[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Page 21924]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                            ELECTION REFORM

  Mr. DODD. Madam President, I thank the distinguished Senator from 
Louisiana, the distinguished Senator from Texas, and the distinguished 
Senator from Illinois for allowing me to speak for 7 minutes on an 
unrelated subject matter.
  It was 1 year ago on this very day that we had a national election. 
It was on November 7 of last year when 105 million of our fellow 
citizens went to the polls to elect a President of the United States, 
Congress, and a variety of governorships and State legislative offices. 
As we all recall, although it is hard to imagine it has been a year, it 
was a very controversial election, one that went on for a month before 
a final decision was made by the Supreme Court.
  According to the CalTech-MIT report, as many as 4 million to 6 
million people actually showed up to vote that day, but for a variety 
of reasons in States across the country, were told they could not vote 
or they voted and their vote was not counted. That is according to 
CalTech and MIT.
  According to that same report, these votes were lost due to a variety 
of reasons that have existed for a long time. They did not just happen 
in one place or in one election: Faulty equipment, confusing ballots, 
registration mixups, flawed polling place operations, absentee ballot 
problems, and the list goes on.
  It was not about one State. We all focused on Florida, but the fact 
remains, in the other 49 States there were problems to varying degrees. 
Again, these problems were not limited to one State. In fact, the 
General Accounting Office found that 57 percent of voting jurisdictions 
nationwide experienced major problems conducting the November 7, 2000, 
elections.
  These problems were not limited to one election. In fact, many of 
these are systemic problems with our election systems that have existed 
for years. For example, over 11 million Americans who are blind or have 
a hand mobility disability have never been able to cast a secret 
ballot. Not a single ballot in America is in braille.
  In fact, according to the General Accounting Office, of the 120,000 
polling places in America, 50,000 of them are physically inaccessible 
to the disabled. Despite the fact we passed the Americans with 
Disabilities Act, there still is a staggering number of our voting 
places that are not accessible.
  We could spend a lot of time talking about what happened a year ago, 
but I want to take the few minutes available to me to strike a more 
positive note. Senator Bond of Missouri, Senator McConnell of Kentucky, 
myself, and Senator Schumer of New York are all working to put together 
a bill to bring to the Senate in the coming weeks. We are working on a 
compromise proposal that will allow us to try to fix the problems that 
existed in the year 2000 elections.
  This is not about the past, but about the future of our democracy. As 
Thomas Paine once said, the right to vote is the right upon which all 
other rights depend. Certainly we ought to be able to get this right in 
the 21st century.
  To reach that goal, those of us who are interested in the issue have 
been working together to come up with a bipartisan proposal that will 
meet the concerns and objectives of all of us in this Chamber and, 
hopefully, in the other body as well.
  On August 2, the Rules Committee, which I chair, approved a bill 
which does three major things:
  It creates a temporary commission to study election reform issues and 
issue ``best practice'' recommendations.
  It creates a grant program to provide States and localities with 
Federal funds to acquire updated voting systems and technology, improve 
voter registration systems, and educate voters and poll workers.
  It establishes three minimum Federal requirements for Federal 
elections and authorizes Federal funding for these requirements.
  These three requirements provide for: Federal standards for voting 
machines and technology, provisional voting, and distribution of sample 
ballots and voting instructions.
  There are a lot of ideas for improving our system that can be 
incorporated. It is not about ideology, it is about what reforms need 
to be made to enhance the voting systems of our country.
  Our staffs are meeting. Senator Bond is deeply interested in the 
fraud issue. He has said what I think is the best line about the 
election process. Senator Bond says: Voting ought to be easy, and 
cheating ought to be hard. He is exactly right, and his efforts to try 
to deal with the fraud issues are ones I welcome.
  I am hopeful we can weave reforms which address these issues into a 
bill to which we all will be willing to lend our names. I intend to 
continue to work with those Members who are interested in this subject.
  We do not have the answer yet, but I did not want this day to pass 
when I know there will be a lot of discussion about what happened a 
year ago. Obviously, the events of September 11 threw the entire agenda 
of the Congress off its predictable path. We are scrambling to get back 
to some of these issues that need to be addressed. For Americans who 
wonder if anything has been done over the last year, the answer is yes. 
These are not simple matters. There are strongly held views. We have 
longstanding traditions about how voting is to be conducted in this 
country.
  Americans, as they demonstrated yesterday in New Jersey, Connecticut, 
Virginia, and in places all over the country where elections were held, 
still believe very deeply in the right to vote and have their votes 
counted. I am hopeful that in the coming days we will be able to 
announce a compromise proposal.
  Again, I thank my colleague from Missouri, Senator Bond, my colleague 
from Kentucky, Senator McConnell, my colleague from New York, Senator 
Schumer, and many others interested in this subject matter. Our hope is 
we will soon be able to bring a compromise election reform bill before 
the Senate of the United States.




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