting equipment used by the counties in the 1998 election. Our results found little support for the belief that resource constraints cause poorer counties with large minority populations to retain antiquated or inferior voting equipment. Among our specific findings, first, nationally racial differences in punchcard use are negligible, 32 percent of whites, 31.5 percent of African-Americans lived in counties using punchcard equipment. Controlling for county size and other variables, counties with larger percentages of African-Americans actually have a significantly lower probability of using punchcard voting equipment. Second, as Mr. Vargas mentioned, we found that Hispanics are more likely to live in punchcard counties than blacks or whites, but this disparity is attributable entirely to the use of punchcard voting in Los Angeles County. In most States, whites are actually more likely than Hispanics to live in punchcard counties. Third, based on Presidential voting patterns in 1996, Democratic and Republican voters were equally likely to live in punchcard counties for the U.S. overall. Fourth, African-Americans are more likely than whites to live in counties using electronic voting or lever machines, the two types of equipment in which over-voting is impossible if the equipment is programmed correctly. Fifth, of those who live in counties using optical scan systems, 31 percent of blacks, but only 27 percent of whites and only 23 percent of Hispanics have access to the precinct- based scanners that can be programmed to allow voters to check their ballots for over-votes. Because we elect Presidents by the electoral vote and not the popular vote, it is also important to make these comparisons on a State-by-State basis. It turns out that in the majority of States where some counties use punchcards and others do not, it is the whites, non-poor, and Republican voters who are more likely to reside in punchcard counties than African-Americans, the poor, and Democratic voters. Unfortunately, for Vice President Gore and Senator Lieberman, Florida happened to be one of the exceptions to this pattern. Finally, we found that public resources don't seem to matter much. Counties with punchcard systems actually tend to have higher incomes, higher tax revenues, and larger populations than do counties with more modern voting equipment. In counties using electronic voting systems, the most expensive type, per-capita income and property tax revenues are actually lower than in counties using punchcards or any other voting technology. Florida, in fact, is one of the best examples of these patterns. In Florida, it is the largest and richest counties that have retained punchcard equipment up to now. So our study shows that providing financial assistance to replace punchcard technology would not be subsidizing the poorest counties. In most States, including Florida, it would subsidize the richer counties. I would like briefly to mention a couple of other research findings. Another study we have done of survey data shows that three-quarters of 1 percent of all voters at the polls report deliberately not voting in the Presidential contest. This is important because often we hear the terms ``errors'' or ``uncounted votes'' applied to all ballots for which no Presidential vote is recorded, but it turns out that nationwide more than one-third of these invalid votes reflect deliberate under-voting. Senator Lieberman mentioned in his opening remarks that there were 2.5 million ballots not counted nationwide, but our study finds that probably close to 1 million of these were actually deliberate. Of course, we should do everything reasonable to make sure the preferences of the other 1.5 million are accurately recorded, but there are many misconceptions regarding how best to accomplish this. A recent CalTech/MIT study has found electronic systems often promoted as the high-tech solution to chad problems appear to generate the same rate of invalid Presidential votes as punchcard equipment. So replacing punchcard technology with expensive electronic systems might not reduce the number of invalidated Presidential votes. In fact, it would probably increase it in the short run because we do not understand yet why electronic systems are generating high rates of invalid votes. On the other hand, just about everybody is now well acquainted with the problems of punchcard technology, and we can take corrective measures. Apparently, there were very few problems with chad in the Palm Beach County mayoral elections held in March. Voters appeared to take extra care in inserting the card into the machines correctly, to punch their selections forcefully, and tear off any hanging chad before turning in their ballot. We should also recognize that reducing the rate of invalid votes, depending on how it is accomplished, will not necessarily increase the total number of votes recorded. Lever machines are among the best at minimizing invalid votes, but they are also usually associated with long lines because there are not enough of them and they often break down. Longer lines mean more people giving up and going home without voting. Similarly, when voters use precinct-based scanners to check their ballots for over-votes, they can slow things down enormously in densely populated areas. This is why many election officials do not even program their precinct scanners to check for over-votes. To ensure that you do not have long lines that discourage people from voting, you might have to spend a lot more money on new machines than has been estimated. The bottom line is that we should not pretend that there is a simple technological solution to these problems for which we only need to spend a little more money. Thank you. Chairman Thompson. Thank you. Mr. von Spakovsky. TESTIMONY OF HANS A. VON SPAKOVSKY,\1\ MEMBER, FULTON COUNTY BOARD OF REGISTRATION AND ELECTIONS, FULTON COUNTY, GEORGIA Mr. von Spakovsky. That is a pretty good pronunciation. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. von Spakovsky appears in the Appendix on page 278. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chairman Thompson. How did I do? Mr. von Spakovsky. You did very well. Chairman Thompson. Really? I tried to slur it a little bit so that you cannot tell really what---- Mr. von Spakovsky. I am Hans von Spakovsky. I am a member of the Election Board of Fulton County, Georgia. I am going to talk mostly about absentee balloting in my testimony. In an effort intended to reverse a long-term decline in voter turnout and to increase voting convenience, some States have adopted no-fault absentee balloting statutes as well as early voting. However, removing the voting process from the polling site is not good public policy for a number of reasons. First of all, when combined with some of the side effects of Motor Voter, absentee ballots make the job of vote thieves easier. Unfortunately, the United States has a long history of voter fraud from an election in New York City in 1844 in which 135 percent of the eligible voters turned out, to more recent cases involving fraudulent absentee ballots in 1993 in Philadelphia, in 1994 in Green County, Alabama, a county commission race in Dodge County, Georgia in 1996, and the Miami mayors race in 1997 in a case involving 5,000 fraudulent absentee ballots. While allowing registration at government offices, for instance, which Motor Voter provided, is a good idea, some of its other provisions have opened security holes in our voting process. For example, Motor Voter made it illegal for States to check someone's identification before allowing them to register to vote, and it mandated mail-in registration. When you combine that with absentee voting, an individual can register and cast an absentee ballot without any election official ever seeing them. That makes multiple registration and multiple votes very easy. I can guarantee you, Senator, that if you picked up five mail-in registration forms, completed them under five different names, mailed them in, you would get registered and you would have the ability to cast five votes, and the chances of you getting caught are slim to none. Second, no-fault absentee ballot laws do not increase voter turnout, as some people think, and they may lead to greater declines in turnout. There was a study released last year that showed that early voting and no-fault absentee voting States did not see related increases in turnout and actually performed worse in terms of having lesser increases in years where there was a slight upturn in turnout, such as 1992 and 1994, than States which did not adopt either of these procedures. I would urge skepticism of you if you are urged to legislate to make it easier to obtain absentee ballots on the claim that this will increase turnout. Motor Voter was passed on the claim that eliminating registration requirements would increase turnout. What has happened is that registration has increased, but turnout has continued its general decline. Third, absentee ballots make vote-buying and voter intimidation easier to commit, and they make poll watching impossible. The secret ballot prevents coercion, and it helps prevent vote tampering. It was instituted in the United States in the late 1800's to prevent these very problems which were then prevalent in American elections. Absentee ballots are voted in unmonitored settings where there is no election official and no independent election observer present to ensure that there is no illegal coercion or intimidation. The ability of poll watchers to monitor polling sites is also an important guarantee of the integrity and security of our election process. That kind of transparency must be maintained. No-fault absentee ballot laws make it easier for campaign organizations to engage in tactics such as requesting absentee ballots in the names of low-income housing residents and senior citizens and either intimidating them into casting votes or completing their ballots for them. Absentee ballots also make vote buying easier because buyers can make sure that votes stay bought, something not possible in the traditional voting location. We make a necessary exception for military personnel or the physically disabled who cannot go to a traditional polling site. However, because of their inherent security risks, absentee ballots should remain an exception and not the rule. When voters cast absentee ballots in large numbers, the cost of political campaigns, which are already prohibitive to many citizens, are also significantly increased. As all of you know, the bulk of the money spent by campaigns is in the last few days before election on advertising and Get Out the Vote efforts. When significant numbers of voters cast absentee ballots, any candidate who does not spend that kind of money on those efforts throughout the entire balloting period will be at an inherent disadvantage. No-fault absentee balloting and early voting increase the cost barrier to the average citizen to be involved in the election process. The right to cast a vote in a fair and secure election is our most precious right. Every American citizen who is eligible to vote should be able to do so with a minimum of administrative procedures and statutory requirements. None of the measures that can and should be taken to amend Motor Voter and tighten State election laws would infringe on the right of citizens to vote. I have made a series of recommendations for changes in State and Federal statutes, and that is attached to my written testimony. That is all of my testimony, Mr. Chairman, but I would like to ask your indulgence for one more minute to address some allegations about Fulton County that were made by one of our other panelists, Mr. Shelton, if I may. Chairman Thompson. You will get that opportunity. We will get to that in our questioning. Mr. von Spakovsky. Thank you. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Senator Lieberman, would you like to begin? Senator Lieberman. Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to the four witnesses for some excellent testimony. Let me just see if I can focus this on a few questions. The question before us, I had the number of 2.5 million. Whether it is 1.5 million, it is still a lot of voters as Dr. Knack's study suggests, a lot of voters who actually went to the polls and did not have their votes counted. We have had a series of different suggestions about why or why not that happened, and I think I want to get a little bit later to what we in the Federal Government or the States can do about it. But let me just focus in and ask you from your work. Mr. Shelton, I will begin with you. How do you explain that? What do you think are the causes of those millions of voters not having their votes counted? If you had to cite the most significant ones, what are they? Mr. Shelton. I think a number of things. I think the voting systems themselves, antiquated systems in communities. I think lack of education, the utilization of those voting systems. I think in some cases, untrained poll workers to be able to provide some assistance. We had so many people testify that even if they made mistakes with their cards, as they were filling out their voting cards, they were not allowed to make any changes and were told to either discard them or just simply present them. Things along those lines created major problems. I might add that we are seeing some solutions to these problems that are showing some ray of light. One of the examples shown to us was in Detroit, Michigan. Detroit is a city that is predominantly African-American. It has a very heavy poor population, but, for the first time, utilized optical scan systems. It was 4 years ago that they had an over 7 percent error rate in the Presidential election. In this last election, they brought that down to right around 1 percent. Senator Lieberman. That is great. How were they voting last time? Mr. Shelton. The last time, they used punchcards primarily, but, this time, they used optical scan; that is, the scratching grid. Senator Lieberman. Right. Mr. Shelton. You put it into an optical scanner. It leaves an auditable trail by leaving the paper ballot behind. If there is a problem in it, it kicks it back out and tells you so that you can make the adjustments. Senator Lieberman. If you voted more than once for a given office, the ballot will come back out at you. Mr. Shelton. Anything that would discount the ballot, it would kick it back out and would set off an alarm so you could go back and fix it. But the things that made it most effective were the training of the electorate itself; that is, everyone that was registered to vote was given the opportunity to be trained in precincts throughout the State. There was a systematic approach to training voters and also training poll workers to utilize this system. Senator Lieberman. Who sponsored those training programs? Mr. Shelton. They were sponsored by the Detroit Board of Elections Commission, and the head of the commission, as a matter of fact, who testified not too long ago on the House side. So it proved to be very effective; in other words, the combination of efficient, effective equipment, training, and education. One of their rules is they sent out a sample ballot in advance so that people can also become familiar with how the ballot is going to be set up, and, actually, their precinct standards are that ballot must also reflect the structure of the ballot they are actually going to be coming in to utilize on Election Day. Senator Lieberman. Those are very helpful examples. While I am speaking with you, Mr. Shelton, how do you explain the higher rates of uncounting of ballots cast, if I can put it that way, among people of color? I cited the Secretary of State of Georgia study, and there was a study in USA Today a while ago that had similar points made. Mr. Shelton. I think confusing ballots are part of the problem. I think poll workers that are not trained to assist people that are coming to the polls and being able to fill those ballots out adequately and in a way that they will actually be counted. I think on the other end of the spectrum, we have ballots that were not counted because they were simply lost; that is, we experienced some things in Florida where entire ballot boxes disappeared and we are still waiting for them to show up. So you have from one end of the spectrum to the other, Senator. Senator Lieberman. You just tweaked my interest there, but I am not going to pursue that line of inquiry about those boxes showing up. Mr. Shelton. We have some ballot box numbers that we are still looking for. Senator Lieberman. OK. Mr. Vargas, how would you answer that question? I suppose particularly from the perspective of the growing Latino- American community. What do you think are the most significant problems? Do you agree basically with what Mr. Shelton said, or are there other problems here? Mr. Vargas. I would echo many of the examples that Mr. Shelton gave, but I would underscore the need for well-trained and bilingual poll workers. We ask a lot in our country of poll workers. We ask them to work 14-hour days, to engage in a very long and tedious task, and, yet, we do not compensate them for that. We ask them to do that as volunteers, and then we wring our hands when we cannot find enough people who are willing to sit, sometimes in cold garages or a cold auditorium, and sit there for 14 hours trying to run elections. Then we want them to be well trained. We want them to be expert in voting procedures. We want them to be bilingual. We want them to be articulate. We want them to be helpful. But then we do not want to compensate them for that. So it is very unattractive for anybody to want to engage in that kind of work. I think we have to value our voting systems to the point that we value the work that we ask of poll workers, and we need to encourage more Americans to undertake that valuable task to make sure our democracy works. We work closely with the L.A. City and L.A. County registrars to encourage high school students and college students. Oftentimes, we are able to negotiate them to get credit from the government classes in order to engage in this task, but sometimes it is a hard sell to tell students, ``OK. In order for you to do this, you have to sit here for 14 hours and sometimes skip your lunch in order to make this happen.'' We need to value the work that they do. Senator Lieberman. It is obviously an unusual job because it happens once a year, maybe---- Mr. Vargas. Actually--no, sir--it happens all the time. There are elections held virtually every single month in jurisdictions all over the country. Los Angeles, for example, had its municipal elections in March. Senator Lieberman. A while ago. Mr. Vargas. And we are going to have a run-off in June. There are elections in San Antonio in May. Senator Lieberman. I agree. What I am saying is to be a poll worker, it is not a full-time job. So you are bringing people in to do it on an occasional basis, maybe more than that, one time for a day. The question is how do you get a cadre of people in sufficient numbers who are adequately trained, and maybe the Detroit example--and I know there are other programs like that around the country--of training is a good one. I want to bring you back to the Voting Rights Act because, as we react to what we learned in the 2000 election and Congress considers being involved here, one of the questions being raised is what can Congress do. It is our tradition, though these are national elections, that they be run and administered locally, but there is statute, as you point out in your testimony, Mr. Vargas, that it is pretty clear. Congress has previously--and Presidents have supported this--reached a judgment that there is a fundamental national interest and constitutional principle on the line that the law has prescribed quite in some detail what local election officials should be doing to protect those constitutional rights. You mentioned that in regard to language accessibility. How do you interpret those sections of the Voting Rights Act? Do they require, for instance, poll workers who are adequately trained and are bilingual, and at what point, just for the record--how many people who are bilingual and may need language assistance at the poll trigger the requirement that something special be done for them? We have heard stories in the last election that Asian voters, for instance, in some parts of New York either had ballots which were done in Chinese in one case that were reversed. They did not actually describe either ticket, and others, there was just not adequate language translations going on. So what under existing laws is the requirement, and what more might we, or should we, do? Mr. Vargas. Well, as I recall, the Voting Rights specifically states that in those jurisdictions where they have 10,000 or more individuals of a single-language minority group, or 5 percent of the eligible voters overall, and where there are certain rates of illiteracy in English combined. So you need to have a certain number of folks of a particular language group, 10,000 or more or 5 percent of the overall eligible voting population, coupled with high rates of illiteracy in English in that jurisdiction. Where those criteria are met, then local election institutions are required to provide language assistance. It does not specify that it be bilingual poll workers and so forth. It just specifies that those individuals should be able to exercise their right to vote with sufficient assistance. Some folks provide the actual ballot in non-English languages. Sometimes they provide guides that translate the ballot. Sometimes they actually do provide individuals at the polling booth who are bilingual. Senator Lieberman. So I presume that there is a lot of unevenness in the reaction of various voting jurisdictions to that requirement under the Voting Rights Act. Mr. Vargas. Exactly. It is very uneven, depending on what resources are available, and this, I think, is one area where the Congress could help local jurisdictions ensure that all U.S. citizens are able to exercise their right to vote in an unfettered way, as Mr. Shelton said, by providing the resources to develop the kinds of infrastructure to allow all Americans to vote. Senator Lieberman. Dr. Knack, my time is ending, but I found your testimony quite interesting, particularly regarding the connection between income in voting districts and the use of the punchcard system or not. In your studies, do you agree that the punchcard system among the choices we have for voting is less accurate, and, therefore, regardless of the income of the given district, as a national goal, we ought to be trying to reduce and ultimately eliminate the use of the punchcard system? Mr. Knack. I think as a long-term goal, that is right. I do not think there is any particular reason to be in any big rush to get rid of it over the next 2 years or even 3 or 4 years. As I mentioned, I think at this point, people are aware of all the defects and can take corrective measures. Where it is still in use in the 2004 election, I would guess that the invalid vote rate in those areas turns out to be lower than in areas using other kinds of equipment. Senator Lieberman. If you were the chief election official and wanted to run an election in a particular county, where you wanted the most votes possible that were cast to be counted, what system would you go for? Mr. Knack. I do not think there is enough good evidence on that because, if I wanted to minimize the rate of invalid ballots, meaning of those who show up at the polls, what percentage of them show no recorded vote for the Presidential contest, then either lever machines or precinct count optical scan systems would probably be the best, judging by the data. Senator Lieberman. The so-called old lever machines? Mr. Knack. That is right. They show a very low rate of invalid ballots, but the problem with these systems, as I mentioned, can be that unless you are willing to spend huge amounts of money to have a lot of these machines there, you can end up with long lines. Senator Lieberman. Long lines, yes. We have those lever machines still in Connecticut, and this is not about last year, but I cannot help but say it. It did strike me when the news about the over-votes came out that, if some of those counties in Florida had not been so advanced and stuck with the old lever machines, I might not have had the privilege of being at this hearing today. Mr. Knack. It is very possible. Senator Lieberman. Thank you. With your indulgence, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Shelton, do you want to respond at all--I will give you the choice--to the notion that the punchcard system does not fall disproportionately on lower income or voters of color generally? Mr. Shelton. No. What we found is that regardless of the numbers that are being shared with us, we are finding that African-American voters are most often in areas that utilize punchcards, and we are finding that those are oftentimes creating mistakes and problems from having their votes counted. Let me put it very simply. For instance, we are going to hear more about this. Even Fulton County, when you have 1 out of 16 African-American voters having their votes thrown out and the other local counties being like 1 out of 200, that shows that we have major problems with punchcards, and I guess you could make arguments for other systems as well, but the point being that, for some reason, very high numbers are thrown out and punchcards seem to be the culprit in most of those cases. Senator Lieberman. Thank you. Thanks to all the witnesses. Chairman Thompson. All right. Thank you. Following up on that--Mr. von Spakovsky, I know you wanted to respond to that, and the statement that I think you wanted to respond to is Mr. Shelton's statement in his prepared remarks that the NAACP has received reports that some States, particularly Georgia, Illinois, and Florida, routinely disenfranchise thousands of voters, primarily in low-income and ethnic minority communities. In predominantly black Fulton County, Georgia, 1 in 16 votes for President was invalidated, and nearby Cobb County and Gwinnet County, both mainly white, only 1 in 200 had been destroyed because of irregularities. Then it went on to say, interestingly, in Illinois more than 50 Cook County precincts reported that on an average, 1 in 6 ballots went uncounted, while almost every vote was counted in Chicago's outer suburbs. What is your statement on Fulton County? Mr. von Spakovsky. Let me point out a couple of things. First of all, Fulton County does have a high rate of under- votes, but I should point out that we are the largest county in the State, and it is not 100 percent African-American. It is probably about 45 percent white, about 55 percent black. So that rate you are talking about applies not just throughout the City of Atlanta and other areas of the county, but in some of the very wealthy suburban parts of the county which are predominantly white. So that rate applies everywhere. There seems to be some implication here that this somehow racially intentional. Let me point out that the board that I serve on, of its five members, three are African-American; of our board of commissioners, seven members, four are African- American. The reason for the difference is that Cobb County and Gwinnet County switched. They used to use punchcards just like Fulton County. They had high under-vote rates, just like we did. Last year, their board of commissioners voted to spend the money to switch to precinct scan, optical scan systems, and their under-vote rate dropped down dramatically. I am proud to say that prior to the November election, our board of elections submitted a request to our board of commissioners to get rid of the punchcard equipment we have and to give us the money to purchase precinct opti-scan systems. Frankly, it looked like they were going to vote to do it in the 2001 budget until all the news started hitting at the end of December and beginning of January, right before they voted, on all the bills being dropped in Congress and the fact that there might be Federal money coming down the pike. Then, when our Secretary of State, her news hit that she was going to ask the State legislature for money, and all of a sudden the county commissioners, just like any elected official down at the county level when they see the potential of Federal or State money coming down, suddenly said, ``Well, wait a minute. We are not going to vote in our county budget for the money to do this.'' I would be happy to give Mr. Shelton the names and phone numbers of our Democratic commissioners on our board of commissioners, to please call them and ask them to vote to spend the money to buy this equipment. Chairman Thompson. They obviously have not been watching the speed with which Congress responds. Mr. von Spakovsky. Well, we are trying to make them change their mind. The precinct scan system can make a dramatic difference. I would cite an example. Polk County, Florida, in 1996 had an election controversy that was almost like a forerunner of what happened in November, and they were using a central opti-scan system. They had 6,000 under-votes because of the scanners not reading the ballots. It was such a problematic election that, as soon as the election was over, they switched to a precinct scan system, and the next election, they dropped to having only about 800 under-votes. Chairman Thompson. This whole area troubles me greatly in terms of trying to figure out what the nature of the problem is, and it seems that one of the things that you can say about it is that we have had problems with elections in this country, maybe any democracy, ever since we have had elections. We have had people intimidated at the polls, and we have had people buying votes. We have had people engaging in voter fraud. That is not to minimize it, but that is a problem when you have got a big country and thousands of voting precincts and such important things at stake at election. This last election, I am trying to get to the heart of the problem. Mr. Shelton, I think, very candidly and properly responded to Senator Lieberman's question, what is the nature of the problem. He mentioned several things, voting machines and poll workers, voter education, worker training, using latest technology and so forth, and I think we are learning a lot more about that, what we can do in that regard. There is an underlying message here that there is at least a series of local conspiracies to keep black and poor people from voting. If that is true, the Justice Department ought to be out there en masse. I know you filed a complaint before the end of the year. I do not know what, if anything, has been done. I think some of them have been disproven. I think some of them are still open. But that is the answer to that. That is violations of the law, and we have laws against that, State and Federal laws, and that ought to be pursued. We had witnesses here last week talking about voter fraud. We could have filled the room with witnesses talking about what they have heard about voter fraud. You could fill the room with witnesses talking about intimidating at the polls. So where does that leave us in trying to come to an accommodation? It has broad social implications here. I think we are dealing in an area that is volatile. It is serious. When you talk about routinely disenfranchising thousands of voters, that even voters using machines, that certain groups have their votes thrown out, what are we saying here, that there is a nationwide conspiracy of if they are conspiring? Cook County--I do not understand what the point is. I do not think the allegation is that the folks in Cook County are conspiring to deliberately disenfranchise African-American voters. I do not think that you could make that case just on the face of it unless you can come in with individual instances. I do not think it is fair to the States and the people running the elections involved, which are bipartisan and biracial in most cases, if we are not willing to label it what it is and not willing to try to get the Justice Department down there to look at it. On the other hand, if that is the case, some people need to be in jail. If it is not the case, we ought to be very careful about how we describe the nature of the problem. As I say, I think you are going to have all kinds of improprieties. There is no question that there were some in this last election. There is no question that some voters were intimidated in this last election. I think it probably happens all the time, unfortunately, but we can talk about all of these things that we can do in terms of bettering the system, but if what we are really saying is that we have localities, both north and south--and Michigan, you mentioned in your statement--in Illinois, in Georgia, in Florida, if we have places in more than these where in some way either the elections boards or the poll watchers are deliberately disenfranchising anybody, we have got a much more serious problem in this country than anybody ever realized. I would have thought that the Justice Department would be on this like a chicken on a june bug if there was prima facie cases of this. If we do, we need to face up to it. On the other hand, if we have a certain amount of that, but we have a large amount of untrained poll workers, lack of education initiative, lack of using proper technology--what you seem to be saying--you did not jump to the conspiracy theory. You responded in terms of constructive things that we can do, but there is a subliminal, not very subtle implication throughout all of this. I am not using you as an individual, but everybody, all of us, that, yes, we have these little problems, we need some voting machines, but what is really going on with these massive conspiracies or small conspiracies all over the country? There is no way to address it other than to get prosecutors down there in individual cases. I hope that is what is going on. What is going on as far as the Justice Department is concerned? I know you filed a complaint. Do you know? Mr. Shelton. We are waiting to hear. Perhaps that is another issue for a hearing before this Committee is to find out what the Justice Department has done thus far and following through on the many complaints that have been filed by the NAACP and other civil rights organizations as well as along this area. We would like to know as well. Certainly, the Voting Rights Section of the Justice Department can do a great job on individual cases, but when you have the volume of cases that we have here, I guess one of the questions that could probably very well come before this Committee and certainly the Judiciary Committee of the Senate is how are we funding the Voting Rights Section of the Justice Department, do they have the capacity for a quick response when complaints come out prior to an election, during the Election Day, and just after the election. I think you are seeing that we overwhelm the Justice Department, and I would love to see an increase in the budget, as a matter of fact, for the Voting Rights Section, but if you look at this particular budget being handed down by this particular President, we do not see such a line item. Chairman Thompson. Some of these accusations are State law violations, also. Mr. Shelton. Yes, they are, but, of course, the Federal Government has oversight. Chairman Thompson. There are States that are scattered around the country. So, certainly, there is some responsibility there, too. Mr. Shelton. Sure. Chairman Thompson. Dr. Knack, I do not know if you addressed this at all in your statement. I do not know if you got into this, but do you see any patterns in terms of discounted or invalidated votes? Do you see any income or racial patterns there? Did you come across that at all, one way or another, in your studies? Mr. Knack. We are working on a study now on this. Again, it is a nationwide county-level analysis. We are finding that in counties with more African-Americans that there are more invalidated Presidential ballots, even when you control for education and other variables to the best of our ability to do so. Obviously, education levels is not the full story. You cannot really measure quality of education and other things that you like to control for. This ethnicity effect seems to be stronger in areas with certain kinds of voting equipment. The greater rate of invalid Presidential votes in counties with more African-Americans, that relationship is stronger in counties that use punchcard equipment and optical scan equipment and paper ballots than it is in counties using the new DRE equipment or the old lever machine equipment. Chairman Thompson. Oh, I see. So, even though there is not a disproportion in terms of the use of equipment with regard to race, that is pretty much it, but where there are punchcard ballots in minority communities, the rate is higher? Mr. Knack. That is right. So you cannot attribute differences in the rate of invalid ballots across races to differences in the equipment used, but a given kind of equipment for whatever reasons, differences in educational quality or who knows what, can cause a high rate of invalid ballots for one group than another for a given type of voting equipment. Chairman Thompson. All right. Thank you very much. Is Senator Carper still with us? Senator Lieberman. He is not. Chairman Thompson. Did you have anything further? Senator Lieberman. Very briefly, Mr. Chairman. Mr. von Spakovsky, perhaps Mr. Shelton will help you in this, but the sad fact is that thus far, I would say that you should return to Fulton County and tell your fellow commissioners that it is not at all clear yet that help will be on the way from the Federal Government regarding either the law or funding. I hope that can be changed. I hope that these hearings can help to make sure that we do not leave what we learned last year, and I am not talking about Florida alone or about the outcome of the election, but about some of the things that you all have testified to here, without trying to do something to make it better. It is that fundamental. This is one of those elements of our public life that, for the most part, remains invisible unless there is an extraordinarily close election as there was last year, and when there is, when we see something revealed, that surprised me about the national implications, how many people were either turned away from the polling place because of registration list problems and one home disappointed or voted and did not have their votes counted. I do appreciate the tone of responses here. As you said, Mr. Chairman, there may be conspiracies in some places. It may be the way the machines are set up, the failure to educate and train the poll workers, the lack of clarity in the ballot, perhaps the lack of adequate training to handle bilingual voters. It may have the effect, even without a conspiracy, of having a disproportionately negative effect on the ability of some groups in our society to vote, but, just overall, the fact that so many people cast their vote and did not have it counted last year is something we ought to do something about. I hope that we can continue to focus on that, something as simple as poll worker training. In part, you hope that other States--Florida had a particular imperative to act, but what they did was quite significant last week, and I think it will have a very positive effect. Hopefully, as this continues to receive some attention, other States will act as well, and then, hopefully, before long, we can do the same. I honestly do see this as an extension of the Voting Rights Act. If somebody casts their vote and it is not counted, that is a denial of the right to vote, and I hope that we can find a way with the help of the testimony that you have given today to do just that. So I thank the four of you for being here. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Thompson. Likewise, I thank you very much. I appreciate your being here with us today. It was very helpful. We will now proceed to our second panel. The witnesses are: Sharon Priest, Secretary of State for the State of Arkansas; R. Doug Lewis, executive director of The Election Center; Conny McCormack, registrar-recorder and county clerk of Los Angeles County, California; and Samuel Wright, co-chair of the Uniformed Services Voting Rights Committee for the Reserve Officers Association. Thank you very much for being here with us today. Ms. Priest, please proceed with your testimony. All of your written remarks will be entered into the record in their entirety. Thank you. TESTIMONY OF HON. SHARON PRIEST,\1\ SECRETARY OF STATE, STATE OF ARKANSAS, ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SECRETARIES OF STATE Ms. Priest. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Lieberman. I appreciate the opportunity to be here to represent the National Association of Secretaries of State, and we appreciate your willingness to hear from us, the Nation's Secretaries, on the work that we do surrounding elections in this country. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Ms. Priest with an attachment appears in the Appendix on page 284. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- You already have my written testimony. So I am just going to summarize what I have there. First of all, I think it is very important that we remember that elections are the core of our democracy, and if our elections, if our core is bad, then it casts doubt on everything else that we do. I think given the voter turnout and participation, that is something we all should be very aware of. I think it is also worthy to note that many States have existing election laws that are good, and part of the problem is that those laws are not carried out. If there are violations, they are not always prosecuted. I think that is a very important part. I think election law violations ought to be prosecuted. We do not want to send little old ladies to jail, but there are instances where violations really need to be dealt with and dealt with seriousness. The Secretaries in February adopted a resolution that you have a copy of in my testimony, and we will be coming forward with more specifics in July. So we will, hopefully, be able to give you additional information. We have talked a lot about voting equipment, and I think you will all agree that part of the issue is voting equipment was not designed to be voter-friendly. Voting equipment was designed to give us the results as quickly as possible, and as a result, we see a lot of voters either making mistakes or not understanding how to operate the equipment. Senator Lieberman, you alluded to Secretary Cathy Cox's testimony before the Presidential Commission on opti-scan, and, in fact, they found that in opti-scan equipment, there was 5 percent under-vote in 21 counties. One county has a 15 percent under-vote, which is remarkable. In Georgia, they also found that on the same equipment, minorities had more under-vote than over-vote, the same equipment, the same county. So I think the jury is still out on what is the best equipment, and although I think everybody would like to say give us new equipment, that will solve all our problems, I think that is unrealistic, and I think there is a lot more that goes into elections. There is people, the process, and the technology that make up the whole elections process. I also think, to avoid civil rights violations, mandatory poll worker training is necessary, and you have heard previous testimony that talked about the difficulty of finding poll workers, the difficulty of training poll workers, and the difficult job that poll workers do. I always say that we tend to hold poll workers prisoner for 14 hours on Election Day, and we have an aging poll worker workforce. Recruitment is very important, but training is, I think, very important in terms of civil rights violations because I do not think poll workers are aware that if they violate somebody's civil rights, they are personally liable for that. There is no shelter from Federal, State, or local government, and we do not want to frighten poll workers to death and say, gosh, they are afraid that they are going to do something improper and be personally liable, but they have to be made aware so that, when there are issues that come up, people are not turned away from the polls because of personal prejudices. Recruitment is something that is very important. I do not think we have to hold poll workers prisoners if we can recruit enough people. Some States actually do pay poll workers. In Arkansas, we pay them the minimum wage, which is not a whole lot, but if we can recruit additional poll workers, we can work in shifts. We can have some people coming in, in the morning, some in the afternoon. I am endeavoring to get involved the 2- and 4-year colleges, as well as the private and public sectors to help us with poll workers. Most of our communities, most of our corporate sectors, are good corporate citizens and will provide us people who will work for a festival, for example, but they have never been approached and asked if they would provide poll workers, and I think that is something that we need to do. Voter education is a very important piece of this as well. It is very important that voters know that just because they register or apply, actually apply to register to vote under NVRA at the Department of Motor Vehicles, unless they receive their voter registration card, they are not registered. They need to know that they have to follow up on that. It is not automatic. Hilary Shelton talked about students. In many cases, students need to be made aware that they have to choose their residence. So, if they are going to school in Arkansas and they are from Chicago, they show their primary access as Chicago, that their application form is going to be forwarded to Chicago and they will be unable to vote in Arkansas. Some States have residency statutes dealing with that, but I think, again, it is a voter education issue. Voters need to know about candidates. They need to know about issues. They also need to know about how to operate the equipment. We had a lot of first-time voters in this last election, and, basically, they were never told about how to use the equipment. They walked into the precinct. Somebody said sign here, vote over there, and they were confronted with something they had never seen before. So I think being able to educate the voter on all of those issues is going to help make sure that fewer mistakes are made. I think the other thing is flexibility and funding. I think that it is unrealistic and, in fact, I would be very concerned if you were to throw money at States without any strings attached. I think that all of us who are elected have a fiduciary obligation to ensure that we are good stewards of taxpayer dollars, but I think there is flexibility in terms of how that funding is sent to the States and also on spending guidelines. Some States may need it for equipment. Some may need it for voter education. Some may need it to help supplement poll worker training. So there are a lot of areas, I think, that funding can be used. I do not want you to think that the Secretaries think this is solely a Federal obligation or a Federal burden. We in our resolution said State and local governments need to step up to the plate as well, and we want to partner with you. We do not want you to shoulder the entire burden. Democracy, as you know, does not come cheap. We pay a heavy price for democracy in this country, and that is why we know that you cannot run government like a business. So I think that while we are looking at the ability to return taxpayer dollars to the people of this country, I think we would all appreciate that, but I think our democracy is so important that has to be a key in there and we need to look at spending some of that money to ensure the fairness of our democracy. Our democracy depends on our abilities to work together without partisan battles for the best interest of our country. Thank you. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Mr. Lewis. TESTIMONY OF R. DOUG LEWIS,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE ELECTION CENTER Mr. Lewis. Thank you for having me here. It is always a pleasure to be with these fine panelists. I have been with them pretty much anywhere and everywhere in the country together. So we are all singing the same tunes constantly, it seems like, and we have sat on virtually every commission created to discuss this issue. So, in 5 or 6 minutes, it really gets tough to tell you all that we have now discussed for hundreds and hundreds of hours, but let me say to you that I am hopeful that with all of the conversation that has gone on, with everything that you have heard, with everything that you have seen, that you move cautiously and judiciously. This is a very complex process. It is a process in which all of the estimations of the imminent death of democracy are probably not right. It is a process in which all the estimates of how much fraud has gone on are probably not right, and all the allegations of denial of civil rights is probably not right. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Lewis appears in the Appendix on page 286. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The truth is that in 98.5 percent of our elections in America, things went very well. We have problems. There are systemic problems that did not start with the election of 2000, that have existed, that continue to exist, and part of those are going to continue until we have enough funds and enough training of enough people and enough elements of this process that we can fix those. Certainly, when it gets down to the way we administer democracy, we get a far better form of democracy than we deserve or than we pay for because, roughly, only one-quarter of our elections officials have at least as equally well funded an operation as any other part of government. Senator Lieberman, I think you said as high as 3 percent of the counties budget is spent on elections. I would be surprised in most cases in America if it amounted to one-half of 1 percent of a county budget. That is how it has been ignored, and 75 percent of our jurisdictions run on thin air. We are talking about elections officials that we pay $16,000 or $17,000 a year to for a full-time job, and they still make it work despite the fact that their county commissions and their city and town councils do not appropriate the money to make it work. So, when we get to voting equipment, which everybody is focused on in this election and everyone seems to think that is a magic solution and a magic answer to this, and the truth is it has always been about policies and procedures--and people and laws--and the way you do those and the way you administer those. Certainly, we cannot allow a situation to exist in which any element of our society feels that it is denied equal access to participation. If you do not believe that the process is fair, you cannot believe in the government that results from it. We know that. We do not look at this as being one of those deals where we try to make sure that certain elements of society do not get to vote. That is not the case. It is simply not the case. We try to qualify all the voters. We try to include all the voters. But there are also misunderstandings about how the process works, and particularly in terms of inexperienced voters. If you go vote for the first time and you are told that you should go vote or somebody has encouraged you to go vote and you get up and you go try to actually do that, if you have not registered, in most States you are not going to get to vote. That is just the simple fact. So we have an education process to do with the voters, and particularly with inexperienced voters. All of the studies that we were talking about before in terms of whether it disproportionately affects African-Americans or what the reasons are for that, the truth is that if you are inexperienced, no matter what your color is, no matter what your background is, you are going to make mistakes in the process. We have not taken enough of that into consideration when we started planning and making the process work for those folks. We have all presumed as a society, as policy-makers, as administrators that people knew how to do this process. Well, it certainly has been proven that they do not always know how to do this process. Is there a role for the Federal Government in this? Absolutely. The notion that the Federal Government ought to stay completely out of it is not correct. Yet, at the same time, I am encouraging you folks to go slowly about intruding on it to the degree that we try to run it from the Federal level. It works best by being administered at the State and local level, and, certainly, we believe that the Federal voluntary voting system standards are absolutely critical to the improvement of American elections and the continued health of American elections and that is administered by the Office of Election Administration currently within the Federal Election Commission. We certainly believe that the operational standards that go with those, to show the best practices, need to be developed, but we have been saying that for 7 years and Congress has never put this into statutory authority and never given anybody responsibility to do it. We also believe that the Office of Election Administration ought to be researching on voting systems in which types of voting systems counties have and where voters make more errors on them in terms of that and tracking over-votes and under- votes so that we know what a national norm is and then how to figure out ways to correct some of those problems. We believe that the Office of Election Administration's publications are absolutely critical to the continued well- being of this process. They publish, what most of you all probably do not even know, a series called an Innovation Series. As running a national non-profit, I am envious of that series because it really can go to all of the jurisdictions in America, and it is very helpful in terms of the way to administer that. But that, again, is something Congress can do and make sure happens. Certainly, we need a new elections class of mail so that when we mail to voters, the biggest expense other than voting equipment and other than personnel is our mailing costs in elections. It certainly ought to be worth something to the Federal Government to establish an elections class of mail so that we can deliver first-class mail at about half the current first-class rates. Clearly, education and statewide databases are needed. We need to look at voter education, but let me say this. We are not going to build voter schools. This is not going to be the Field of Dreams. We are not going to build voter schools and have them come. They are not going to automatically show up. What we are going to have to do is show new voters how to vote in this process in probably 2 minutes or less inside the polling place and to make sure that they do not disqualify their ballots when they do so. We are going to have to use different things other than just printed information. We are probably going to have to do that visually and auditorially, and we are going to have to do a little studying to figure out how people learn how to do things in very short doses and very short time spans. Then, let me wrap up with we must have provisional ballots. I have done a survey at The Elections Center to find out how many of our States do not do this. I have 39 responses so far. Out of the 39 responses, 19 of the States do not offer provisional ballots. So we have a problem here that needs to be looked at, but when we solve that problem, we need to look at it with a couple of answers here. There are some States where the provisional ballot would be more cumbersome than what they do; that is, Election Day registration. The second set of States that are more cumbersome are going to be those that allow you to vote by a voter affidavit. You just swear that you are a resident and you, therefore, do not have to have it ever proven. So those States do not want to make that change to where they have to go to provisional ballots. Finally, let me say to you please have faith in the elections administrators of America. They want to do the right thing. They want to make this process work for everyone. These are our citizens. They live next to us. They are our neighbors. We want them in this process, and the assumption that we are somehow designing the system to keep them out of this process is a faulty assumption. These people want to make the right choices and want to do the right things, and a national coalition of those folks, 37 of them representing all of the elections administrators in America, are going to offer to you and to the public in late June or early July a national plan of how to fix a lot of these problems, through the Election Center's National Task Force on Election Reform. Thank you. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Mr. Lewis, all of that practice has served you well, I must say. Ms. McCormack. TESTIMONY OF CONNY B. McCORMACK,\1\ REGISTRAR-RECORDER/COUNTY CLERK OF LOS ANGELES COUNTY, CALIFORNIA Ms. McCormack. Hon. Senators, I really appreciate the opportunity to come today and talk to you about the very important issue of electoral reform in this country which to me as a 20-year election administrator is certainly in my heart. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Ms. McCormack with attachments appears in the Appendix on page 290. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am the registrar of voters in Los Angeles County, California, which is the largest election jurisdiction in the United States. We have 4.1 million registered voters, and last November, we cast 2.7 million ballots, which was more ballots cast in our county alone and counted in our county alone than in 41 of the individual States in the United States. We even have 540,000 absentee ballots we had to individually deal with, and that was more ballots cast than in eight States. I began my career as the registrar of voters in Dallas, Texas, 20 years ago and moved on after a few years there to San Diego, and now I have been in Los Angeles for 5 years. So I have presided over literally thousands of elections and many recounts as well that I hope to have an opportunity to tell you a little bit about. In last year's election in Los Angeles County, we had to staff 4,963 precincts with 25,131 election poll workers. We had to process over a half-a-million absentee ballots, and we had to write software that would accommodate all of the ballots- counting accurately, which includes merging absentee ballots in with Election Day ballots. For 33 years in Los Angeles County, we have been on the punchcard voting system. It is time to change. Last year, before the November election, I asked my board of supervisors for the funding to institute a pilot project for the electronic voting, the DRE system, and I am glad to say that they did give me a half-a-million dollars to begin a pilot program. We had a pilot program where, during the early voting period in the 2 weeks before the election, we set up nine locations around Los Angeles County. I have seven offices in the county because I am also the recorder of deeds and the county clerk, and we set up in our offices plus two city clerks so that anyone of our 4.1 million voters could go to any one of these locations in the 2 weeks before the election, including the Saturday and Sunday before the Election Day, and cast a ballot on the new electronic equipment. This was especially popular to people who had English as a second language. We have a very diverse community in Los Angeles, and by Federal Voting Rights Act requirements and local ordinance, we print our ballot in seven languages, but, with a punchcard with seven languages, it is very cumbersome for a person to go in with a translation and try to vote. But on the new touch-screen equipment, the very first thing they did when they touched the screen was choose the language. We had hundreds of voters come in and vote in Tagalog, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and in other languages, and they were literally in tears saying how easy it was to read their propositions in their native language. Propositions in California--it is a long ballot--are hard enough to understand in English. So this was a very popular feature. Also, this new equipment allowed us for the first time to have blind and visually impaired voters vote without assistance. I actually used the equipment and voted on it blindfolded. It was incredibly easy. You use an audio headset and a raised keypad, and we had hundreds of voters come in accompanied only by their Seeing Eye dogs and cast ballots privately and independently for the first time in their lives. It was a tremendous experience. We had a wonderful response from it, and we partnered with the Braille Institute and the Center for the Partially Sighted and they sent out for us 8,000 brochures to all of their members encouraging people. At their own expense, they sent out this mailing since we have no money in elections. They brought in people to try the new system. It was a big success. We had 21,963 of our voters cast ballots on the new system, and 99 percent of the surveys that they filled out said that they loved it and it was a lot easier than the punchcard system. Later, I hope you will ask me some questions in following up to Mr. Knack and also the CalTech study as to what we saw with over-votes and under-votes in the same demography of our county compared with the punchcard system because, I think, it is more enlightening than what we are reading in some of the preliminary--and I urge this--studies from CalTech because now I am working with them so they can understand a little bit more about some of the variables that they are finding. As I mentioned, these features are very important that we have this in a diverse community, but with punchcard balloting, we simply are limited and cannot do this type of special feature voting. I would like to make some observations and recommendations. As I will echo some of what Doug said, the conduct of elections in this country involve candidates for Federal office as well as candidates for local office, and, yet, counties bear the sole responsibility for paying for all of these elections. When we have cities on our ballot, we have water districts on our ballot, they are all assessed a proportionate share of the cost. The election cost in Los Angeles County for the November election, for our county alone just to administer one election, was $20.4 million. The Federal Government took up space on that ballot, and they were the only entity that gave us zero pennies to conduct the election. We had water districts that do not have a nickel, and they had to pay us to conduct their part of the election. I do not think that is appropriate. I think that we should at least be able to assess a fair share to every governmental entity that shares the ballot in the election. My board of supervisors that I report to is fully supportive of completely converting our punchcard voting system, but in a county our size with 5,000 voting precincts, the cost to do that would be $100 million for the equipment alone. I have asked my board to have a $3-million infusion of funds this fiscal year to expand my early voting project, and I have to tell you, $3 million out of my county's budget of $15 billion dollars and my own personal departmental budget of $72 million sounds very small, but it is in total jeopardy of even getting $3 million because right now our county has a deficit in the health budget of $184 million. If I am sitting on my board of supervisors and I have a $184-million hole in the budget, it is hard to decide whether or not they can afford to give me $3 million. As of right now, they have not given it to me, which means I will not be able to continue the touch-screen project at all in 2002 because we cannot just go at the same level we had it the last time. We know we are going to have more people come out and want to use it. Similarly, our State is in complete financial turmoil and crisis right now. There is a bill in the State legislature that would appropriate up to $300 million to help with voting equipment, and without the electricity crisis costing an additional $54 million a day, I think we might have gotten it. It was the right year to ask for it. It was the wrong year. The lights are out, as you are probably reading about. I called home, and we do not have any electricity. So, again, it has been relegated. Unless we get some Federal funding to assist in this process, the voting reform and financing of new equipment is always going to remain illusive, the number 11 on every local government's top-10 list of priorities. It will just never surface, and we need to invest in the infrastructure of our democracy. One means to do that, as we have said, is a 50 percent reduction in postal rates. This would really save my budget when I mail out half-a-million first class absentee ballots. It costs hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. In addition, in California, we mail every voter, every one of our 4.1 million voters, a sample ballot, and those costs are very, very high. We need to have some sort of a subsidy of the postal. That would be, I think, something fairly easy for the Congress to do. Another possible source of funding could be a checkoff box on the IRS tax forms. We need to look at creative ways to find not just a one-time source of money to buy equipment, but sustainable funding because problems in elections start because we do not have any money and ratchet all the way down in not having enough money to pay for poll worker training. Our Federal Government spends over $30 million a year supporting democracy-building in foreign countries. We spend not a dime here. It is time we spent a little money in our own country to do some democracy-building. We had the Census last year, and the Federal Government put $100 million in an advertising campaign. It was a great campaign. It made people aware of the importance of the Census, and it had the effect, especially in Los Angeles County, of having a higher rate of Census completion than we have ever had before. Arturo Vargas here today and I know each other, and we all worked with the organizations. It was very successful, and I sat on the Census Committee. We need that type of investment in voter outreach in this country. If we can spent $100 million on the Census, why cannot we spend some Federal dollars on letting people know about the processes of election. We hear all about campaigning and the money that is spent there, but just so people can understand what the process is, how you actually vote, put some PSAs on the TV, show people how to punch the hole or touch the screen or color in the optical scan ballot. Why was that so revolutionary to spend a little bit of money advertising? We cannot do it in 2 minutes at the poll. We cannot do it. We ought to look at other foreign countries and be a little bit embarrassed. If you may remember, in Mexico they used to spend no money on their elections, and it was a problem. After their 1988 Presidential election, before the 1994 Presidential election--and I was able to go to observe that election--they infused a huge amount of their national dollars and required poll worker training for a week. You had to have a college degree to be a poll worker. This cost a fortune in their government, but it was paid for. I went down there and I saw polling place officials who knew what they were doing, had incredible supplies. Here we are and our standard for poll workers in the United States is if you prick them and they bleed, they are hired. I mean, that is truly the standard of getting a poll worker in our county, and 30 or 40 percent of them quit without telling us about it. We are left with people who do not know what they are doing at the polling places, and that ratchets all the problems that you have heard about and the anecdotal issues. We need to have testing of our poll workers. We need to pay them a decent wage, and we need to say this is important. If it is important, we should fund it. It is that simple. I see that I am over my time, and the rest of my testimony, I am sure you can ask me questions about, but I wanted to reiterate that one size does not fit all in elections. We really cannot say that an optical scan system or this type of system or another type of system will work in every jurisdiction. It simply does not. We need to have the authority, the ability to look at innovation, to realize that in Alpine County in California, with 700 registered voters, it does not need the same voting system that I need in Los Angeles County with 4 million registered voters and seven languages, which we anticipate may be 10 after the next Census. Thank you very much, and I look forward to your questions. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Mr. Wright. TESTIMONY OF SAMUEL F. WRIGHT,\1\ CO-CHAIR, UNIFORMED SERVICES VOTING RIGHTS COMMITTEE, RESERVE OFFICERS ASSOCIATION OF THE UNITED STATES Mr. Wright. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Lieberman. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Wright appears in the Appendix on page 310. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The controversy in November 2000 about the uncounted absentee ballots in Florida has put this issue that I have been trying to raise for 20 years on the national radar screen, but the problem did not start in the year 2000 and is not limited to Florida. There has been a lot of discussion among the prior witnesses about the cost of democracy. I respectfully suggest that the greatest cost of democracy is not represented in dollars, and the men and women that serve in our Armed Forces are the people that are called upon to pay that cost. As I mentioned, it is not a new problem. I found some hearings conducted in 1952, a year after I was born, by the Subcommittee on Elections of the House Administration Committee about disenfranchisement of military personnel in the Korean War. So it is the same problem now that it was then. There has been some progress in recent years. Arkansas passed a great legislation just a few weeks ago on our issue. Senator Thompson mentioned the Florida bill passed just a few days ago. It includes several provisions that we were pushing for. So at least we have put the military voting issue on the agenda when all of these other broader problems are discussed. I know the voters we are talking about numerically, I am sure, are very small percentages compared to the other issues that have been discussed, but I respectfully suggest because of their sacrifices for our country that they are entitled to special consideration from the Federal Government as well as the States. As you can appreciate, there are three time-consuming steps in absentee voting, especially if you are outside the United States. The request for an absentee ballot must go from the voter to the election official, and then the unmarked ballot must go from the election official to the voter. Finally, the marked ballot has to go from the voter back to the election official. Each of these steps can take weeks, and it is subject to being lost if you have to depend on the Postal Service. I have had this problem myself. I am a Captain in the Naval Reserve. I am not on active duty now, but I have done a lot of on and off active duty, most recently, from October 1999 to March 2000 in Tampa and Bahrain, but mostly in Tampa. I sent in a Federal postcard application form to vote in Virginia's Presidential primary on February 29, 2000. I mailed it from Tampa, Florida, from the post office at MacDill Air Force Base. It was postmarked 1 February. It was 11 days later that it came back marked ``returned to sender, attempted, not known.'' I sent it to the Registrar of Voters of Arlington County, Virginia, using the address contained in the Voting Assistance Guide. It turned out, it never left Tampa. Somehow my return address was confused for the address where I wanted it to be sent. That happens 1 or 2 percent of the time with all mail, but why did it take 11 days and why did it get this little note showing, attempted, not known? The Postal Service could not answer that question. As long as we are depending on snail mail, we are going to have these problems. I favor as a long-range solution a properly designed system of electronic voting through designated computers at U.S. military bases at home and abroad and also at U.S. embassies and consulates. We talk about the military, but there are also 2.5 million voting-age American civilians outside of the United States, and they are eligible to vote by absentee ballot at least for Federal offices and that has been true under Federal law since 1975. We need Federal legislation. As I mentioned, there were hearings in 1952. In those hearings, it contains a letter to Congress from President Truman who called upon the States to solve this problem. He also called on Congress to enact temporary legislation for the 1952 Presidential election. He wrote any such legislation by Congress should be temporary since it should be possible to make all the necessary changes in State laws before the congressional elections of 1954. Well, it has not happened that way. Here we are, almost half a century later. The States have had their chance. They have not solved this problem. The Congress has the power to raise and support Armies, to provide and maintain a Navy. Other legislation, the Veterans Reemployment Rights law, now known as the Uniformed Services Reemployment Rights Act, has been applicable to the States as employers since 1973. The States objected to that, and the constitutionality was upheld. So I think under the War Powers clauses of Article I that Congress does have the authority and responsibility to solve this problem at least for members of the Uniformed Services. In 1940, when Congress first enacted a reemployment rights statute as part of the first peacetime conscription statute, Representative R. Ewing Thomason of Texas forcefully asserted that this is Uncle Sam's law, this is Uncle Sam who is drafting these men, and he ought to be fair enough to see that the law is enforced. What is true of the statutory right to reemployment in one's pre-service civilian job, I respectfully suggest should be even more true of the constitutional right to vote. I would invite the Committee's attention to the first paragraph of President Truman's 1952 letter to Congress. ``About 2,500,000 men and women in the Armed Forces are of voting age at the present time,'' that being 1952. ``Many of those in uniform are serving overseas or in parts of the country distant from their homes. They are unable to return to their States either to register or to vote. Yet, these men and women who are serving their country and in many cases risking their lives deserve, above all others, to exercise the right to vote in this election year. At a time when these young people are defending our country and its free institutions, the least we at home can do is to make sure that they are able to enjoy the rights they are being asked to fight to preserve.'' I suggest those words are at least as true today as they were in 1952, and they are addressed in the 107th Congress. In my written statement, I have attached what I think are some of the specific provisions that should be included in Federal law. They are included in the proposed Military Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, H.R. 1377, and Senator Allard has introduced very similar legislation in the Senate, guaranteeing that a member of the Armed Forces does not lose a right to vote because of absence from a place pursuant to military orders, even if he or she has changed their mind about where to live after leaving the military. That provision has passed the Senate, each of the last 4 years, as part of the Senate version of the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act. It has not yet gotten through the House because of States' rights objections, but I hope it will pass both houses this year and be signed into law by the President. The proposed Federal legislation would also provide for late voter registration for people recently separated from the military. As long as you are on active duty, you do not have to be registered in the traditional sense. You use the Federal postcard application, but when you leave active duty, then you must register in the traditional sense. You may be returning to a community from which you have been away for several years or you may be moving to a new community after you leave active duty, but in either case, you must register to vote. If you do not leave active duty until shortly before or even after the voter registration deadline, you are going to be disenfranchised. More than 20,000 service members leave active duty every month, including that last month before Election Day, and I think maybe the most important provision in the proposed Federal legislation this year is electronic voting, at least as a demonstration project for the 2002 congressional elections, and we hope that it will work well. I think the technology exists to provide for a private and secure electronic vote for people in the Armed Forces, their voting-age family members, and any U.S. citizen outside the United States. Thank you. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. Senator Lieberman. Senator Lieberman. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to this panel for very interesting, very helpful testimony. I thought, Madam Secretary, that you made a very interesting point which is that maybe the machines that we are using now were designed more for speed of calculation or ease of calculation than ease of voting. I wonder if that message is getting over now to those who design and make machines. Do you think that is different for the latest forms, the optical scanners and the DREs? Ms. Priest. I think it is somewhat different, but, for example, we used DREs as a test in early voting in our largest county, Pulaski County, and there were a great deal of problems with them. Senior voters were a little bit intimidated by approaching a computer, and they had not seen it before. I know that Doug Lewis thinks that this is not a Field of Dreams, but I think we have to do more than just dealing with showing them something on Election Day. I think election officials must go out to drug stores, Wal- Mart, public health clinics, civic clubs, and show people how equipment works. You just do not bring something in and throw it out there and expect people to automatically know. So I think it is changing. Senator Lieberman. Yes. Ms. Priest. But this real sense that we have to have instantaneous information---- Senator Lieberman. Yes. Ms. Priest [continuing]. Is really a difficult issue to overcome. Senator Lieberman. Yes. That is a very interesting perspective, and I agree because it puts the emphasis in the wrong place. The right place, obviously, is to have a system that counts people's votes and makes it easier for them to vote. I thought all of you were helpful in your specific suggestions. I think you said that the Secretaries are getting together a little bit later this year and will make a set of recommendations. I look forward to those. Let me ask you about some of the ideas that are on. One idea that came out of the Florida situation and it seems to have fallen off--I am curious about your thinking--is that we ought to have at least a uniform voting system per State so that everybody in a given State votes the same way, whatever, levers, paper ballots, punchcards. What do you think? Ms. Priest. Personally, Senator, I think that we ought to have a statewide uniform system, even though in Bush versus Gore, the equal protection issue came out sort as a one trip, 1 day, one train. In actual fact, I think it is an argument that will be used by State legislators, for example, who cross county lines. So I do think that it would be very helpful for States to have a uniform ballot. Senator Lieberman. Ms. McCormack, as you said, more people voted in Los Angeles County than in 41 other States. That is quite remarkable. Everybody in the county has the punchcard, I take it. Every voter in Los Angeles County votes with a punchcard. Ms. McCormack. For the first time in November 2000, they did have the option. Any one of the voters could have gone and used the touch-screen, but only during the early voting. It started 2 weeks in advance up until the weekend before. Senator Lieberman. Yes. You did mention that. Was it widely used? Ms. McCormack. It was the first time and only at nine locations, and it was not heavily advertised. We tried to get advertising, but Riverside County, our neighboring county, had put in all touch-screen and they got all the publicity. I was calling up all of the editors at the L.A. Times saying, ``You know, I think this paper is published in Los Angeles, and you are writing an awful lot of stories about Riverside.'' They then ran one story after that. We had 21,963 people do it, and the experience in Las Vegas and in Dallas, Texas, that have tried the electronic voting 4 years ago and then the next cycle after that, it is exponential growth. Las Vegas is actually voting a third of their voters early now on the touch-screen. I think that in 2002, if I get my $3 million, which is in jeopardy at the moment, we wanted to have 50 sites available at shopping centers, and that we would have hundreds of thousands of people try it. Senator Lieberman. Yes. That is great. Ms. McCormack. So we are phasing it in, but to go to all of our whole 5,000 precincts is $100 million which, of course, we do not have. A statewide voting system, it sounds like a good idea. I think some States are more homogeneous than others. Certainly, our State is not homogeneous, and as I mentioned, some of our counties are very small and others are very large. So I am not sure that is necessarily a solution. Senator Lieberman. Why have you decided to leave the punchcards? Maybe it is self-evident. If you could just give a brief answer. Ms. McCormack. Well, it really is not self-evident. I have a report, and it is attached to my testimony that explains why optical scan systems just do not work in a county of our size. They are very good for 95 percent of the country for under a half-a-million voters in a jurisdiction that does not have a lot of languages on the ballot. It is very cumbersome and very expensive to get a optical scan. Senator Lieberman. That was a very important point you made that the touch-screen of the DRE really allows you to communicate with voters in different languages very easily. Ms. McCormack. Yes, very easily. Senator Lieberman. It is easy for them, too. Ms. McCormack. It was very easy because you could walk into any one of these nine locations. You qualified on the voter file to make sure that you are one of the voters. Then you are issued a card that is programmed to pull up your ballot style. We had 263 different combinations. We have 17 congressional districts. We have lots of assembly and water districts, with 263 different combinations, in seven languages, and it had to be tallied down to the precinct level. So multiply 5,000 times 263 times 7. Each one of those machines had 9 million combinations in it. So, as soon as you put it in there, it could call up 1 of 9 million. There is just no other system out there, and until these were certified--and this is new equipment---- Senator Lieberman. It is impressive. Ms. McCormack. It was very impressive and very easy. I had an 85-year-old voter who said she had never used an ATM in her life, and she did not want any instructions. She wanted to see if she could do it, and she loved it. She had no problem with it. Senator Lieberman. But you definitely decided that it is time to leave the punchcards, that they do not give you the kind of range and accuracy that you want. Ms. McCormack. They do not give us the range and the accuracy, and the study that CalTech--and I am working now with them because their preliminary study really needs to be adjusted and I think it will be before they come out with a final because they really are not looking--they were looking at a lot of different types of touch-screens from back in the 1980's and early 1990's that really were not very user-friendly and easily could have under-voted on them. I, frankly, tried to use one of them, and I could not even figure out how to use it. The ones that are out there now are incredibly user- friendly. You cannot over-vote on it, so that eliminates that. The number of under-votes we had in our touch-screen was a half-a-percent compared to 2.2 percent on punchcards that people are familiar with, but if you just think about putting a ballot, punchcard ballot into a piece of equipment and trying to find this, you have some stylus breakage. You have some people who do not understand. You have hanging chad issues. You have people who skip a race inadvertently. I have to believe that if 2.2 percent of the people in L.A. County skipped the Presidential race, as I think Mr. Knack said, there is a natural under-vote of maybe about .7 of a percent, which we saw .5 of a percent in the touch-screen. That means if you subtract those out, the other people probably did want to vote in the Presidential race, and between the over- votes of people who on punchcards, the half-a-percent who voted for two, which I am sure was inadvertent somehow, thought they were punching something else after they made an error and did not get another card, that is 29,000 people in our county alone that if we were on touch-screen would have had their votes counted for President. Senator Lieberman. That is significant. Ms. McCormack. I think it is a lot. Senator Lieberman. I gather that from groups or advocates for disabled Americans that the DREs are also, generally speaking, helpful to them, too, in helping them vote. Mr. Lewis. Yes. Senator Lieberman. Madam Secretary, obviously, we all got educated about the so-called butterfly ballots, and it raises this question that I never had thought of before because we use the levers in Connecticut, which in themselves force you to stand there for a minute and kind of get oriented, but what is typically done and then what should be done by election officials to try to provide a ballot that is clear for the voters, that is as clear and unconfusing as possible? Are ballots tested in any way? What should we do? Ms. Priest. Generally speaking, I do not think ballots are tested. I think one of the things that used to be done more frequency than is done now is sample ballots. For example, when I first got into politics, that was something that we did. We did a drop on the weekend before the election of a sample ballot. Newspapers do not seem to be printing sample ballots as they used to, and candidates do not seem to be using them as a tool anymore. So, with the different configurations, it is very difficult to put out one ballot that everybody is going to be able to identify with. So I think local newspapers can help. I think counties can help if they put out sample ballots for their constituents. I know it is expensive, but, as I said, democracy, it is either worth it or it is not. I think it is. Senator Lieberman. Amen. I agree. Mr. Wright, I appreciate your testimony and this long quest you have been on. I think your idea of electronic voting by overseas voters is an excellent idea. I gather that there was a pilot project, very small, that the Department of Defense carried out in last year's election, maybe less than a hundred voters. Mr. Wright. Yes, sir. Senator Lieberman. What do you know about how it worked? Mr. Wright. Well, at least for the 88 voters that participated, every single one of their ballots was counted. Senator Lieberman. Well, that is a good percentage. Mr. Wright. I think the system maybe was a little too complicated. It had this long procedure that you had to sign up in advance of the election. I would like to see an electronic voting system that you could do it in one sitting. You could sit down and communicate with your election official back in your homestate and then complete an electronic equivalent of the Federal postcard application form. If there is a mistake, they tell you what the mistake is right there in real time, instead of weeks later in the mail. Then, once you got it correct, you have the ballot there on the screen. You mark your votes, and it could have a system built in to prevent over- votes or under-votes or at least to direct the voter's attention, ``Hey, you forgot to vote for particular offices. Is that really what you intended?'' Then you push send and you do the electronic equivalent of the affidavit on the back of the ballot return envelope. If there is a mistake, they tell you right then and you can correct it. Whereas, when you depend on the mail, people are going to be disenfranchised by even a small error. Senator Lieberman. Good for you. Well, keep pushing, and maybe we can help you. What you are asking ought not to be too difficult or complicated when you think about how many single- seeded transactions involving great sums of money are carried out every day, millions of times around the world. Mr. Wright. The military uses a system like this to transmit top-secret communications. Senator Lieberman. Yes, exactly. Mr. Wright. So, with encryption, there can be safeguards to ensure that the system is private and secure. Senator Lieberman. Thanks. My time is up. I know we may have a vote soon. So I want to yield back to the Chairman. I thank all of you. Just a final request. Please do send us your specific ideas about what an ideal piece of Federal legislation, judicious as Mr. Lewis counseled us to make it, would contain. Thank you. Chairman Thompson. Thank you. I want to follow up on that, but, first, I cannot help but note we are going to have a hearing here next week on the Postal Service. While cut rates for voters would be a good idea, the only people in worse financial shape than some of these localities is the Postal Service. They are losing money and raising rates themselves. We are kind of stymied every direction we turn in, it seems like. It seems to me that the situation is this basically. We have elections in this country. We are on the ballot. You have Federal elections, State elections, local elections initiatives and so forth. Everybody pays something except the Federal Government for those elections, and we hand that off to the States to run it. Now we have these problems, and localities and States are saying, in some cases, we need more help, and the Federal Government's response is probably going to be, ``Well, OK, but we want to tell you how to use the money,'' and you run right into federalism issues and so forth. One of the things that we do--seem to be able to do up here better than anybody else--is research and development. I was specially interested, Mr. Lewis, in your idea of perhaps developing a national norm. It seems like most of the legislation that has been proposed as to setting up a commission to look at all the things that we should consider, in other words, the same things that we are doing with all these hearings, to see maybe if we are going to try to impose or suggest or induce towards certain rules or standards that we know what we ought to be pushing toward. Even those who get over the federalism hurdle are concerned that what makes us think that we know what the solution is. In looking at this, I would like a short answer, if I may, if you will, from each of you. Do we all agree that the Federal Government ought to participate more, at a minimum, some kind of matching funding, block grant-type thing for voter reform? That would be the minimum, I guess, moving toward the possibilities of money to be used for specific purposes. To what extent should we go down that road, and if we get to the point of trying to induce toward specific things, what is the most important thing? We mentioned a lot of things. Most of them sound like strictly State and local responsibilities and obligations, some of them, maybe not as much, but if we are going to pass a bill and we are going to past something of just setting up another commission and we are going to buy into the idea that we really do pretty much know and can at least agree on certain things that all States ought to be moving toward, what are those things? Do you have a top one, or if you need to, maybe one or two? First of all, what about the federalism issue? Should the Federal Government even be involved in this, past maybe a little funding? Ms. Priest. Senator Thompson, I think the Federal Government ought to be involved in it because you have a great stake in this, as we do at the local and State level. I think continuing to fund the Office of Election Administration, making sure--as you said, the Federal Government is very good at R&D. OEA can do a lot to help State and local in terms of voluntary practices, management practices, updating the Federal voting system standards which have not been done since 1990. I do not think at any time we should say we have solved this problem, we have thrown half-a-billion dollars at it, we have solved this problem, and think that we can go away and forget about it. Elections are an ongoing thing, and we have got to continually work to tweak the system to make sure as times change that the elections systems change with it. But I think the Federal Government has a very important role to play through OEA in terms of voluntary practices. Chairman Thompson. So your idea would be there is a lot of things we can do from an educational standpoint to show the Nation the kinds of things that work that they might consider doing. I might say parenthetically that Maryland and Florida apparently have shown what States can do when people get together within the State on a bipartisan basis and sit down and figure it out and make a commitment to do it. So, again, how much do we need to do? Mr. Lewis, I will ask you the same question. Mr. Lewis. You know, there is always this argument, Senator. You all have served in government long enough to know that the locales hate the States and the States hate the Federal Government, and none of us want anybody to ever control our actions or to interfere with our administration of whatever our fiefdom is. Yet, at the same time, we come to you with our hands out and say give us all the money we can stand and put into our process, but please do not tell us anything at all to do with what we do. That is the standard age-old argument and process. The problem is that in 225 years of running elections, the Federal Government has not put in one dime, and the problem is in about one-quarter of our States, they have contributed to it, but in three-quarters, they have not. So what we have is that we have run Federal elections and we have run State elections out of local coffers. Yet, somewhere in here, there has got to be an equity factor that says that you all ought to be paying your fair share somewhere in this process. Yet, at the same time, if accepting Federal dollars begins to mean that you have to now change dramatically the way you administer the process and that you now have to spend more of your time complying with verifications that you did certain things and that half of the dollars go away in terms of administrative accuracy checking and information checking, then it gets to be almost more of a burden than it is worth. Chairman Thompson. Then you would have some States accepting the Federal standard and some States not---- Mr. Lewis. Exactly. Chairman Thompson [continuing]. And a new disparity would be created. Ms. Priest. Yes. The process is important enough for each level of government to have its responsibility of funding the operations of this, and Lord knows--listen, at the local level, bless those people's hearts. They have tried to fund it, but, in many cases, our local governments do not have enough funds for all the competing goods that go on. We, in the elections community, are always the last part of that because they look at this as not understanding what it is that those staffs do and they do not understand where the money goes. Chairman Thompson. Keeping in mind what you said about if you make the requirements too onerous, people are not going to respond to that, if you had it within your power and you get over that hurdle and the federalism issue to several million dollars and perhaps billions of dollars to spend this on the Federal level, would you spend it, and what would be your priorities? If we are not paying for anything, should we just send a check, or should we send it with some strings, and if so, what is the most important string to you? Mr. Lewis. We want you to be like parents. We want you to send all that you have, and we will find a way to spend it. Then we will tell you how we spent it, which may not match up to exactly how we spent it. The truth is that, certainly, when we are talking about voting systems in America, voting systems are horrendously expensive for locals to do on their own. I mean, $100 million. I will bet you by the time that Conny McCormack is done, it will be a whole lot more than $100 million by the time she is done actually getting a new system in and getting it implemented. The $100 million is only the beginning because then you have all of the maintenance costs that go with it. Chairman Thompson. Should we suggest what kind of system should be used? Mr. Lewis. No. I do not think so. Chairman Thompson. What if they want a more sophisticated punchcard system? Should we be sending Federal money for that? Mr. Lewis. I think, obviously, we have not done enough research over a long period of time to find out which systems truly favor voters. Chairman Thompson. That is what these bills address. Mr. Lewis. I understand. Chairman Thompson. So maybe we are on the right track. Mr. Lewis. But in terms of having one system nationwide, no, I do not think that is the answer. Chairman Thompson. Ms. McCormack. Ms. McCormack. Well, first of all, I would like to say that there are a lot of Federal laws on the books that require a lot of expenditures for those counties that are complying with them. For example, the Voting Rights Act and the language requirements in our county and the oral assistance of the polls, the recruitment program we have, the translation program, of the $20 million I spent on my election last November, more than $2 million was on compliance with the language requirements alone of the Voting Rights Act. Chairman Thompson. Unfunded mandates. Ms. McCormack. Completely unfunded. Every single election, my board of supervisors has to come up with that $2 million. ADA compliance. A lot of counties just say I am not going to comply, we do the best we can, we have no money. Voting rights, NVRA with the Motor Voter and all the issues and costs that has incurred in putting together inactive voter lists that we have to keep for 5 years--I would be very happy to see some money coming against the laws we have already put in place. Forget new funding. It would be nice to see some funding for all the laws that we already have. In terms of what you are saying, how can you assure that you would get some consistency, I think the American public has the right. This is my personal opinion, whether it is in the task force report which I sit on or not. The American public has a right to expect some consistency in the election process, and they are not getting it. I think that the Federal Government certainly has a role to say maybe they would encourage through incentives of who gets the grants. Maybe you would have a better shot at the grants if you have provisional balloting in your State and a recount process. It astounds me that there are States that a voter or candidate cannot get a recount if they want it. It is at the discretion of some canvassing board or something. In our State of California, anybody can get a recount, and believe me, we have them every election. There is some recount that goes on. They have to pay for it. The person asking for it has to pay for it, unless it is overturned, and we have had one that was a tie vote that was overturned. I would like to see some funding coming against the mandates we have now. I do not personally have a problem with Federal funding having an audit requirement and having some accountability. I think that it is naive for us in these positions to think that people are going to hand us money without some accountability. I have no problem with that, personally. We have to account for everything else we do. Why not Federal funding? Chairman Thompson. It is kind of interesting, isn't it, that we place strict limitations on how much money a Federal candidate can raise and what increments he can raise it in, and, yet, on Election Day, when the votes are going to be counted for that office, he is totally subject to a State or local process there with no Federal involvement at all? Mr. Wright. Ms. McCormack. It could be a lot better process if we had a little bit more money. Mr. Wright. Yes, sir. I am a member of the Federalist Society, and I believe in States' rights, but I also think that the Founders clearly contemplated that national defense would be at the core responsibility of the---- Chairman Thompson. We can rule him out for a judgeship, I guess. Senator Lieberman. I was just going to say, I have some friends who would like to talk to you that are interested in going on the Federal bench. Mr. Wright. I am not a candidate for the Federal bench. The Founders contemplated that national defense would be at the core of the testimony of the responsibility of the Federal Government. Senator Lieberman. That is right. Mr. Wright. I think there is a role for Congress in this area. I mentioned the 1952 hearings and the half-century of inaction in the States, but, maybe more fundamentally, I think if we are going to have electronic voting, which I think is the answer, it is probably going to have to be by Federal legislation because the Department of Defense could implement one system. It cannot implement 50 systems or 55 systems. So, even if tomorrow morning, all 50 States said you are right, this is terrible that service members are being disenfranchised and you are right that electronic voting is the answer, but Connecticut comes up with one system and Tennessee with another and Michigan still another, then how is the Department of Defense going to administer a system like that? Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. I am over my time. Senator Levin. Senator Levin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN \1\ I wish I had been here for all the panels, but let me just ask this panel the question. Is there an emerging consensus as to what the ``best system'' would be if we were starting from scratch right now? Would 75 percent of election officials across the country say this is the way to go? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The prepared statement of Senator Levin for May 9 appears in the Appendix on page 116. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ms. Priest. Senator, I would like to tell you the answer to that was yes, but I am afraid that the jury is still out. There is a lot of research that has to be done on equipment to determine what is the best, and even then, what is the best for Arkansas may not be the best for California. Senator Levin. So 75 percent of the election officials, in your judgment, across the country would not say right now, putting aside cost, starting from scratch, this is the best system in your judgment. Mr. Lewis. Mr. Lewis. No. Senator Levin. Do you agree with that? Mr. Lewis. In fact, the problem is that it is so complex. From the one standpoint, I think most of us admit that the DRE systems are very good when it comes to disability and language minority and certainly are very fast and useful. Yet, you cannot count absentee ballots on DRE systems. You have to get over that fundamental policy fear that you do not have a paper ballot to go back to, which a whole lot of policy-makers within given States cannot wean themselves from the paper involved in the process. I think none of us are going to be up here defending punchcards, but, certainly, in terms of optical scan versus touch-screen technology being the two principal systems--the one thing we do know is that precinct- based systems are far better than central-count systems in terms of making sure the voters do not make as many errors. Senator Levin. OK. Ms. McCormack, would you agree? Ms. McCormack. Well, as I said in my testimony, one size does not fit all, and where the optical scan system may be very good for 95 percent of the country, if someone forced me to do it, I would quit because I would not preside over an election in Los Angeles County on an op-scan system because, with seven languages and the size of that ballot, the cost of that ballot, we could buy the DREs in a few elections. San Francisco converted from punchcard. They used that up to 1996. Well, they used it up to 1999, converted in 2000. They have many languages, and they did not realize---- Senator Lieberman. To the optical scanner? Ms. McCormack. To the optical scan. Now after one election, they are thinking of literally checking the entire investment, which was millions of dollars, and going to a DRE because they spent for their county--and I am 10 times bigger--$700,000 on ballot card costs per one election. We were using punchcards. Most of us that use punchcard are big counties, and we use them for one reason. I have to order about 4 million by the time I get all of my absentees for a half-a-million dollars. I do not want to spent $7 million on ballot cards. I would need another building to store them in. That is what happened in San Francisco, and they did not think about all of the logistics, and they were caught up in a system that did not work for them. It works for most counties. It is in my accompanying documentation as to why one size does not fit all, but I do not think that is necessarily the major issue for the Federal Government is to worry about which system. I think innovation is important, and I think that we are seeing a lot of innovation in this field in the last few years with the DREs. I think it would stifle that innovation if there was some sort of a requirement to have a uniform system. Senator Levin. Mr. Wright, let me ask you about some military voting issues. Mr. Wright. Yes, sir. Senator Levin. On the Armed Services Committee, we have real concerns about the military folks who are not really given an opportunity to vote or whose votes are not counted because of confusion and mixup, or there is no postmark, and all the other problems that we ran into. So we are trying to figure out how to improve that system. As a matter of fact, we have a request to the GAO to carry out a comprehensive review of the implementation of the current law, the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act of 1986, and Senators Warner, Cleland, Hutchinson, and I think others have joined in that request to the GAO. But in the meantime, you have apparently carried out this test or the test has been carried out---- Mr. Wright. I did not carry it out. Senator Levin [continuing]. Which you are familiar with, which I think Senator Lieberman was asking you about. Was that test carried out in many jurisdictions? You said there were 88? How many voters? Mr. Wright. There were only 88 voters. Senator Levin. Do you know how many jurisdictions? Mr. Wright. I think it was one whole State. Mr. Lewis. There were four States. Mr. Wright. There were four States, but one State they did for the whole State. Mr. Lewis. South Carolina. Mr. Wright. Not all absentee voters. Mr. Lewis. South Carolina. Mr. Wright. It was South Carolina, and then there were certain counties in Florida and Utah and--I forget which. Mr. Lewis. Texas. Mr. Wright. In Texas, right. Those were the four States. They started out with saying it was going to be 500 voters in five States. Somewhere along the line, Missouri dropped out. I am not sure why. It ended up being 88 voters, but at least for those 88, those people cast votes that were, in fact, counted. Whereas, the people that voted by mail, a substantial percentage were not counted for various reasons. Senator Levin. All right. When you have different voting systems not only in different States, but you have dozens of voting systems within the States themselves, how does that electronic system that you are talking about--that national electronic voting system--interface with that huge variety of voting systems? Mr. Wright. I do not think there is really a conflict there because the voting systems these other people have talked about primarily are for people voting on Election Day or people voting in what they call early voting, where they are still there in person to cast the vote, albeit maybe a few weeks before the election. When I voted by absentee ballot more recently in February 2000 in Arlington County, even though we vote with an electronic system and on Election Day in Arlington County, they sent me a punchcard and a half a paper clip. Senator Levin. Mr. Lewis, in terms of the interface---- Mr. Lewis. The interface, as I understand it--now, I did not see the actual test, but as I understand it, they relied on their own ballot design and then transmitted. They basically got the ballot from the local jurisdiction and then reprogrammed it to fit into the system so that they could then transmit the information back to be counted in that system. Senator Levin. So they would have to design their own system to meet every single local jurisdiction in every State? Mr. Lewis. As more of us move to electronic systems, they will be able to talk with each other and be able to do this. The electronic portion of this means that ballot design and being able to retrieve that from anywhere in the country is easier. Senator Levin. Is there any way that the current overseas ballots system can be improved without going to the electronic system? Can any of you comment on that? Ms. McCormack. I would like to comment on that. First of all, I would like to mention I don't know about this experiment except what I have read and what Doug Lewis has read, but the difficulty is if it is just going to be a Federal ballot, that would not be so difficult, but we had 263 ballot styles just in L.A. alone. I know when we did Desert Storm, 10 years ago or whatever, we had to get all of those ballot styles in a Federal system. That was very interesting. Somehow we managed to do it. Right now, when people are overseas, and we have thousands of people overseas from Los Angeles who vote from overseas and we got many applications this year on E-mail, we accept an E- mail application. So we had thousands of people who at least cut off some of the front end on the process. Right now, the Federal law needs to be changed, I think, because it requires 30 days in advance for the person to have applied for a Federal write-in ballot, and if they wait until 10 days or 20 days out, it is too late. You had to have already had an application in the process. It would seem logical---- Senator Levin. Received more than 30 days? Ms. McCormack. Yes, previous to the---- Senator Levin. Or postmarked more than 30 days? Ms. McCormack. Received. So it does not really seem to make a lot of sense when our own State, in 7 days you can apply for an absentee, and why would you want to penalize these people who are the least. So that seems like it would be a simple law change that you could make, just to take away that 30 days. You do not have to have applied in advance. You can apply for the Federal write-in up to the last minute as long as we can get the ballot to you somehow, and we fax people ballots in California. We cannot take voted ballots by fax, but we faxed a lot of ballots overseas. We even now are E-mailing ballots to people overseas. So their whole ballot, we pick which one is their 263 and E- mail it over there. So the technology is changing. We ought to start using the capability of the technology we have that we did not have before. As part of this process, I do think it is possible. Senator Levin. Did you keep the postmark requirement? Ms. McCormack. We do not have a postmark requirement in California. You have to have the ballot in by Election Day. Most of the States, you have to have it in by Election Day because we do not have the front-end problem like they do in Florida because our primary is in March. So there is plenty of time for people to know who is going to be on the ballot. Senator Levin. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Thompson. Senator, along those lines, I think some of this might have been from Mr. Wright, but I think some of it was from the staff research of the various problems that arise with the current system, that there are considerable variations among the States as to exactly how absentee voting is conducted. On a single ship, there may be sailors from all 50 States with just one voting assistance officer to help all of them. On the postmark, the DOD's postal manual requires that all absentee ballots be given a postmark. As many absentee ballots sent through the military mail systems do not require postage stamps, they are not postmarked unless the sender requests it. Further, forward-deployed mail is not always timely postmarked. There are instances when time constraints and the military situation do not allow for proper postmarking or cancellation. This mail is oftentimes postmarked later in route. As a result, overseas ballots postmarked in transit are often rejected. Is that another one of the problems? The voting assistance officer assigned to educate members and families are often doing collateral duty and does not have time to understand and explain the overly complex absentee voting procedures. Mr. Wright. This is the book that a voting assistance officer uses. It is published every 2 years by the Defense Department, not just military, but also State Department. It has a chapter for each State. All States do accept the Federal postcard application form, but there are big variations about how you fill it out. So the voting assistance officer may be from Tennessee and may be familiar with that procedure, but if he gives advice based on the Tennessee law, it may be wrong for somebody who is trying to vote in Michigan. There is more than 5,000 local election officials that administer absentee voting for Federal elections. I think as part of an electronic voting system that each State should be required to designate a statewide point of contact, at least for electronic voting. I realize there are tens of thousands of ballot combinations in a State the size of California, but it seems to me the Secretary of State in Sacramento ought to be able to figure out based on your permanent home address the particular combination of State reps and State senators and U.S. Representatives, etc., that applies to you and get you a ballot electronically and then count your ballot. I do not see that it is going to be feasible to get 5,000 local officials, some of whom do not even have telephones, much less computers, onto an electronic system. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. I want to thank this panel very much. As public officials and as private citizens, you are really doing a public service. It is encouraging to know that we have people like you working in these areas, and perhaps we can make our own contribution to that. Senator Lieberman. Thanks. Mr. Chairman, let me thank you again for convening these two hearings. I thank the witnesses on this panel and the previous panel. I have learned a lot today and last week, and I hope we can take what we have learned, continue to be in communication with you, and turn it into some legislation and law that will help us make the promise of the franchise, which is fundamental to being an American, more real than it is for people today and easier to exercise. So thanks very much. Chairman Thompson. Thank you very much. We are adjourned. [Whereupon, at 12:48 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] A P P E N D I X ---------- PREPARED OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR LEVIN May 3, 2001 The Florida recount in the 2000 Presidential election was, in a way, like turning over a rock and finding things you'd rather not see-- in this case, the serious inadequacies and problems in our election system. But as is often the case, it takes a crisis like the Florida recount to force us to action--to address the inadequacies to which we had grown accustomed and with which we had become comfortable. The right to vote is too precious a privilege and too fundamental to the conduct of democracy to let these inadequacies go unaddressed, and I congratulate Senator Lieberman on calling these hearings and keeping this issue in our sights. As time elapses, it becomes easier for us to just put the rock back, but hopefully hearings like this one and Thursday's won't let us do that. The crisis in Florida reverberated throughout the Nation. There were reports of significant numbers being turned away from the polling places when they tried to vote, being told they weren't registered when they had registered, and having election officials stepping in to prevent them from voting rather than figuring out how to enable them to vote. Many people across the country realized for the first time the complexities and inaccuracies and the real-life failings of our voting system in which we have had such faith, unjustified though it may have been. The close election revealed the significance of the problems, and these hearings address the two big ones: Updating and distributing accurate registration information and ensuring the accuracy of the votes cast and how the votes are counted. One problem identified by many with respect to registration is the operation of the motor voter law--allowing citizens to register to vote when they apply for or renew their driver's license. There is a problem, apparently, in some States, in accurately transferring the information from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to the Board of Elections. My home State of Michigan has done a good job of establishing a centralized computer database for all registered voters called the Qualified Voter File or QVF. The Michigan system is nationally recognized, because it links election officials throughout the State to a fully automated, interactive statewide voter registration database. One witness today, Dr. Michael Alvarez, from the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, notes in his written testimony that Michigan's QVF is an example of ``best practices'' in the Nation. But even with this premier computer system, we had problems in Michigan. A recent change in Michigan law requires that if a person changes his voter registration address, his driver's license address is automatically changed, and if the person changes his driver's license address, he is given the opportunity to conform his voter registration to that same address. If the person declines to change his voter registration address to conform to his driver's license address, he is automatically dropped from the voter registration rolls with his old address. In last year's election that law had the effect of discouraging many college students from voting in Michigan's 8th district where they attend school, because they would have had to change the address of their driver's licenses to that of their school address where they intended to register to vote, and they didn't want to have to do that. Many college students prefer to keep a permanent address (or their parent's address) as the one address they use for their driver's licenses, and they don't want to have to change their driver's licenses each year that they move during college in order to be able to be registered to vote where they go to school. One Michigan State University student who was turned away by precinct workers on election day, had his driver's license address in the QVF as Grand Blanc, his home residence, and not as East Lansing, his college residence and where he had registered. He was not permitted to vote in East Lansing, because his driver's license address didn't match the address where he registered to vote. In Michigan, if a person believes that he should be on the precinct roll but his name is not there, that person has the right to file an affidavit which swears that he or she does actually live in that precinct and has registered to vote there. As it turned out, in many precincts, the election workers didn't know about the right to file an affidavit, and consequently many students apparently didn't vote. So, in the 8th district, where the election for Congress was decided by an 88 vote margin, the voting registration problem may have affected the outcome of the election. There are a number of possible solutions to some of these election problems: Increased voter education, new technology for voting machines, increased election worker training, standardization of voting machines, and a variety of other ideas. There are a number of election reform bills that have been introduced, and there are several academic studies underway looking at various aspects of elections. One of today's witnesses makes a point with respect to proposed solutions that coincides with my own experience, and that is that as we've applied allegedly improved technology to the voting process, we've seen new problems. For example, I don't remember seeing anything like an over count when we used to mark and count ballots by hand. That problem appears to come as a result of some of the new technologies election boards are using. These hearings will allow us to hear from election experts who will hopefully shed some light on problems like these. In order to make every vote count, Federal election reforms at the Federal level are necessary. At the same time, we must respect the rights of the States. We want to protect the rights of States to be as innovative and progressive as Michigan has been in its so-called motor voter registration, for example. We may want to set a floor for performance that no State should go below; at the same time we want to allow States to be creative and responsive to their own populations. The voting system that works best in rural Michigan may not be the best voting system for an urban area such as Detroit, so we need to allow the States some flexibility. Ensuring that all citizens can vote and that every vote counts is surely one of our highest national priorities. What happened in Florida during the Presidential election of 2000 never should have happened, and the passage of time should not diminish the need to find solutions to the serious election problems we faced in the last election. These hearings should help us to move towards a solution, and I look forward to the testimony. __________ PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARL LEVIN May 9, 2001 We have a situation in too many localities in this country where despite the best efforts of the voting public, they cannot make their vote count. We hear over and over again how in this country, every voter should count--that is our goal and our expectation. But the reality doesn't meet that expectation. According to the Committee for the Study of the American electorate, in the 2000 Presidential election, 2\1/2\ million votes out of 101 million didn't count. They were cast, but they didn't count. And what we're wrestling with is ``why,'' why those 2\1/2\ million Americans who went to the polls, didn't have their votes count. Is the culprit the voter registration systems? The inadequacy of the election officials? The complexity of the voting machines? Intimidation? Foreign language barriers? The inattention of the voter? The culprit is probably one, some or all of these depending upon the particular polling place, and some of these are more pervasive than others. Our job, because of the enormous importance of elections and the right to vote and to have each vote count, our job is to figure out why 2\1/2\ million votes didn't count and what we can do about it. And, while we often look to technology to cure our ills, it appears we must be cautious about technology in the area of election reform. Last week a member of one of our panels, Dr. Michael Alvarez, of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, delivered some surprising testimony. From his data, he told us that he has found that manually counted paper ballots have the lowest average incidence of spoiled, uncounted and unmarked ballots, followed by lever machines and optically scanned ballots. He also found that punch card methods and systems using direct recording electronic devices (DREs) had significantly higher average rates of spoiled, uncounted and unmarked ballots than any of the other systems. This seems counter intuitive: That the computer screens actually had a higher rate of unmarked votes than some of the other technology that we consider more primitive such as the lever machine or the optical scan machines. One problem here is that we just don't have the data to determine what works and what doesn't. A group called the Constitution Project, a bipartisan nonprofit organization that is looking closely at the issue of election reform, reports that ``there is an astonishing lack of information about the performance of voting equipment.'' Dr. Alvarez has done some interesting work here, but more needs to be done. Florida's debacle has served as our national wake-up call. And hopefully we won't just hit the snooze button and roll over, but we will persist in asking questions and getting information so we can make the 2\1/2\ million votes that didn't count in the last election, count in the next. Prior to Florida, many Americans didn't realize that the counting of the votes could be such a messy business. Now that we do know, we should use the lessons from the past election to ensure that the system fully works in the next election. __________ PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR CLELAND May 3, 2001 Mr. Chairman, thank you and your Committee for affording me this opportunity to discuss the vitally important subjects of electoral reform and voter registration. I can think of few more important topics than insuring the integrity of the voting process and securing the rights of American citizens to have their voices heard and their votes counted. Our representative democracy is grounded on the principle of popular sovereignty. Thomas Paine put it best: ``The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected.'' As Georgia's Secretary of State for 13 years, I am familiar with the challenges of registering million of voters. In 1995, I implemented the National Voter Registration Act (``Motor Voter'') in Georgia, which added almost one million new voters to the rolls. The statewide voter registration computer system needed to implement the program was designed and constructed in approximately 8 months. Georgia certainly has experienced problems in the area of registration, as does every State, but I think we are ahead of many because: (1) We have a consolidated statewide database, which many States do not have, (2) we collect Social Security Numbers and use these to help weed out duplicate and fraudulent registrations, felons and the deceased, and (3) we have been careful about relying on data from third party vendors in managing our lists. Georgia's Secretary of State, Cathy Cox, has published a detailed report on the 2000 election in Georgia. The report, A Wake-Up Call For Reform and Change, identifies the sources of complaints for individuals who had problems registering to vote in the State and outlines possible solutions for reform. Secretary Cox's report states that on the 2000 General Election Date, 4,648,210 voters were eligible to cast ballots in Georgia. The sources of new voter registration in Georgia for the 2000 elections originated from the following sources: Sources of New Voter Registration in Georgia ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Percentage of Registration location Total number total ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Department of Public Safety............. 381,938 61.22 Mail Direct to Secretary of State....... 66,323 10.63 County Registrars Office................ 54,918 8.08 Libraries............................... 52,928 8.48 DFACS Offices........................... 49,364 7.91 WIC Offices............................. 17,078 2.74 Other Offices........................... 1,288 0.21 ------------------------------- Calendar Year 2000 Total.............. 623,837 100.00 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Source: Georgia Secretary of State In Georgia, voter registration additions, deletions and modifications are entered at the county level by local registrars into the State computer system. Secretary of State Cathy Cox's office received numerous complaints from individuals who believed that they had properly registered to vote, but whose names did not appear on the voter roll. A majority of these complaints came from metro Atlanta residents. The most complaints were associated with those who registered at the Department of Public Safety where the accuracy of the registration process depends entirely on the driver's license examiner. Another source of complaints were individuals who registered at independent voter drives. Secretary Cox identifies better education of registrants at Department of Public Safety Office, and developing an Internet-based voter registration verification system as possible solutions to registration problems. As you may know, I have previously introduced S. 479, the Make Every Vote Count Act, which would provide block grants to States to upgrade their voting systems. Because many registration errors are caused by inadequate training of registration officials or education of voters in how to properly register, S. 479 would allow up to one-third of the grant funds to be used for training and education. In addition, I am concerned about the problems that military voters have experienced in attempting to register to vote. I have included some language in my proposal to improve ballot access for our military personnel. Section 3 of my bill is derived, verbatim, from Title VI of Senator Daschle's bill, S. 17. These provisions require that, for purposes of voting, no military member be deemed to have had a change of domicile or residence solely because he or she had to be absent in compliance with military orders. Furthermore, they provide that States and localities must permit absentee voting by uniformed service members in State and local elections, as is currently required only for Federal elections. These provisions are intended as preliminary steps to redress problems in military voting, pending completion of a General Accounting Office study of such problems which I requested along with Senators Warner, Levin, and Hutchinson. __________ PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR CLELAND May 9, 2001 Mr. Chairman: I want to thank you and Senator Lieberman for your continuing leadership on the issue of election reform. We can all agree that last year's election was one of the most unusual political events this country has ever seen. As a former Secretary of State and chief elections official in Georgia, I believe it was also a wake up call for reforming our electoral process. Now that we have completed the campaign finance debate, it is time for election reform debate and action. In February, the National Association of Secretaries of States adopted an election reform resolution. One of their recommendations was that Congress should provide funding to the States to assist the State and local efforts for reform. Several bills have been introduced in the Senate this year, including my own proposal, which would address the issue of election reform. And this Committee, Commerce, and the Rules Committees have also begun hearings on this priority issue. However, States like Florida, Maryland, and Georgia have already developed election reform plans and need Federal assistance to help their efforts. As I have said before: Time is the enemy with respect to the provision of sufficient Federal funds to really make a difference in sharply reducing the number of Americans who are literally being disenfranchised by our voting machinery. So, I would urge my colleagues to head the wise words on election reform which appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on March 28: ``Congress should not squander this opportunity for meaningful change that will allow people to vote with ease and with confidence that their votes will be counted.'' (Article follows this statement.) As a young man I had the opportunity to be one of the first in our country to use the then-brand new punchcard voting machines when they were introduced in my home county of DeKalb in 1964. Then I faced the even more daunting challenge of voting by absentee ballot while serving in Vietnam in 1968. And for 13 years, I had the privilege of being my State's chief election official as Georgia's Secretary of State. So when I saw the problems experienced in our neighboring State of Florida during the 2000 Presidential Election, with both citizens and election officials struggling with chads, I had a great deal of empathy and sympathy. But I would hasten to add that I don't think Florida was, or is, at all unique in facing serious problems in ensuring that every citizen's vote will be correctly tabulated. From my own experience in Georgia, and from the testimony of my very able successor, Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox, to the Commerce Committee a few weeks ago, I know that my State would fare no better, and quite possibly much worse, if subjected to the same set of circumstances where the vote margin was so small as to turn on what to do about incomplete counting of ballots. A recent study by Dr. Charles Bullock of the University of Georgia, further analyzed the report on the 2000 Georgia elections by Secretary Cox. The findings in this study found that:Lthe rate of undervotes was significantly higher in counties using punch cards or optical scanning equipment than in counties using lever machines; Lin the optical scan counties, the error rate was worse for the counties that did not use a type of optical scanning equipment that kicks-out ballots containing errors; Land undervoting was significantly higher in counties that had a large increase in registrants between the time of the primary and the general election. I am pleased to report that Georgia was the first State in the Nation to require a uniform electronic voting system to be in place by July 2004. Although the choice of voting systems and of means for assuring the voting rights of service members and disabled citizens is also primarily a matter for State and local decision-making, I believe in these cases consensus exists that an infusion of Federal funds can make a decisive difference, and make it in the near term. The Washington Post reported on April 5 that the number of Detroit voters whose ballots were invalidated dropped by almost two-thirds after the city switched from punch-card to optical-scan machines that warn of errors and allow for an immediate re-vote. (Article follows this statement). Thus, I see the legislation I am proposing--which provides for an immediate, large and one-time infusion of Federal funding to deal with widely recognized problems with our voting equipment--is complementary and not in competition with the other bills I just alluded to earlier. My bill, S. 479, the Make Every Vote Count Act, seeks to quickly and effectively improve our electoral system by increasing the likelihood that all citizens' votes will be properly counted but to do so in a way which fully respects the primary role of State and local governments in the conduct of elections. It accomplishes this by providing Federal funds to modernize voting systems, promote uniformity in voting equipment within States, and require greater standardization in assuring the voting rights of military personnel abroad. In addition, it allows up to one-third of the funds to be used for training of elections officials and voter education. Again, I want to thank the Chairman and Ranking Member for their efforts to address this critical need for reform. This issue will not be resolved in one hearing, but I think we have made some great strides in this Committee for further action. I am confident that a Committee with two former Secretaries of State is a great place to get started. __________ [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.001 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.002 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.003 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.004 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.005 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.006 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.007 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.008 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.009 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.010 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.011 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.012 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.013 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.014 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.015 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.016 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.017 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.018 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.019 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.020 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.021 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.022 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.023 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.024 [GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T3391.025 [GRAPHIC] 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