[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 21213-21220]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 RECOGNIZING AND SUPPORTING EFFORTS TO PROMOTE GREATER CIVIC AWARENESS 
                     AMONG PEOPLE OF UNITED STATES

  Mr. NEY. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the 
resolution (H. Res. 796) recognizing and supporting all efforts to 
promote greater civic awareness among the people of the United States.
  The Clerk read as follows:

                              H. Res. 796

       Whereas the Constitution of the United States establishes a 
     representative form of government in which the people of the 
     United States elect Members of the House of Representatives 
     and Senators of the Senate, and each of the States appoint 
     electors who, based on the popular vote of the State, select 
     the President and the Vice-President;
       Whereas the 15th, 19th, 24th, and 26th amendments to the 
     Constitution establish that the right of citizens of the 
     United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged on 
     account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude; 
     on account of sex; by reason of failure to pay any poll tax 
     or other tax; and on account of age for those 18 years of age 
     and older;
       Whereas the right of citizens of the United States to vote 
     is fundamental to our representative form of government;
       Whereas many eligible citizens do not exercise the right to 
     vote;
       Whereas numerous civic awareness organizations and advocacy 
     groups at the Federal, State, and local level actively 
     promote voter registration and voter participation; and
       Whereas many communities and schools have instituted civic 
     awareness programs: Now, therefore, be it
       Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
       (1) recognizes and supports all efforts to promote greater 
     civic awareness among the people of the United States, 
     including civic awareness programs such as candidate forums 
     and voter registration drives; and
       (2) encourages local communities and elected officials at 
     all levels of government to promote greater awareness among 
     the electorate of civic responsibility and the importance of 
     participating in these elections.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Ohio (Mr. Ney) and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Costello) each will 
control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ney).
  Mr. NEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I want to thank again our ranking member, the gentleman 
from Connecticut, for this important measure.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of House Resolution 796, which 
recognizes and supports all efforts to promote greater civic awareness 
among the people of the United States.
  Mr. Speaker, today our soldiers are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq 
to build and protect democracy. This Saturday, Afghanistan will hold a 
historic election. Reports indicate that more than 10 million Afghans 
have registered to vote and will participate in the election--despite 
threats and violence by the opponents of democracy. Iraq is scheduled 
to hold elections in January, an event that will forever alter the 
direction of that country and, hopefully, forever separate it from its 
despotic past.
  While we fight abroad to build democracy, unfortunately, here at 
home, too many of our citizens take our rights for granted and fail to 
exercise them. Mr. Speaker, no matter what

[[Page 21214]]

side of the aisle you sit on, we all agree that the election coming up 
on November 2 will be an extremely important one--one that all eligible 
citizens should participate in. This resolution encourages that 
participation because the right to elect our leaders should be 
exercised and never taken for granted.
  When terrorists attacked us three years ago on September 11th, they 
were attacking not only innocent civilians, but also the very ideals 
and freedoms that we celebrate as fundamental human rights in this 
country. Those rights and freedoms are what the terrorists fear and 
hate most.
  Now, more than ever before, it is imperative that every American 
participate by exercising the precious gift each citizen has been 
given, the freedom to choose our leaders.
  Recently, the House of Representatives passed a resolution expressing 
the sense of Congress that the actions of terrorists will never cause 
the delay of any national election.
  We need our citizens to mirror that same resolve and show terrorists 
that we cherish our democracy and will not be deterred from exercising 
the rights we have.
  There have been a number of reports about how voter registrations 
have increased dramatically in the past year. State and local elections 
officials are working hard to process those registrations and make sure 
that all eligible voters are able to cast a vote on Election Day. I 
would encourage our citizens to do what they can to help this election 
run smoothly. Confirm that you are properly registered and find out 
where your polling place is. This can be done by contacting your local 
board of elections office, or, in many cases, just visiting their Web 
site. Doing these things in advance, instead of waiting until Election 
Day, can protect your right to vote and will make things go much 
smoother for everyone on Election Day.
  While voters need to do their part, we should note that over a 
million, perhaps as many as 2 million, people will volunteer to serve 
as poll workers this year. Without them, we simply could not have 
elections in this country. We should recognize that our democracy 
survives only through the hard work and participation of millions of 
our citizens--both as voters and poll workers. I encourage others to 
volunteer to help at the polls as a poll worker or assistant.
  I sincerely hope that every citizen of this great Nation will 
participate in the 2004 election, and will also do what they can to see 
that it goes smoothly. Whether it be through early voting, absentee 
ballots, or visiting the polls on election day, it is our great 
privilege to live in a country where we have the right to choose our 
leaders, and it is our responsibility to exercise this right. I thank 
the gentleman from Texas for introducing this resolution and encourage 
my colleagues to support it.
  Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I 
may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I would just like to concur with the chairman of our 
distinguished committee, and thank the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. 
Ross) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hall) for bringing forth this 
most important piece of legislation, and from the bottom of my heart I 
want to thank especially those members who worked tirelessly for us in 
the Clerk's office and recognize Mr. Trandahl and Gigi Kelaher and the 
distinguished Mr. Paul Hayes and so many members who come here day in 
and day out and carry on these duties, considering the lateness of the 
hour.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of a resolution that aims to 
support the very core of our democracy: voting. The resolution, H. Res. 
796, recognizes efforts to promote greater civic awareness in this 
country.
  With this in mind, it is important to reference the words that embody 
our democratic right that are written in the Constitution. This 
document establishes that ``citizens of the United States shall not be 
denied or abridged their right to vote on account of race, color, or 
previous condition of servitude; on account of sex; by reason of 
failure to pay any poll tax or other tax; and on account of age for 
those 18 years of age and older.''
  This election is arguably one of the most important in our Nation's 
history. It is too important to sit on the sidelines. I call on all 
citizens to participate in our democracy by casting a ballot on 
November second. I would also urge citizens to think about other ways 
they can use their civic spirit to assist their communities. For 
example, maybe they could volunteer to drive other voters to the polls 
or donate their time to assist at local polling places. The friendly, 
dedicated individuals that help us as we head to the polling booth are 
often taken for granted. However, the pool of these volunteers has been 
severely reduced over the years. This year, millions of poll workers 
are needed on Election Day.
  These volunteers are the backbone of the election process, sometimes 
working up to 16-hour days with little, if any pay. In most cases, 
volunteers are needed for such long hours simply because there are not 
enough of them. In addition, the majority of those who do volunteer to 
be poll workers continue to be older citizens. We need to inspire a 
younger generation of poll workers to continue to carry the torch of 
democracy.
  I call on colleges and universities to offer college credit to 
students who serve as poll workers, and corporations to offer paid 
leave to employees who volunteer as poll workers. Voters should go to 
the Election Assistance Commission's Web site at www.eac.gov, to learn 
how they can become poll workers in their state.
  Yesterday, I sent a letter to 43 presidents of public and private 
higher education institutions in my home state of Connecticut. I 
reminded these academic leaders that the Higher Education Act 
Amendments of 1998 require that they make a good-faith effort to 
distribute voter-registration materials to their students prior to 
elections. I urged them to review their compliance with this federal 
law.
  For many students, the first time they have the opportunity to vote 
is during their college career. Therefore, it is imperative that 
institutions of higher learning do all they can to help young people 
get into the habit of voting while they are young.
  States can do their part by offering better training to poll workers. 
Many of the problems associated with this year's primaries have been 
attributed to poor poll worker training. I hope we do not see a repeat 
of these mistakes during the general election.
  Several newspapers have reported that there are a record number of 
new voters registered for this coming election. I urge election 
officials to be mindful of these first-time voters so they will have 
the opportunity to participate in the election process without a repeat 
of past frustrations, or misinterpretation of voting laws, including 
the Help America Vote Act.
  I am extremely concerned about voter intimidation, and I ask all 
citizens to be mindful of voters who may be denied their right to vote 
at the polls. Should an eligible voter be afraid to cast a ballot, I 
urge them to call the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division or 
civil rights groups to ensure these circumstances are documented.
  These concerns are not unwarranted. In South Dakota's June 2004 
special election, Native American voters were prevented from voting 
after they were challenged to provide photo IDs, which they were not 
required to present under State or Federal law. In 2003 in 
Philadelphia, voters in African-American areas were systematically 
challenged by men carrying clipboards, driving a fleet of some 300 
sedans with magnetic signs designed to look like law enforcement 
insignia. These are just two examples in a report by the NAACP and the 
People for the American Way Foundation.
  Our Nation has certainly tried to respect the democratic wishes of 
the framers of our Constitution through ongoing efforts to ensure that 
all citizens are inspired to vote. Voting is a powerful act. The simple 
act of pulling a lever, or checking a box or touching a screen 
indicates to policy makers that the voices of those they represent must 
not be ignored. It also gives citizens an instant sense of community, 
and that alone is certainly worth recognizing and supporting.
  I urge my colleagues to support this resolution and to continue to 
expand voter participation.

             [From the San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 5, 2004]

               Poll Watchers To Ensure Every Vote Counts

                            (By L.A. Chung)

       Nancy Frishberg remembers helping her father register 
     people to vote when Adlai Stevenson mounted his second doomed 
     campaign against Dwight D. Eisenhower. She was ``clean for 
     Gene'' in 1968, before Hubert Humphrey beat Eugene McCarthy 
     for the Democratic nomination.
       In other words, the Redwood City woman is familiar with 
     being on the losing side of presidential campaigns. Even so, 
     her belief in the democratic process was undiminished until 
     she heard the infamous reports about voter disenfranchisement 
     in 2000 and problems during the primaries this year.
       So Frishberg, 55, has decided to become a poll monitor Nov. 
     2. She and about 19,000 others have signed up with the 
     Election Protection Coalition, a nonpartisan group, to fan 
     out across the country to watch for problems at the polls.
       ``I'm trained as a scientist and in observational 
     research,'' said Frishberg, a linguist and contributor to 
     Stanford's Human-Computer Interface program. ``The difference

[[Page 21215]]

     here is I'm willing to intervene.'' That means alerting the 
     coalition's network of lawyers, who will file injunctions if 
     there are violations. She's spending her own money to fly to 
     Phoenix, one of the cities where past problems at the polls 
     have been identified. Her commitment comes, she says, from 
     her intensely non-partisan desire that every vote counts.
       Bigger than expected ``We've been stunned by the amount of 
     energy we're seeing,'' said Michael Kieschnick, president of 
     Working Assets, a socially progressive company that is 
     recruiting volunteers for the coalition. The country may be 
     highly polarized, but the coalition has been attracting 
     people who are primarily concerned about the integrity of the 
     election.
       ``It's not who won or lost in Florida,'' Kieschnick said, 
     referring to the state that has come to symbolize problems at 
     the polls. Rather, ``for the first time, people realized not 
     all the votes get counted--and which ones get counted 
     sometimes depends on elected officials. People looked in the 
     mirror of Florida and didn't seem to like that.''
       Working Assets, a long-distance and credit card services 
     company, has worked hard to promote voter registration, 
     Kieschnick said. But more new voters means more potential 
     problems--from learning where to vote to figuring out how to 
     work the various voting machines. Plus, there were troubling 
     reports of election officials who seemed ready to make it 
     harder for new voters.
       The secretary of state in Ohio, for example, just retreated 
     from his directive last month that voter registration forms 
     must be printed on 80-pound paper stock, potentially 
     disenfranchising those who had filled out forms on lighter 
     paper. He also faces a lawsuit challenging state guidelines 
     that would prevent voters from casting provisional ballots if 
     they mistakenly went to the wrong polling places.
       Keeping the trust in fact, election experts predict a huge 
     number of provisional ballots, which could determine a close 
     race.
       We're not at the point where we want overseas election 
     monitors to come. That's something Jimmy Carter and Sen. 
     Richard Lugar have done from the Phillipines to South Africa.
       Still, the outpouring of volunteers for the Election 
     Protection Coalition is important and useful. At least 35 
     cities in nine states --Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, 
     Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin--will 
     be monitored. In each place there was some kind of trigger--
     past voting rights violations, accusations of voter 
     intimidation or problems with people going to the polls and 
     finding their names don't appear.
       ``In no case are we predicting there will be a problem,'' 
     Kieschnick said. ``In all these cases there is some reason to 
     believe the odds are higher that there could be problems.''
       I'm just hoping that Frishberg and other volunteers are 
     surprised at what they find in the field. Pleasantly 
     surprised.
       That would be the bigger victory for democracy in these 
     times.
                                  ____


                [From the Washington Post, Oct, 1, 2004]

                Ensuring That Voting's Sanctity Wins Out

                            (By Donna Britt)

       Cuddling her fluffy white Maltese dog in her Silver Spring 
     living room, Joan Biren explains why on Election Day, she and 
     five friends will be in Philadelphia doing something that 
     most Americans believe happens only in corrupt foreign 
     governments:
       Watching a polling place to ensure that registered voters 
     are allowed to cast their ballots for the candidates of their 
     choice.
       It isn't just that Biren sees the bitterly contested 
     presidential election of 2000 as an event ``as threatening to 
     our democracy as anything that has happened in my lifetime,'' 
     or even that ``suppression and intimidation of voters, 
     particularly minorities, has a very long history in this 
     country,'' she says.
       As with others who've volunteered to be poll-watchers 
     through the nonpartisan Election Protection coalition--which 
     tomorrow will sponsor orientation-trainings in the District--
     Biren knows of several recent disturbing incidents:
       Last year in Philadelphia, voters in black neighborhoods 
     were challenged by unauthorized men carrying clipboards and 
     driving sedans with magnetic signs designed to look like law 
     enforcement insignia, according to a recent report by the 
     NAACP and People for the American Way, ``The Long Shadow of 
     Jim Crow: Voter Intimidation and Suppression in America.''
       In South Dakota's primary in June, some Native American 
     voters complained that they were prevented from casting 
     ballots when they couldn't provide photo IDs and weren't 
     informed that they could have signed personal affidavits 
     instead.
       In Michigan, state Rep. John Pappapgeorge (R) actually was 
     quoted in July in the Detroit Free Press as saying, ``If we 
     do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough 
     time in this election.''
       More than 80 percent of Detroit's population is black.
       It's no wonder that on Nov. 2, hundreds of volunteers, 
     ``including many people like me--white, middle-class,'' Biren 
     says, ``are feeling moved to go into areas that are 
     principally black and Latino to ensure that . . . people who 
     are registered to vote and who want to vote are not 
     disenfranchised.
       ``It's not about Bush or Kerry or about Democrats or 
     Republicans,'' Biren insists. ``I'm working for democracy.''
        Working for democracy--for the grand, noble notion of free 
     and fair elections--is just one reason why Americans from 
     every political party are casting their votes by absentee 
     ballots and traveling to sometimes-distant locations to act 
     as poll monitors. Another pressing reason is expressed by 
     Washington attorney J.E. McNeil:
        ``Every time I hear either [presidential] candidate's 
     voice on the radio, I turn it off, count to 20, then turn it 
     back on--I'm stressed,'' says McNeil, 53, who will monitor 
     polls in Philadelphia. Sitting in front of a TV, following 
     election returns, would make her ``flip out,'' she says. ``. 
     . . I'd rather be doing something helpful and concrete.
        ``Something that keeps me from having to watch it.''
        Of course, watching it, in the most up-close-and-personal 
     way, is exactly what 10,735 volunteers--one-quarter of whom 
     already have trained and received their Election Day 
     assignments--plan to do. Volunteers include ``people who are 
     not activists in daily life . . . who really want to make 
     sure this is a fair election,'' says Becky Bond of Working 
     Assets, the long-distance provider that's helping the 
     Election Protection coalition of civil rights groups organize 
     the effort.
        (Saturday's three two-hour orientation trainings are at 9 
     a.m., noon and 3 p.m. at National City Christian Church in 
     Northwest Washington. For more info, log on to 
     electionprotection.org).
        Election Protection hopes to monitor ``every precinct 
     where there's a danger of voter suppression or where it's 
     already happened,'' says Bond, 34, places where voters ``have 
     been asked for unnecessary ID or to sign affidavits, or where 
     they've needed language assistance and couldn't get it.'' She 
     cites the Latino mother with four children in Florida who was 
     told by a poll worker, ``You can't bring those kids in 
     here.''
        ``In fact,'' Bond says, ``she could.''
        Volunteers choose among 38 sites where monitors have been 
     deemed necessary. They receive initial training either in 
     person or by conference call from representatives of civil 
     rights organizations and learn about their duties as poll 
     monitors and the voting laws in various jurisdictions. On 
     election eve, they'll receive more detailed information and 
     copies of their designated state's Voters' Bill of Rights so 
     ``if there's a dispute, they can go in and say, `I've got the 
     Voters' Bill of Rights right here,' which can quickly resolve 
     the problem,'' Bond says.
        They'll also have all cell phones to connect them to a 
     lawyer hotline for instant advice or, if necessary, ``to tell 
     a lawyer to `Get over here right now,''' Bond says.
       ``In the past . . . so many problems at the poll were 
     documented after an election--when it's too late. If people 
     don't have their vote counted again . . .''
       Bond's voice trails off at the prospect. Finally, she 
     continues. ``There's so much at stake. People's faith in 
     elections is on the line.''
       Former middle school teacher Noel Tieszen says that when 
     the last presidential election ``made it clear that the 
     electoral system doesn't work for everyone,'' she decided 
     that such a ``debacle'' shouldn't be repeated. She and her 
     boyfriend, a lawyer, will monitor polls in Allentown, PA.
       ``More important than who we vote for is that we have a 
     right to be involved in the process,'' says Tieszen, 29, of 
     the District. When that right is denied ``through 
     incompetence or discrimination in a government that's 
     supposedly of the people, by the people and for the people, 
     it's the responsibility of the people to do something.
       ``I'd rather the wrong guy win than the right guy win 
     through an unfair electoral process,'' she says.
       Denyse Brown of Richmond is a self-employed nurse-
     practitioner who insists that it's worth ``giving up five 
     days of pay'' to travel to Raleigh, NC, to monitor polls 
     there. Election Protection's mission reminded her of Jewish 
     women in Israel who daily monitored and documented the abuse 
     of Palestinian women by Israeli border guards. Because the 
     women were watching, abuses were reduced.
       ``I've never been involved in politics in a big way,'' 
     Brown, 58, says. ``But it's my philosophy that everything 
     happens for a reason. . . . Thanks to the 2000 election, lots 
     of people who'd never been involved are jumping up saying, 
     `Enough is enough.'''
       In her high-backed chair, Biren is stroking her Maltese and 
     explaining something she has learned in her 61 years: In 
     tumultuous times, ``you have to do some kind of action to 
     keep from falling into despair,'' she says. Taking action, 
     ``helps more than sitting around and worrying, even if what 
     you're doing is a small thing.''
       She pauses.
       ``Making every vote count is not a small thing.''
                                  ____


                 [From the New Yorker, Spet. 20, 2004]

                             Poll Position

                          (By Jeffrey Toobin)

       On March 7, 1965, John Lewis, the twenty-five-year-old 
     chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, 
     let about

[[Page 21216]]

     six hundred marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, in 
     Selma, Alabama. When they reached the crest of the bridge, 
     the protesters were set upon by helmeted Alabama state 
     troopers and local sheriff's posses, who were swinging clubs 
     and firing tear gas. One of the first troopers on the bridge 
     slammed his nightstick into the left side of Lewis's head, 
     fracturing his skull. ``I remember how strangely calm I felt 
     as I thought, `This is it,''' Lewis wrote years later in his 
     autobiography. ```People are going to die here. I'm going to 
     die here.''' As it turned out, more than fifty marchers were 
     treated for injuries, but no one died.
       The attack on the unarmed protesters shocked the country, 
     and President Johnson used the events of what became known as 
     Bloody Sunday to advance an essential part of his civil-
     rights program. On March 15th, Johnson addressed a Joint 
     Session of Congress to demand that legislators pass, at long 
     last, the Voting Rights Act. Adopting the great anthem of the 
     civil-rights movement, the President concluded his speech 
     with the words ``. . . and we shall overcome.'' Five months 
     later, on August 6th, Johnson signed the bill into law, and 
     invited Lewis to the Oval Office to celebrate the occasion. 
     Toward the end of their meeting, as Lewis recalled, Johnson 
     told him, ``Now, John, you've got to go back and get all 
     those folks registered. You've got to go back and get those 
     boys by the balls. Just like a bull gets on top of a cow. 
     You've got to get 'em by the balls and you've got to squeeze, 
     squeeze 'em till they hurt.''
       Thirty-seven years later, in 2002, Lewis was called on by a 
     federal court to answer a charge that he had violated the 
     Voting Rights Act by discriminating against African-
     Americans. Lewis was an eight-term member of Congress by 
     then, and a pillar of the Georgia Democratic Party. In the 
     nearly four decades since the act's passage, it had 
     revolutionized the franchise in the South. The literacy tests 
     that were still in effect throughout the region were 
     immediately suspended. Federal registrars replaced local 
     officials who refused to register blacks. And the Attorney 
     General was authorized to eliminate poll taxes wherever they 
     remained. Amended and expanded in 1970, 1975, and 1982, the 
     act also prohibited the kind of racial gerrymandering that 
     allowed white state legislators to draw district lines that 
     prevented African-Americans from winning elective office. It 
     was this provision which Lewis was charged with violating.
       During most of that time, the Justice Department's Voting 
     Section, which consists of three dozen or so lawyers who are 
     responsible for enforcing the Voting Rights Act, had insisted 
     that states in the South draw some legislative districts with 
     heavy minority populations, so that African-Americans could 
     be assured of representation. But in the redistricting that 
     followed the 2000 census Lewis and the Democrats, who then 
     controlled Georgia's General Assembly, decided that this 
     process had become counter-productive to black interests and 
     they spread the largely Democratic African-American vote 
     around to more districts. ``My congressional district was 
     probably sixty or sixty-five per cent black,'' Lewis told me 
     recently. ``Now it's barely fifty-two per cent. That's fine, 
     I can win, and I'm running unopposed this year.'' As Lewis 
     testified in the voting-rights trial, Georgia is ``not the 
     same state that it was . . . in 1965 or in 1975 or even in 
     1980 or 1990. We've changed. We have come a great distance. 
     It's not just in Georgia but in the American South. I think 
     people are preparing to lay down the burden of race.''
       The Justice Department argued that the Georgia plan 
     violated the rights of African-Americans in several of the 
     redrawn districts, a contention that outraged Lewis. ``For 
     them to suggest that someone who almost lost his life to get 
     the Voting Rights Act passed wanted to violate it, that was 
     just unbelievable,'' he told me.
       But the government's position wasn't frivolous. The Georgia 
     plan did make it somewhat less certain that blacks would win 
     in several legislative districts. That could be seen as a 
     ``retrogression'' of African-American rights, which is 
     prohibited by the Voting Rights Act. The fight went all the 
     way to the United States Supreme Court, which last year 
     upheld Georgia's redistricting plan by a margin of just five 
     to four. As it turned out, the five more conservative 
     justices supported the Georgia plan, while the more liberal 
     justices dissented, saying, in effect, that the Voting Rights 
     Act had been designed to help black voters--not to serve the 
     shifting agendas of incumbent politicians, Africa-American or 
     otherwise. ``If one appreciates irony, it is a wonderful 
     case,'' Daniel Lowenstein, a professor of law at U.C.L.A., 
     says. ``Here you have the standard five so-called 
     conservatives on the Court deciding in favor of John Lewis 
     and the Democratic Party of Georgia, and the so-called 
     liberals in favor of the Republicans in Georgia.''
       The Georgia controversy also raised a question that once 
     seemed unthinkable: Is the Voting Rights Act obsolete? The 
     question has special salience because key provisions of the 
     law expire in 2007, and it's not clear how, or whether, 
     Congress will reauthorize them. ``The Voting Rights Act was a 
     transformation statute,'' Samuel Issacharoff, a professor at 
     Columbia Law School, says. ``It's hard to think of any civil-
     rights law in any walk of life that has been as dramatically 
     effective.'' In more recent years, the law has gone far 
     beyond such basic issues as eliminating the poll tax; it has, 
     for instance, stopped cities from annexing suburbs to dilute 
     the importance of the minority vote, and the law has made 
     sure that city councils are elected by neighborhood, rather 
     than in at-large citywide races, which had been another way 
     to limit the number of minority candidates who would win 
     seats. As a result of all its changes, according to 
     Issacharoff, ``The act created a black political class that 
     is now deeply embedded and politically savvy.'' The civil-
     rights establishment--which includes interlocking networks of 
     public-interest organizations, legal academics, and social 
     scientists--is now conducting a sober and uncertain appraisal 
     of the law, but doing so with little momentum and unclear 
     goals.
       It is a vacuum that the Justice Department, under John 
     Ashcroft, has moved quickly to fill. As 2007 approaches and 
     liberal activists cautiously explore their options, 
     conservative--including those in the Justice Department--are 
     using the traditional language of voting rights to recast the 
     issues, invariably in ways that help Republican candidates. 
     The results of this quiet rightward revolution within the 
     Justice Department may be apparent as soon as the November 
     election.
       On October 8, 2002, Attorney General Ashcroft stood before 
     an invited audience in the Great Hall of the Justice 
     Department to outline his vision of voting rights, in words 
     that owed much to the rhetoric used by L.B.J. and Lincoln. 
     ``The right of citizens to vote and have their vote count is 
     the cornerstone of our democracy--the necessary precondition 
     of government of the people, by the people, and for the 
     people,'' Ashcroft told the group, which included several 
     veteran civil-rights lawyers.
       The Attorney General had come forward to launch the Voting 
     Access and Integrity Initiative, whose name refers to the two 
     main traditions in voting-rights law. Voter-access efforts, 
     which has long been associated with Democrats, seek to remove 
     barriers that discourage poor and minority voters; the Voting 
     Rights Act itself is the paradigmatic voter-access policy. 
     The voting-integrity movement, which has traditionally been 
     favored by Republicans, targets fraud in the voting process, 
     from voter registration to voting and ballot counting. 
     Despite the title, Ashcroft's proposal favored the 
     ``integrity'' side of the ledger, mainly by assigning a 
     federal prosecutor to watch for election crimes in each 
     judicial district. These lawyers, Ashcroft said, would 
     ``deter and detect discrimination, prevent electoral 
     corruption, and bring violators to justice.''
       Federal law gives the Justice Department the flexibility to 
     focus on either voter access or voting integrity under the 
     broad heading of voting rights, but such shifts of emphasis 
     may have a profound impact on how votes are cast and counted. 
     In the abstract, no one questions the goal of eliminating 
     voting fraud, but the idea of involving federal prosecutors 
     in election supervision troubles many civil-rights advocates, 
     because few assistant United States attorneys have much 
     familiarity with the laws protecting voter access. That has 
     traditionally been the province of the lawyers in the Voting 
     Section of the Civil Rights Division, whose role is defined 
     by the Voting Rights Act. In a subtle way, the Ashcroft 
     initiative nudged some of these career civil-rights lawyers 
     toward the sidelines.
       Addressing the real but uncertain dimensions of voter fraud 
     means risking potentially greater harm to legitimate voters. 
     ``There is no doubt that there has been fraud over the 
     years--people voting twice, immigrants voting, unregistered 
     people voting--but no one knows how bad the problem is,'' 
     Lowestein says. ``It is a very hard subject for an academic 
     or anyone else to study, because by definition it takes place 
     under the table.'' And, despite its neutral-sounding name, 
     ``voting-integrity'' has had an incendiary history. ``It's 
     one of those great euphemisms,'' Pamela S. Karlan, a 
     professor at Stanford Law School, says. ``By and large, it's 
     been targeted at minority voters.'' During the Senate 
     hearings on William Rehnquist's nomination as Chief justice, 
     in 1986, a number of witnesses testified that in the early 
     nineteen-sixties Rehnquist, then a lawyer in private practice 
     and a Republican political activist, had harassed black and 
     Latino voters at Arizona polling places, demanding to know if 
     they were ``qualified to vote.'' (Rehnquist denied doing so.) 
     In the 1981 governor's race in New Jersey, the Republican 
     Party hired armed off-duty police officers to work in a self-
     described National Ballot Security Task Force, which posted 
     signs at polling places in minority neighborhoods reading, 
     ``Warning, This Area Is Being Patrolled by the National 
     Ballot Security Task Force. It Is a Crime to Falsify a Ballot 
     or to Violate Election Laws.''
       As recently as last year's gubernatorial election in 
     Kentucky, Republicans placed ``challengers'' who may query a 
     voter's eligibility, in poling places in Louisville's 
     predominantly black neighborhoods, an act that many Democrats 
     regarded as an attempt at racial intimidation. An emphasis on 
     voting integrity, whatever the motivations behind it, often 
     helps Republicans at the polls.

[[Page 21217]]

       The person in over-all charge of the Administration's 
     voting-rights portfolio is R. Alexander Acosta, the Assistant 
     Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. On May 4th, 
     Acosta invited representatives of many leading traditional 
     civil-rights organization, such as the N.A.A.C.P. Legal 
     Defense and Educational Fund and the Leadership Conference on 
     Civil Rights, to the seventh-floor conference room in the 
     Justice Department Building to talk about his plans for the 
     upcoming election. Acosta, who is a thirty-five-year-old 
     Cuban-American from Miami, served first as a top political 
     appointee in the Civil Rights Division, where he was known 
     for his close attention to the rights of Spanish-speaking 
     minorities. After the 2000 census, Acosta asked the Census 
     Bureau to make data available before the 2002 elections, 
     hoping to locate Spanish-speaking communities and provide 
     bilingual ballots. ``Alex was very helpful in making sure 
     that the bureau got the data on a timely basis, so 
     jurisdictions could make all aspects of voting accessible,'' 
     says Marisa Demeo, who was then a lawyer with the Mexican-
     American Legal Defense and Education Fund, which gave Acosta 
     its 2003 Excellence in Government Service Award.
       The May 4th meeting addressed issues that related more to 
     the traditional voting-rights concerns of African-Americans 
     than to those of Latinos. Acosta opened the session with an 
     unusual request: that no one takes notes on what he had to 
     say. The meeting was a courtesy, he said, but he didn't want 
     to have his exact words thrown back at him later. (Acosta has 
     declined repeated requests to be interviewed.) According to 
     several people present at the meeting, Acosta described how 
     Voting Section lawyers will monitor ballot access at the 
     polls while federal prosecutors will be on call to respond to 
     allegations of fraud. He informed the group that ninety-three 
     federal prosecutors would travel to Washington in July for a 
     two-day training session, and that they would all be on duty 
     on Election Day. Acosta said that the changes were being made 
     in good faith and asked those assembled to keep an open mind.
       The idea of placing prosecutors on call on Election Day 
     created misgivings both inside and outside the Voting 
     Section. ``A lot of assistant U.S. attorneys are going to be 
     more interested in voting integrity than in voter 
     protection,'' Jon Greenbaum, a lawyer who recently left the 
     Voting Section, after nearly seven years, to join the 
     progressive Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, 
     told me. ``How many people are scared off from voting because 
     you ask them a question at a polling place? There is no way 
     to know.'' As another civil-rights lawyer puts it, ``Voting 
     is kind of an irrational act anyway. It's easy to discourage 
     people from doing it.'' Justice officials insist that they 
     don't want to keep anyone from legitimately voting. ``I 
     understand that, historically, intimidation is something that 
     could be used as a method to get people not to vote,'' Luis 
     Reyes, who is counsellor to Acosta, says. ``But intimidation 
     is antithetical to our mission with this initiative.''
       By most accounts, Ashcroft's Access and Integrity 
     Initiative came too late to make much difference in the 2002 
     elections, which followed his announcement by about a month. 
     Civil-rights advocates note, however, that the only major 
     fraud investigation that came out of that election concerned 
     Native Americans in South Dakota, who generally vote 
     overwhelmingly for Democrats.
       The spectre of the vote-counting controversy in Florida 
     after the 2000 election still haunts most discussions of 
     voting-rights law, and gives everything about voting rights a 
     partisan slant. This is especially true of the government's 
     most direct response to the 2000 election--the legislation 
     that became known as the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA, 
     which Congress passed in 2002 and which is only now having 
     widespread practical effect. Though HAVA is often described 
     as Congress's answer to the Florida imbroglio, some of its 
     original inspiration, according to Kit Bond, a Missouri 
     Republican who was one of its principal sponsors in the 
     Senate, was a voting controversy in Missouri that same year. 
     ``I don't believe we had anywhere near an honest election in 
     St. Louis in 2000,'' Bond told me. ``They kept the polls open 
     late and let all kinds of people vote who shouldn't have--
     people who registered from vacant lots, dead people on the 
     rolls, even a springer spaniel. After what I saw, I said we 
     are going to make it easier to vote but harder to cheat.'' 
     (On November 7, 2000, Democrats in St. Louis persuaded a 
     local judge to extend voting hours, arguing that high voter 
     turnout had caused lines to back up at polling places; 
     Republicans charged that the maneuver was an illegal attempt 
     to gain partisan advantage.)
       At the time HAVA was passed, it was generally portrayed as 
     a compromise between voter access and voting integrity: 
     Democrats got more money for the states to invest in modern 
     voting technology, and Republicans won new and tighter 
     restrictions on fraud. So far, though, implementation of the 
     law seems to have favored Republicans. HAVA authorized the 
     government to spend up to $3.9 billion over three years on 
     new registration systems and voting machines, but states have 
     received less than half of the original amount. The law 
     requires each state to create a computerized list of all 
     registered voters, but forty states have been granted waivers 
     of this obligation until 2006. The anti-fraud provisions, 
     however, are expected to take effect in time for the November 
     elections. This is what Bond intended. ``There is nothing 
     like the fear of jail time to get people to stop messing with 
     elections,'' he told me. HAVA also requires states to allow 
     people who claim they are wrongly denied the right to vote at 
     the polls the chance to cast ``provisional'' ballots. The 
     recent history of provisional ballots is not promising, 
     though. For example, in Chicago during this year's primary, 
     5,498 of 5,914 provisional ballots were ultimately 
     disqualified. The question of how and whether provisional 
     votes will be counted in 2004 is unsettled in many states and 
     could delay the posting of results on Election Night.
       One of the more controversial parts of the new law 
     requires, in most circumstances, voters who have registered 
     by mail to provide their driver's license or Social Security 
     numbers, and to produce an official photo I.D. at the polls, 
     or a utility bill. Hans A. von Spakovsky, a counsel to Acosta 
     and the main Justice Department interpreter of HAVA, wrote to 
     Judith A. Arnold, an assistant attorney general in Maryland, 
     that the Justice Department believed states must ``verify'' 
     the Social Security numbers that people submit on their 
     registration forms. For most states, this requirement won't 
     apply until 2006, but it may be a major hurdle for both the 
     states and newly registered voters. ``What D.O.J. is saying 
     is clearly contrary to the statute in our view,'' Armold 
     says.
       Von Spakovsky, a longtime activist in the voting-integrity 
     cause, has emerged as the Administration's chief operative on 
     voting rights. Before going to Washington, he was a lawyer in 
     private practice and a Republican appointee to the Fulton 
     County Registration and Election Board, which runs elections 
     in Atlanta. He belonged to the Federalist Society, a 
     prominent organization of conservative lawyers, and had also 
     joined the board of advisers of a lesser-known group called 
     the Voting Integrity Project.
       The V.I.P. was founded by Deborah Phillips, a former county 
     official of the Virginia Republican Party, as an organization 
     devoted principally to fighting voting fraud and promoting 
     voter education. In 1997, von Spakovsky wrote an article for 
     the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, a conservative research 
     group, that called for an aggressive campaign to ``purge'' 
     the election rolls of felons. Within months of that article's 
     publication, the V.I.P. helped put von Spakovsky's idea into 
     action. Phillips met with the company that designed the 
     process for the removal of alleged felons from the voting 
     rolls in Florida, a process that led, notoriously, to the 
     mistaken disenfranchisement of thousands of voters, most of 
     them Democratic, before the 2000 election. (This year, 
     Florida again tried to purge its voting rolls of felons, but 
     the method was found to be so riddled with errors that it had 
     to be abandoned.) During the thirty-six-day recount in 
     Florida, von Spakovsky worked there as a volunteer for the 
     Bush campaign. After the Inauguration, he was hired as an 
     attorney in the Voting Section and was soon promoted to be 
     counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, in what is known 
     as the ``front office'' of the Civil Rights Division. In that 
     position, von Spakovsky, who is forty-five years old, has 
     become an important voice in the Voting Section. (Von 
     Spakovsky, citing Justice Department policy, has also 
     declined repeated requests to be interviewed.)
       In a recent speech at Georgetown University, von Spakovsky 
     suggested that voting integrity will remain a focus for the 
     Justice Department, and that voter access might best be left 
     to volunteers. ``Frankly, the best thing that can happen is 
     when both parties and candidates have observers in every 
     single polling place, wherever the votes are collected and 
     tabulated, because that helps make sure that nothing happens 
     that shouldn't happen, that the votes are counted properly, 
     and that there is transparency to maintain public confidence 
     in elections,'' he said. ``Not enough people volunteer to be 
     poll-watchers. They ought to do that so that there are poll-
     watchers everywhere in the country throughout the whole 
     election process.'' The Bush-Cheney campaign has announced 
     plans to place lawyers on call for as many as thirty thousand 
     precincts on Election Day, to monitor for vote fraud. 
     Democratic lawyers also plan to be out in force.
       Since Ashcroft took office, traditional enforcement of the 
     Voting Rights Act has declined. The Voting Section has all 
     but stopped filing lawsuits against communities alleged to 
     have engaged in discrimination against minority voters. 
     ``D.O.J. is a very bureaucratic institution,'' Jon Greenbaum, 
     the former Voting Section lawyer, said, ``and it's hard to 
     get cases filed under any Administration, but we were filing 
     cases in the Clinton years.'' As even civil-rights advocates 
     acknowledge, there are fewer vote-discrimination cases to 
     bring than there have been in the past. The Justice 
     Department's Web site says that ``several lawsuits of this 
     nature are filed every year,'' but since Bush was sworn in 
     the Voting Section has filed just one contested radical vote-
     discrimination case, in rural Colorado, which it lost.

[[Page 21218]]

     Justice Department sources say the Voting Section is also 
     considering whether to sue a Mississippi locality that has an 
     African-American majority. Such a lawsuit would be the first 
     use of a key section of the Voting Rights Act to protect the 
     rights of white voters.
       The main business of the Voting Section is still passing 
     judgment on legislative redistricting in areas that have a 
     history of discrimination. Under Ashcroft, its actions have 
     consistently favored Republicans--for instance, in Georgia, 
     where the department challenged the Democrats' gerrymander, 
     and in Mississippi, where the Voting Section stalled the 
     redistricting process for so long that a pro-Republican 
     redistricting plan went into effect by default. The Voting 
     Section's role in the controversial redistricting of Texas 
     was more direct and, ultimately, more significant. After the 
     2000 census, Texas, like most states, put through a new 
     redistricting plan. Then, after the midterm elections, Tom 
     DeLay, the House Majority Leader, who is from Houston, 
     engineered passage of a revised congressional redistricting 
     plan through the state legislature, which may mean a shift of 
     as many as seven seats from the Democrats to the Republicans. 
     It was unprecedented for a state to make a second 
     redistricting plan after a post-census plan had been adopted. 
     When the DeLay plan was submitted to the Justice Department 
     for approval, career officials in the Voting Section 
     producted an internal legal opinion of seventy-three pages, 
     with seventeen hundred and fifty pages of supporting 
     documents, arguing that the plan should be rejected as a 
     retrogression of minority rights. However, according to 
     people familiar with the deliberations, the political staff 
     of the Voting Section exercised its right to overrule that 
     decision and approved the DeLay plan, which is now in effect 
     for the 2004 elections.
       Far from Washington, and even farther from the reigning 
     ideology there, some civil-rights advocates have begun to 
     sketch the beginnings of an alternative scenario for voting 
     rights. At a conference at Harvard Law School on May 10th, 
     under the direction of Christopher Edley, who is also a 
     member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, about 
     forty litigators, law professors, and social scientists 
     started debating key moves for the reauthorization of the 
     Voting Rights Act in 2007.
       ``Mostly, we concentrated on trying to identify the right 
     questions,'' Edley, who recently became the dean of Boalt 
     Hall, the law school of the University of California at 
     Berkeley, said. ``You can't be utopian. This was not an 
     exercise in how to reinvent democracy. But we were trying to 
     figure out what could one plausibly argue for.'' Decades 
     removed from the struggles of the nineteen-sixties, Edley and 
     his colleagues faced a complex set of issues. How should the 
     government draw multiethnic districts, where Hispanics or 
     Asians lay claim to seats held by whites or even by African-
     Americans? ``Who speaks for the African-American community?'' 
     Edley asked. ``Is it the African-American incumbents, or do 
     we discount their testimony, because of their self-
     interest?''
       For Edley and his colleagues, the lessons of the Florida 
     recount suggest possible reforms of the Voting Rights Act. 
     Some of the more lurid allegations of racial discrimination 
     in Florida during the 2000 election, like racial profiling at 
     roadblocks near polling places in black neighborhoods, were 
     never proved, but there is little doubt that African-
     Americans faced disproportionate difficulties at the polls. 
     In Jacksonville, for example, apparently because of a 
     confusing ballot design, more than twenty-five thousand 
     votes--nine per cent of all ballots cast--were rendered 
     invalid. Nearly nine thousand of these invalid votes were 
     concentrated in African-American precincts. Gadsden County 
     had the highest percentage of black voters in the state and 
     the highest rate of disqualified ballots, with one in eight 
     votes not counted. In its current form, the Voting Rights Act 
     offers no specific redress for these problems. Perhaps, Edley 
     suggested, the law should be expanded to include such things 
     as the quality of voting machines. ``In Florida, we saw 
     tremendous geographic disparities in spoilage rates for 
     ballots,'' Edley said. ``We don't accept those kinds of 
     disparities when it comes to the standards for drinking 
     water. Why do we accept them when it comes to the quality of 
     the voting process?'' Still, Edley recognizes that control of 
     the Justice Department may matter as much as the precise 
     words of the laws on the books. ``Obviously, the 
     effectiveness of it is going to be greatly diminished if 
     enforcement takes on a pronounced ideological tilt,'' he 
     says.
       Under Ashcroft, the Justice Department has also changed its 
     method of hiring lawyers, who are supposed to be apolitical, 
     and often go on to spend their careers working for the 
     government. The department, which employs close to four 
     thousand attorneys, hires junior-level lawyers through a 
     program known as the Attorney General's Honors Program, which 
     brings in about a hundred and fifty new lawyers each year. In 
     the past, the program was run by mid-level career officials, 
     who were known for their political independence. Since 2002, 
     the Honors Program has been run by political appointees. 
     ``It's called the Attorney General's Honors Program, and when 
     Attorney General Ashcroft signed the first batch of 
     appointments he said, `I'm the Attorney General. How come I 
     don't know anything about this?''' Mark Corallo, Ashcroft's 
     spokesman, says. ``He said he wanted the top people in the 
     department getting involved. He said he wanted greater 
     outreach, different law schools approached, reaching out not 
     just for racial minorities but for economic minorities as 
     well.'' Corallo dismisses complaints about the changes as 
     coming from malcontents. ``A bunch of mid-level people here 
     had their boondoggle taken away from them, going on these 
     recruiting trips for weeks at a time, wining and dining at 
     great hotels on the government's dime,'' he said.
       Lawyers inside and outside the department say that the 
     change in the Honors Program has already had an effect, 
     especially in politically sensitive places like the Voting 
     Section. ``The front office disbanded the hiring committee 
     and took over all hiring,'' one lawyer who recently left the 
     Voting Section told me. ``That was a huge deal. Under 
     previous Republican Administrations, that hadn't happened. 
     They even took it over for summer volunteer clerks.'' Thanks 
     to these changes, some in the department believe, it's only a 
     matter of time before tensions in the Voting Section 
     disappear. As a current employee puts it, ``Soon, there won't 
     be any difference between the career people and the political 
     people. The front office is replicating itself. Everyone here 
     will be on the same page.''
                                  ____


              [From the Washington Post, October 6, 2004]

              Indian Health Agency Barred New-Voter Drive

                             (By Jo Becker)

       Officials at a federal program that runs hospitals and 
     clinics serving Native Americans this summer prohibited 
     employees from using those facilities to sign up new voters, 
     saying that even nonpartisan voter registration was 
     prohibited on federal property.
       Staff members at several Indian Health Service hospitals 
     and clinics in New Mexico, a presidential battleground state 
     where about one-tenth of the population is Native American, 
     were trying to register employees, patients and family 
     members who use the facilities.
       In a July e-mail, Ronald C. Wood, executive officer of the 
     program's regional Navajo office, told his hospital and 
     clinic directors that ``we are in a very sensitive political 
     season'' and outlined a policy that he said came from Indian 
     Health Service headquarters.
       ``There have been recent questions about whether we can do 
     non-partisan voter registration drives in our IHS facilities 
     during non-duty hours,'' Wood wrote. ``The guidance from HQs 
     staff is that we should not allow voter registration in our 
     facilities or on federal property.''
       Several of those involved in the registration effort 
     questioned what they saw as a double standard, given that the 
     federal government encourages registration on military bases, 
     where voters traditionally have favored Republicans.
       Democrats and civil rights groups yesterday said they had 
     been unaware of the directive and were concerned that the 
     motive was partisan. Native Americans have become an 
     important constituency for Democrats.
       ``Why should it be permissible to conduct voter 
     registration on one type of federal facility--military 
     bases--but not on another? asked Elliott Mincberg, legal 
     director at the People for the American Way Foundation.
       The Indian Health Service, a program under the Department 
     of Health and Human Services, said in a statement yesterday 
     that outside groups are not prohibited to register voters at 
     IHS facilities. As to Wood's instruction to the program's 
     employees, the statement said: ``No IHS employee will be 
     registering voters as part of his or her official duties.''
       Wood did not return phone calls, but in his e-mail he 
     referred employees' questions to Jeanelle Raybon, director of 
     the IHS office on integrity and ethics. Raybon declines to 
     clarify the agency's statement or answer questions about 
     whether Wood's instructions reflected IHS policy.
       She would say only that employees are expected to follow 
     the Hatch Act. That law restricts partisan activity by 
     federal workers but does not speak to nonpartisan 
     registration drives. A 1992 memo by the General Services 
     Administration, which controls federal buildings, authorizes 
     voter registration on federal property.
       Defense Department spokesman Glenn Flood said that service 
     members must comply with the Hatch Act but that the military 
     encourages them to take part in registering others ``on or 
     off-base,'' so long as the activity is nonpartisan and does 
     not interfere with official duties.
       Joseph E. Sandler, general counsel for the Democratic 
     National Committee, said that the Hatch Act does not apply in 
     this case and that he plans to investigate the matter.
       Also yesterday, the DNC outlined an aggressive legal 
     strategy it says is needed to protect minority voters from 
     intimidation at the polls.

[[Page 21219]]

       It unveiled an ad to air on African American radio stations 
     implying that President Bush cares only about getting white 
     voters to the polls. Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, the first 
     black Republican elected statewide in Maryland, rebutted that 
     charge. Both the GOP and the administration want to get out 
     the vote, he said, ``black or white.''
       Several Bush administration agencies have been criticized 
     after taking steps to block or question other registration 
     efforts.
       The Homeland Security Department sought to block a 
     nonpartisan group from registering new citizens outside a 
     Miami naturalization ceremony in August.
       The Justice Department has launched inquiries into new 
     registrations submitted by Democratic leaning groups in 
     several key states. Democrats say the probes are politically 
     motivated.
                                  ____


              [From the Washington Post, October 6, 2004]

            Election Day Anti-Terrorism Plans Draw Criticism

                   (By Spencer S. Hsu and Jo Becker)

       A push by the 50 states to coordinate anti-terrorism 
     activities before Election Day is drawing warnings from 
     Democrats, civil rights groups and election officials, who 
     say excessive measures could suppress turnout among urban and 
     minority voters.
       They contend that an elevated national threat warning--and 
     any actions in response--could scare away voters, 
     intentionally or not, especially in cities, which tend to 
     vote Democratic. Voting rights advocates worry that fear of 
     terrorism could lead to federal agents and local police being 
     posted at polling places, a tactic that has historically been 
     used in some places to intimidate minority citizens.
       Such generalized threats ``could have the consequence of 
     discouraging people that may otherwise be motivated to 
     vote,'' said Jeff Fischer, senior adviser to IFES, a 
     Washington-based organization that promotes democratic 
     elections.
       ``There is a fine line that public officials must walk,'' 
     weighing the specifics of the threat, communicating openly 
     with voters and reacting judiciously, he said.
       Citing the March 11 bombings in Madrid before elections in 
     Spain, Department of Homeland Security officials have warned 
     that terrorists might try a similar assault here before the 
     Nov. 2 elections. In recent weeks there has been a focus on 
     Election Day, although the government has said it has no 
     intelligence about the timing, status or target of a possible 
     attack.
       State and federal officials issued a security planning 
     bulletin last week urging governors, state homeland security 
     advisers and election officials to coordinate preparations 
     and contingency plans. The document advised officials to 
     think through how they would handle threat information, 
     secure or change polling places and ballot-counting centers, 
     guard members of the electoral college, and communicate to 
     the public.
       In interviews, the bulletin's authors said they were aware 
     of the political minefield surrounding the issue. But they 
     said that if there were an attack and elections and homeland 
     security officials were unprepared, the consequences could be 
     more disruptive.
       ``There is no doubt that the threat that is posed 
     nationwide prior to the election here in this country is very 
     real,'' said Bryan Sierra, spokesman for the Justice 
     Department. ``We have an absolute responsibility to provide 
     that information to state and local governments, who are 
     charged with protecting their citizens.''
       Sensitivity over the political fallout of the warnings is 
     especially high because of the narrow partisan divide in the 
     country and bitter memories of the 2000 presidential race, 
     which turned on tiny vote margins in some states and partly 
     on decisions made by Florida election officials.
       Analysts say that regardless of intent, terrorism warnings 
     have shaped voter attitudes, an influence that could grow if 
     the warnings are extended to polling sites. Kathleen Hall 
     Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at 
     the University of Pennsylvania, said people who oppose 
     President Bush ``see a clear pattern to scare the 
     electorate,'' while his supporters see ``an administration 
     vigilantly protecting the country.'' As for undecided or 
     swing voters, ``raising the public's anxiety level helps the 
     candidacy of George Bush, because at the moment the polls 
     suggest the public feels it's safer to have George Bush as 
     president,'' she said.
       Critics of the warnings point to Minnesota Secretary of 
     State Mary Kiffmeyer's effort to raise terrorism awareness as 
     an example of how election security measures could chill 
     turnout. Kiffmeyer (R) gave local election officials fliers 
     that warned voters to watch for unattended packages, vehicles 
     ``riding low on springs'' and ``homicide bombers.''
       Bombers may have a ``shaved head or short hair,'' ``smell 
     of unusual herbal/flower water or perfume,'' wear baggy 
     clothes or appear to be whispering to themselves, the flier 
     warned.
       Several local election officials were outraged over what 
     they saw as an attempt to discourage voting with excessively 
     dire warnings and stereotyping descriptions that could single 
     out voters from specific religious, racial or ethnic groups 
     for harassment. They refused to distribute the fliers.
       Kiffmeyer said the language of the bulletin was taken from 
     Minnesota's homeland security agency, which developed it with 
     federal guidance. ``What if something happens? I don't want 
     to say, `I didn't want to scare people, so I didn't pass out 
     this information,''' Kiffmeyer said. ``And do people really 
     think this isn't on the minds of the public when they saw 
     what happened in Madrid and in Russia?''
       But Oregon Deputy Secretary of State Paddy J. McGuire (D) 
     said he believes the intent of such a message is not to 
     protect the homeland but to ``scare people away from the 
     polls.''
       Some Democrats are suspicious of the timing of the 
     announcements, noting that warnings about an election-season 
     threat came on April 19, when Bush was close to his low in 
     the polls; on Aug. 1, right after the Democratic National 
     Convention; and last week, as the president's post-National 
     Republican Convention bounce ebbed.
       In a statement last week, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), 
     the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, 
     warned that it is possible for terrorism response plans 
     created in the name of election security to discourage voting 
     and ``become a thinly veiled partisan tactic to tilt the 
     elections.''
       Spokesmen for Ashcroft and Ridge emphasized that the effort 
     to secure the election was initiated and led by the states, 
     which administer elections. Federal law normally prohibits 
     the presence of armed federal agents near polling sites. They 
     also noted that the effort is supported by the National 
     Governors Association, chaired by Virginia Gov. Mark R. 
     Warner (D), whose aides have said it is vital to address the 
     issue of election security in a post-Sept. 11, 2001, era.
       ``We do not do politics at Homeland Security,'' Ridge 
     spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said.
       Nevertheless, partisan tensions were apparent as officials 
     of the NGA and the National Association of Secretaries of 
     State and homeland security experts sparred last week over 
     the timing and content of a public announcement.
       Rebecca Vigil-Giron (D), New Mexico secretary of state and 
     president of the secretaries of state association, said the 
     directive sent out by her organization to the states to step 
     up preparations to safeguard national balloting has been 
     ``blown way out of proportion.'' She said election officials 
     must plan a coordinated response to an election disrupted by 
     a terrorist attack, but she said, ``I want to make very sure 
     that these plans don't look anything like voter 
     suppression.''
       Still, civil rights organizations are worried. People for 
     the American Way Foundation issued a report concluding that 
     various efforts in the name of combating voter fraud have 
     replaced Jim Crow-era laws restricting ballot access as a way 
     to hold down minority voting.
       Elliott Mincberg, the foundation's legal director, said he 
     suspected that efforts to protect against terrorism, could 
     have the same effect. ``The devil is in the details,'' he 
     said, ``and I want to be sure that this is not done in a way 
     that scares people away from the polls.''

  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this 
resolution to promote greater civic awareness among all people of the 
United States. This issue is particularly important at a time when 
voter participation has been decreasing. The Census Bureau found that 
only 46% of eligible voters participated in the 2002 elections.
  This is not acceptable. Full participation in the electoral process 
by all Americans is truly a bipartisan concern. We are a society that 
values democracy. One of the most basic of all rights in a free and 
democratic society is the right to participate. Exercising the right to 
vote makes us productive members of society and contributes to the 
substance of our laws and character. The fact of the matter is clear; 
the right to vote is the most basic constitutional act of citizenship.
  As a society, we must take steps to raise civic awareness and to 
develop strategies to promote civic responsibility. Too many people 
have shed blood and died for us to have this right. While promoting 
civic awareness, we must also ensure that there are no barriers to the 
process. In 2000, a number of people went to the polls, but their votes 
were not counted due to faulty equipment and human error. This must 
never happen in the world's greatest democracy.
  Again, I rise in support of this legislation because it represents 
progress in addressing voter complacency.
  Mr. LARSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of 
my time.
  Mr. NEY. Mr. Speaker, I just want to again thank the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Hall) and the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Ross) for their 
introduction and support of this resolution.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by

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the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ney) that the House suspend the rules and 
agree to the resolution, H. Res. 796.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds having voted in favor 
thereof) the rules were suspended and the resolution was agreed to.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

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