Both Parties Must Protect Integrity of Vote

by Leonard M. Salle

Oakland Tribune, 22 September 2005, http://www.insidebayarea.com/searchresults/ci_3051916

SINCE the 2000 election, those who have been close to voting issues have been intensely concerned about the integrity of the vote. However, there has been scant coverage of this issue in the major media and, perhaps reflecting this, little interest by the broad public. Moreover, few elected officials of either major party are willing to address what is, without a doubt, the major political issue of the day.

During the Florida recounts in 2000, voter disenfranchisement and voting improprieties occurred on a large scale. C-SPAN broadcast the investigation by the NAACP that presented testimony on voting irregularities. These "irregularities" included such things as throwing away ballot boxes, voter intimidation of many sorts and illegal identification requirements.

Shortly after the 2002 election, questions were raised about the reliability of touch-screen voting. Particularly disturbing findings were that top executives of the major suppliers of touch-screen voting equipment were strongly aligned with one political party (Republican), and that there was no way to verify the accuracy of the touch-screen vote. Subsequent investigations by computer scientists have shown that the touch-screen computers could easily be hacked. Indeed, there were strong indications of touch-screen computer fraud in the 2002 election.

Coming up to the 2004 election, there was not only well-documented disenfranchisement of voters, but even stronger indications of lack of trustworthiness of touch-screen voting. It has also been revealed that the results of other voting systems, including paper ballots, could be subject to miscounts through manipulation of the central tabulating equipment used at the county level to tally votes from the precincts. Although this particular problem could be overcome by instituting appropriate procedures, putting these procedures in place nationwide cannot realistically be achieved under the current system, in which individual states and even counties have jurisdiction over voting procedures.

Those who believe there is no way widespread voting fraud could occur in America might well consider the following. There are currently four bills before Congress designed to address one or more well-identified problems that interfere with having honest elections. These bills all have one thing in common: significant support from Democrats but little or no support from Republican members of Congress. The one exception is HR 278, a bill that can be characterized as anti-voting reform. It has only Republican cosponsors.

Why are mostly Democrats supporting voting reform? It's really an issue of self-interest. Republicans have a substantial advantage in leaving things as they are. The flaws in our election system work to their advantage. Unfortunately, history has shown that it is not unusual for political parties (for example, there were questions about Chicago and the JFK election in 1960) to be more interested in winning than in honest elections.

It is ironic that America's leaders talk about the need to create democracies around the world and emphasize how important honest elections are to achieving that goal. The truth is that many of these same leaders don't believe in the democratic principle of honest elections, where every person who chooses to vote can, and every vote will be accurately and honestly counted.

As things now stand, unless our representatives in both political parties are willing to do what is needed to ensure the integrity of the vote, we cannot expect to maintain our democracy.

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Leonard M. Salle is president of the Commonweal Institute, an activist think tank, in Menlo Park.