The Republican bill, introduced by Senator John Ensign of Nevada, would
focus on the most critical weakness in the system by requiring that electronic
voting machines produce voter-verifiable paper records of the votes cast. The
paper records would take precedence when there were inconsistencies.
Mr. Ensign's bill
does not go as far as another paper-trail bill that has been introduced in the
House by Representative Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat. That bill is
preferable because it includes other safeguards, like requiring an audit of
some paper records as a spot-check for the electronic
totals. Still, Mr. Ensign's bill would be a good step, and its Republican
sponsorship and narrow focus could give it real momentum in this Congress.
The Democratic Senate bill, introduced last week by Senators Hillary Clinton,
Barbara Boxer, John Kerry and Frank Lautenberg, is now the gold standard for
election reform. It would require not only paper records, but recounts in 2
percent of all polling places or precincts, and restrictions on political
activity by voting machine manufacturers.
The bill would also
take on lines at the polls - which stretched up to 10 hours this year - by
requiring standards for the minimum number of voting machines per precinct. It
would limit the states' ability to throw out voter registration forms and
provisional ballots on technicalities, and prevent them from using onerous
identification requirements to turn away eligible voters. And it would strike a
blow against vote suppression by outlawing the use of deception - like fliers
giving the wrong date for a election - to keep people
from voting.
Some important
big-picture reforms would also be made by that Democratic Senate bill. It would
make Election Day a holiday, freeing up people to vote and serve as poll
workers, and it would require states to allow early voting. It would bar chief
election officials, including secretaries of state, from engaging in partisan
politics. And it would require states to restore the vote to felons who have
paid their debts to society; many of them are now barred from voting.
Election reform
should not be a partisan issue. No member of Congress should be satisfied with
a system in which voters are forced to wait in line for hours or to vote on
unreliable machines. Americans from across the political spectrum were moved to
see Iraqi voters going to the polls last month. Congress should take that
idealism and direct it toward making our own election system the best it can
be.