Our election system is in a perilous state as never before.
Back in the early 1970s, as Clark County auditor, overseeing elections involved registering voters, setting up polling stations, tabulating ballots and confirming the election results. While the ballot positions were mostly partisan, conducting the elections was wholly nonpartisan. These were collegial meetings with the Republican and Democratic county chairpersons to enlist volunteers to greet and verify voters who showed up at the polling stations, then devoted long hours to counting the ballots.
A lot has changed over the past 50 years. In some respects, voting was more restrictive back then. There were no drop-off boxes or same-day registration, no mail-in or absentee ballots, except for those in military service.
The 2020 presidential election had a surprisingly high voter turnout despite the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the largest voter participation in the 21st century with 17 million more people voting than in 2016. State and local officials went all out to make voting easier, with some states like Washington actually mailing ballots to all voters, plus expanding drop-off boxes.
Due to false allegations of election fraud and the partisan drumbeat, some state legislatures enacted laws that curbed these make-voting-easier initiatives. In 2021, 19 states passed 34 such laws, restricting access to casting ballots in elections. Republican lawmakers claimed that such actions were needed to prevent voter fraud and to safeguard elections. Yet federal and state agencies, including President Trump’s Attorney General William Barr, found no evidence of problems with the 2020 election. Subsequently, 50-plus federal and state court rulings dismissed such claims.
So what’s the problem? It comes down to politics. Political operatives on both sides recognize that a higher voter turnout inevitably results in more Democratic victories.
How ballots are counted is another concern. The traditional hand-counting paper ballots had poll volunteers working late into the evening with selfless dedication, a trusted means to ensure safeguarding of vote counting but the long hours delayed releasing of the results. Clark County and many others also had the so-called “lever machines” tabulating ballots. Dating back to 1895, these hulking 875-pound machines were a cost burden — each $5,000, plus the enormous amount for storing and delivering to the polling stations.
That’s when I learned about a punch-card device, known as Votomatic, that no one knew about. A new computerized alternative with a $185 price tag would require legislation to authorize this untested new voting system. It took two years to convince lawmakers in Olympia to allow Clark County to be the first in the nation to use this new device for computer tabulation of ballots with the necessary safeguards. The Votomatic quickly spread to other Washington counties and nationwide but got caught up in a highly publicized glitch in Florida that resulted in a federal law that banned pre-scored punch-card ballots.
Congress had a bipartisan vote to prohibit punch-card voting, but what are lawmakers doing today to pass legislation that provides the necessary safeguards to prevent some states from rigging election laws to guarantee more partisan outcomes?
The “For the People Act,” first introduced in 2010, is something of a Democrat freight train loaded with 791 pages of so-called election reforms, including making Election Day a national holiday, campaign financing reform, and automatic voter registration. Despite relentless effort by the president and Democrat leaders in Congress, their ambitious stockpile of reforms never got to the president’s desk. The same destination awaited the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.
There is nothing more sacred to our democracy than the integrity of our election system, but partisanship reigns over how we approach this issue. While state and local governments are responsible for overseeing our elections, the U.S. government definitely has responsibility given the federal positions (president, Congress) on the ballot, so why does it stand by helpless? Compromise is about give and take. What Republicans are doing in state legislatures to undermine voting and the Democrats with their sweeping For the People Act leaves no room for finding common ground.
Today our leaders are coping with huge problems of COVID variants, inflation, Russia’s threatening actions, but the stakes are much higher if we are to preserve the bedrock of our democracy.
Don Bonker was the congressional representative for Washington’s 3rd District from 1975 to 1989.
