[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 122 (Friday, October 1, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1766-E1767]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                INTRODUCTION OF THE COUNT EVERY VOTE ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. DAVID E. PRICE

                           of north carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 30, 2004

  Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, today I am introducing the 
Count Every Vote Act, legislation to provide additional time, when 
needed, for conducting recounts of votes in presidential elections.
  At its core, our form of government is based on the premise of ``one 
person, one vote.'' The presidential election of 2000, however, 
demonstrated how precarious that tenet can be. In the midst of an 
ongoing challenge to the election result in the state of Florida, the 
U.S. Supreme Court ruled that manual recounts could not continue 
because there was not enough time to undertake a proper recount prior 
to the meeting of the Electoral College. The unsatisfactory result was 
a president who took office with a cloud hanging over him in the eyes 
of many Americans.
  Given the close nature of the current presidential race, there is a 
very real chance that we could be faced with a similar situation five 
weeks from now. We could easily wake up on November 3rd with a swing 
state election controversy, the outcome of which could decide who will 
be the President of the United States for the next four years. And it 
could take more than the 35 days allowed under current law to resolve 
the controversy without risking the loss of a state's electoral votes.
  Mr. Speaker, I request that a June 15 Roll Call column by Leonard 
Shambon, a counsel with Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr and 
former assistant to the co-chairman of the Ford-Carter Commission on 
Election Reform, be reprinted in the Record following my remarks. In 
his column, Mr. Shambon makes a strong case for the need to reform the 
timing of the Electoral College, and I have drawn from his expertise in 
this particular area of elections law. I appreciate Mr. Shambon's 
tireless research and collaboration in developing a solution to this 
problem.
  The bill I am introducing today has the support of leading scholars 
renowned for their research in the electoral process, including Thomas 
Mann, the W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow in Governance 
Studies at The Brookings Institution; John C. Fortier, a research 
fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and editor of and 
contributor to After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College; 
and Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise 
Institute, columnist for Roll Call, and contributor to After the People 
Vote. It would establish a contingency date for the meeting of electors 
in all states, but only when a challenge to a state's presidential 
election result remains unresolved as of three days prior to the 
Electoral College meeting date defined in current law. For the upcoming 
election, if a recount in any state were ongoing as of December 10, the 
bill would establish January 3rd as the new meeting date for the 
Electoral College, providing 59 days--24 days more than current law--to 
ensure that the recount is given as much time as possible to be 
resolved.
  In a dissenting opinion on the 2000 election contest that the U.S. 
Supreme Court later upheld, Florida Supreme Court Justice Major Harding 
appropriately noted, ``The circumstances of this election call to mind 
a quote from football coaching legend Vince Lombardi: `We didn't lose 
the game, we just ran out of time.' '' We cannot afford to run out of 
time when it comes to ensuring the integrity of our presidential 
election contests. That is a conclusion on which everyone should agree.
  I invite my colleagues to join me in ensuring that our electoral 
process is given the most time possible to resolve any contested 
election results by cosponsoring the Count Every Vote Act.

                    [From Roll Call, June 15, 2004]

           Electoral-College Reform Requires Change of Timing

                        (By Leonard M. Shambon)

       This is a modest proposal to reform the Electoral College. 
     No, it would not abolish the Electoral College, just change 
     its timing.
       In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court called off the Florida 
     recount because it believed that the recount could not be 
     concluded in time to conform to the schedule established by 
     federal statute for the electoral college.
       One of the Florida Supreme Court justices, whose position 
     was upheld by the Supreme Court, analogized the Gore camp's 
     predicament to a quote from Vince Lombardi: `` `We didn't 
     lose the game, we just ran out of time.' '' But running out 
     of time should not control the outcome in 2004.
       Under the federal statute, each state's presidential 
     electors are to meet on the first Monday after the second 
     Wednesday in December. If a state appoints its presidential 
     electors at least six days before that date, then its choice 
     of electors cannot be overridden. The U.S. Supreme Court in 
     Bush v. Gore believed it was imperative to block the recount 
     ordered by the Florida Supreme Court because the recount 
     could not be completed by the six-day cutoff before the 
     electors' meeting.
       But the aftermath of the Bush v. Gore decision, no one 
     seriously examined the question of whether the federal 
     statutory dates make any sense. Fearing endless debates about 
     whether the Electoral College should be completely abolished, 
     no one looked at the peculiarities of the federal law. But 
     there's still time for Congress to do so this year.
       Congress should amend 17 words in the statute to push those 
     dates into January, so that any state recounts and contests 
     that occur this fall can proceed at a more orderly pace.
       The federal statutory scheme, first adopted in 1792, 
     provides the dates for four events: (1) the states' 
     appointing their electors, on Election Day; (2) having the 
     electors meet and vote; (3) reporting the results to 
     Congress; and (4) the Congressional counting.
       Congress has changed the dates on which those events are to 
     occur five times, most recently in 1934 in response to the 
     ratification of the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, which 
     moved the date of inauguration back from March 3 to Jan. 20.
       In 1934, the Roosevelt administration recommended to 
     Congress that the period between Election Day and the date of 
     the electors' meeting be set at 41 days. Records reveal that 
     a government attorney chose the 41-day period arbitrarily, 
     without any further explanation.
       Congress, without any legislative explanation, went along 
     with this change even though it significantly shortened the 
     period from its pre-existing statutory length.
       One Member of Congress, Judiciary Committee Chairman Hatton 
     Sumners (D-Texas), did speak out against the shortened period 
     during the House debate, and in subsequent

[[Page E1767]]

     years, Sumners kept up the drumbeat, noting that it 
     ``requires no great imagination to visualize what might 
     develop in a close election when feeling was running high 
     with a belief that wholesale fraud had been perpetrated in 
     one or more pivotal States with no possibility of a final 
     judicial determination.''
       Sumners' ``serious situation'' arose in 2000, and it could 
     easily happen again this year. An era of electronic 
     communication and overnight couriers, Congress should 
     immediately lengthen the period between Election Day and the 
     date of the electors' meeting.
       The electors' meeting should occur as few days as possible 
     before the Jan. 6 Congressional counting date. The six-day 
     deadline for a state's choice of electors should be changed 
     to the new date for the electors' meeting. And delivery of 
     the electors' votes to Congress should be accomplished by any 
     rapid and secure method, not just by registered mail as is 
     currently required.
       Making the date, say, Jan. 3, would provide an additional 
     four weeks this year for an unrushed review.
       We should not be hamstrung by a redundant and slow 
     transmission scheme built for an earlier time. The states 
     should have the maximum time, within the framework of the 
     existing November election date and the Congressional 
     counting date, to resolve any contested elections. This time, 
     the game clock should not control the outcome.

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