We Urgently Need to Fix Our Voting System

As the 110th Congress convened January 4, its members had only to look around them to be reminded of an issue they should be addressing this session. Indeed, they could look the reminder right in the face.

His name is Vern Buchanan, and he was sworn in as the duly elected representative of Florida's 13th District. He won his seat by 369 votes, but his opponent has called into question why some 18,000 people in the district who voted for other races on the ballot seem not to have cast votes in the House contest.

It will be up to the courts to decide on the opponent's charge that she was the victim of a voting-machine malfunction. But the questions that have arisen over whether the computerized voting machines in Sarasota County operated properly — or whether, as some suggest, a poorly designed ballot page caused some 18,000 voters to skip choosing a congressional candidate — are yet another reminder of a serious problem that our representative government faces and that Congress needs to address: Our voting system is fragile and desperately in need of shoring up.

Ever since the 2000 presidential election recount in Florida, Americans have been aware that the systems by which we record, tally, and verify votes don't always work. Why does this matter? I'll let the 2005 report by the national Commission on Federal Election Reform, on which I served, give the answer. "The vigor of American democracy rests on the vote of each citizen," the panel wrote. "Only when citizens can freely and privately exercise their right to vote and have their vote recorded correctly can they hold their leaders accountable. Democracy is endangered when people believe that their votes do not matter or are not counted correctly."

In other words, what might seem an obscure and technical subject — the accuracy and verifiability of our voting process — is in fact part of the bedrock of American democracy.

While we do not face a crisis in our voting system, the problems do need to be addressed. It puzzles me that there seems no particular sense of urgency, either among the public or in Congress, about making sure we fix things right now. If elections are defective, our entire system is at risk.

Admittedly, fixing the system won't be easy or inexpensive. For one thing, it involves questions about how far the federal government should reach into a matter that has largely been left to states, counties and local governments to resolve. Some states and smaller jurisdictions do a fine job of conducting elections; others, however, try to do it on the cheap, with machinery and processes inadequate to the task.

So let's ask ourselves: Is it too much to expect that every American voter, regardless of where he or she lives, can go to the polls on Election Day confident that there won't be long delays and that his or her vote will actually be registered as cast?

The federal government took a step in the right direction with the Help America Vote Act of 2001, known as HAVA, which for the first time set national requirements for state and local elections, in exchange for funds to improve the administration of elections. Now it's time for Congress and the states to focus on what additional steps are needed.

To begin, it will take a lot of money to be sure that every precinct in the country is equipped adequately. A lot of jurisdictions have adopted computerized voting screens, but without going to the added expense of making sure they include a voter-verifiable paper trail; as the election reform commission suggested, Congress should require such an audit trail and, if need be, help fund it.

As the 2005 report noted, "The purpose of voting technology is to record and tally all votes accurately and to provide sufficient evidence to assure all participants — especially the losing candidates and their supporters — that the election result accurately reflects the will of the voters."

Several other steps might also be needed to ensure that Americans have confidence in the system. Voter registration systems need to be strengthened, voters accurately identified, voting made more convenient, votes counted accurately, and the administration of elections improved.

Why my sense of urgency about all this? Because we have less than two years until the next presidential election and a set of House and Senate elections that might affect the majority in both chambers. As the election reform commission noted, "Election reform is best accomplished when it is undertaken before the passions of a specific election cycle begin." The time to fix things is now, not after the next instance in which voting snafus cause some number of Americans to wonder whether they really live in a democracy.

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Congressional Debates Need Facts, Not Spin

Congress likes to think of itself as "the world's greatest deliberative body." If ever there is a time for it to live up to this self-image, it is now.

In 2007, our senators and House members face grueling — and long overdue — debates on the Iraq War, fighting terrorism as a free society, enhancing economic chances for working families, improving the long-term outlook for Social Security, policing their own ethical behavior, and other knotty issues.

This is as it should be: Congress is where our diverse nation is supposed to come together to discuss and thoroughly air the challenges we face.

So it was dismaying to read a recent study by two respected political scientists stating that thoughtful congressional debate, rooted in facts, is actually hard to come by. Legislators often resort to "half-truths, exaggeration, selective use of facts, and, in a few instances, outright falsehoods," write Gary Mucciaroni of Temple University and Paul J. Quirk of the University of British Columbia in their book, Deliberative Choices: Debating Public Policy in Congress.

This is not reassuring at this especially troubled moment in our history.

We all know that Congress doesn't always live up to the lofty standards we would wish. Debate on the House and Senate floors can get long-winded, repetitious, and perfunctory. But the Mucciaroni-Quirk study probes deeper than that, exploring how truthful and accurate were claims made during 43 separate debates between 1995 and 2000 on three key issues of that time: welfare reform, estate-tax reduction, and telecommunications deregulation.

Their conclusion was that in debates, only about a quarter of the claims made by members of Congress were supported by the facts, with the other three-fourths either unsupported or only partially supported by the relevant evidence.

In addition, "When others exposed speakers' claims as weak, the speakers in almost every case ignored the criticism only to reassert the dubious claims." This brings to mind the infamous comment by Rep. Earl Landgrebe of Indiana during the Watergate debate: "My mind is made up," he said. "Don't confuse me with the facts."

Even worse, the book concludes, "Congressional debate is typically no better than moderately informed. Legislators frequently assert claims that are inaccurate or misleading, and reassert them after they have been effectively refuted.... In a typical debate, the best that Congress achieves is a roughly even balance of fact and fiction."

I suppose this "facts don't matter" approach might sometimes be expected on the campaign trail. There, unfortunately, we have become accustomed to half-truths, distortions, and falsehoods, and voters have had to learn to take campaign statements with a grain of salt.

But when Congress is in the process of making decisions on key issues confronting the nation, is it really okay with the American people that its members deal with each other in a straightforward and truthful manner only half the time? I doubt it. Members of Congress simply must do better.

There are some internal changes in the way Congress operates that would improve the situation, and Mucciaroni and Quirk suggest a few. They would extend the time for debate, for instance, noting that members can, indeed, catch misleading statements by others and correct them on the floor. Congress might also reduce the number of omnibus bills, which make it difficult, if not impossible, to delve into the details of what the legislation would actually accomplish.

And Congress should restore the central role once played by standing committees, whose members tend to have the expertise to understand the issues they confront. Moreover, committees usually serve to refine and focus debates on the core issues, making it easier both for the American public and for other members of Congress to follow and take part in them.

In the end, though, I think there's no substitute for members and staff to become more serious and more careful about how they prepare for and conduct debates. They are, after all, making the nation's laws, not engaging in some effort to score debating points.

The American people have an important role to play in this. They must hold their representatives in Congress to a high standard. They must insist that the decisions of Congress be rooted in solid analysis and factual information. Part of the intense dislike Americans have developed for Congress in recent years stems from disappointment in the quality of its political discourse and the prevalence of spin, distortion, and partisan mockery.

As the new Congress takes up a long list of formidable public policy challenges, it could go a long way toward restoring public confidence by debating them carefully, fully, and accurately, with respect not only for the truth, but also for its own role in making the laws of the nation.

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It's Now or Never for Ethics Reform

The voters offered Congress an unparalleled opportunity on Election Day. Let us hope our legislators have the wisdom to seize it.

I'm talking, of course, about ethics reform. The upcoming session of Congress may be our best chance in a generation to enact meaningful reforms governing how Congress runs and polices itself.

Acting quickly, early in 2007, is crucial not only for addressing the problems that arose on Capitol Hill over the past several years, but also for restoring public confidence in a vital, but badly stained, American institution. Voters were clearly and unequivocally in the mood for reform in November and impatient with excuses for not moving ahead with it, and there is no doubt in my mind they will be watching carefully to see what happens in January.

The signals coming from the incoming House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, have been quite positive. She has said that the 110th Congress will be "the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history," and the new House majority is already moving to put together a package of reforms. Republican leaders also seem supportive of efforts to prevent abuses of office.

So this is a hopeful moment — but it is only that. The hard work will come when Congress convenes and focuses on the details of changing fine words into deeds.

Some of what Congress needs to do is obvious. Banning all gifts, meals, and travel paid for by lobbyists is a key first step. So, too, are: requiring complete and readily accessible disclosure of lobbyist contacts with members of Congress; finding ways to restrict the access to sitting members by former members of Congress who have become lobbyists; and tightening up on ways members enrich themselves while in office.

Simply put, the freewheeling atmosphere that once prevailed on Capitol Hill — at least until the Jack Abramoff scandal dampened the fun — needs to become a thing of the past.

Somewhat less obvious, but no less important, Congress should also own up to its own bad habits. The new majority has already indicated that so-called "earmarks" are off the table for the remainder of the fiscal year, but it also needs to act for the long term by requiring disclosure of who is responsible for each earmark that lards future budgets.

This is a slippery issue, because there are some earmarks — a bridge, a new post office, a badly needed highway interchange — that members are more than happy to be associated with back home. But there are other earmarks — most notably, appropriations aimed at funneling federal money to this contractor or that contributor — that their sponsors would prefer to remain cloaked. So talk of requiring full disclosure of "district-oriented earmarks" misses the point; it's those darker payments to interests that may not be located in a member's district that need the full light of day and thorough vetting.

Finally, I am heartened to see that the notion of an independent Office of Public Integrity, separate from the congressional ethics committees, is at last getting serious consideration by House members and senators on both sides of the aisle.

This is a key reform. The slap-on-the-wrist approach taken by the House ethics committee toward members who knew early on about former Rep. Mark Foley's behavior toward House pages is a classic illustration of how hard it is for Congress to enforce its own ethics code. Even though an independent office could at best make recommendations for enforcement to the ethics committees, its words would carry great weight and ensure that, at a minimum, the American public would have a trustworthy yardstick by which to judge the actions — or inaction — of its representatives.

The truth is, it takes two independent forces acting at once to keep congressional ethics on the front burner, both legislatively and in legislators' minds.

One is pressure from the voters, and with 42 percent having reported in exit polls Nov. 7 that corruption and scandals in government were extremely important in how they voted last month, public pressure is a key influence at the moment.

The other is a clear message from the bipartisan leadership of the House and Senate that this is important, and that they expect and will enforce the highest standards of conduct in Congress.

No doubt there will be attempts in coming weeks to water down whatever reform legislation is proposed, just as the temptation will be strong, once the spotlight has moved on, to let standards slip. But as long as the public and the leadership remain determined to see that members of Congress act to reflect credit on the institution and to live up to what the American people expect and deserve, we have a good chance of regaining an institution that makes us proud and maintains our trust.

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