Promiscuous Voting

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With the 2008 Presidential Election drawing near to a close, political think tanks are proposing new election laws to deter election fraud and to prepare the state and federal governments in guiding an election during a time of catastrophe.

In recent years, the U.S. election system has fallen prey to chaos. “Successfully managing an ordinary presidential election requires an enormous amount of preparation and planning, read an AEI October 2008 events news brief. “Natural and man-made disasters alike have caused massive administrative disruptions to elections in recent years in states like Louisiana, with Hurricanes Katrina and Gustav, and New York, with the attacks of September 11. Numerous legal questions arise in the face of disaster: If a catastrophe required closing polling places in a specific city or state on Election Day, could that state legally reschedule the federal election? How would the Constitution or federal law handle the incapacitation, or federal law handle the presidential or vice-presidential candidates in a terrorist attack?” These questions were just a few of the many questions which politicians and legal scholars debated on October 23.

“It is clear that the current system created in 1974, the first used in 1976, and fundamentally unchanged since, including the law [on] spending limits in the primary and general election campaigns-is utterly broken,” CBS election analyst Norman J. Ornstein noted in a recent article published by AEI. Ornstein believes the current election system is in great need of reform.

Steven F. Huefner, an associate law professor at Ohio State University wrote a piece in 2007 entitled, “Term Limits in State Legislative Elections: Less Value For Money?” in which he argued, “many matters of U.S. election administration have attracted significant popular, political, and scholarly attention in recent years, especially after Bush v. Gore. Largely slighted, however, has been the matter of how the various state election systems respond when an election outcome is unsettled or contested.”

“Moreover some recent electoral reforms, such as widespread provisional balloting and increased use of no-fault absentee voting, actually may increase the frequency with which contested elections occur.” Ironically, Huefner’s premonition could not haven been more accurate.

“Even 25 years ago, there was a single Election Day, the day when 95 percent of Americans voted and only a handful cast absentee ballots,” John C. Fortier, a research fellow at the AEI wrote in an October 2008 article entitled, “Early Voting Shows No Sign of Slowing.” “By 2004, nearly one-fourth of votes come before the officially designated Election Day, and the percentage in 2008 will likely exceed 30 percent.”

Thus, Fortier argued, “absentee balloting is the area where we have seen most prosecutions of voter fraud.” “Americans should consider if this is how they really want to vote, as concerns linger about ballot security and privacy,” he argued.

Al Ater, former Secretary of State of Louisiana, explained that after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, it was next to impossible to connect with potential voters in Louisiana, as the local government was ill-prepared to deal with such a catastrophe.

Tom Wilkey, the first permanent executive director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission agreed with Ater’s accounts of Hurricane Katrina, but added that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was also partially responsible for the disconnect with voters, due to its maladroit efforts to locate residents in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina touched ground.

Typically, the U.S. Constitution has set guidelines for federal elections, such as the presidential election, which allows for certain provisions to take place in instances in which a president dies while in office or for some other reason cannot fulfill his term as the commander-in-chief, Fortier explained.

“In wake of the contested 2000 Presidential Election, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed by Congress in 2002. The law provides funds to the states to enable them to replace punch card voting systems. It has also created an Election Assistance Commission to help to help administer federal election laws and has set standards for the administration of federal elections by states and local governments,” according to a press release published by the AEI January 26, 2006.

Irene Warren is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.