Nothing undermines W more than reminders of Florida, and he’ll hear plenty more when Congress returns after Labor Day. America, it seems, can capture space dust from the beginning of time and pop a plastic heart into a dying man, but we haven’t mastered the science behind counting paper ballots. According to researchers at Caltech and MIT, some 4 million to 6 million votes were lost in the last presidential election. The Carter-Ford commission issued an overhaul plan that would cost taxpayers as much as $2 billion. Bush couldn’t wait to roll out the report in the Rose Garden, but once the publicity dies down, lawmakers aren’t sure he’ll get behind it. Having emerged victorious from the swamps of Florida, Bush hasn’t been eager to admit that the system failed.
The nation’s problems at the polls turn out to be myriad. Voter lists are outdated, and if you don’t fill out your ballot with precision, any kind of machine might reject it. Among the recommendations Congress will likely embrace: new equipment and statewide computerization of voting lists. Among those that may not fly: moving Veterans Day to Election Day every four years, so more polling places and workers are available, and getting the media to stop projecting winners before polls close.
The question that almost unraveled the Carter-Ford report is not what to do, but how to get it done. Wary of bossing states around, the commission–after Carter presided over a genteel, nine-hour debate in Charlottesville, Va.–proposed that states get federal matching funds to update systems voluntarily. But when members floated the draft on the Hill, liberals exploded. Sen. Christopher Dodd demanded that states be forced to meet uniform standards. Christopher Edley Jr., a Harvard law professor on the commission, fought to reopen the debate, triggering a wave of heated negotiations just days before the scheduled release.
In the end, Edley and five other members signed onto a dissent that probably foreshadows a fight on the Hill. Some states aren’t waiting around. In Georgia, where the ratio of missed ballots was far worse than Florida, officials want to buy 30,000 machines that ask voters to approve their selections after they fill out ballots. “The bottom line is, do you really want this to happen?” says Cathy Cox, Georgia’s secretary of State. “A lot of officials are sitting back and saying, ‘Well, the system may be flawed, but it elected me’.” Cox doesn’t name any names–but if the White House doesn’t step up on voting reform, you can bet that some of its former occupants will.
