Why do we have to make voting so difficult?
A bipartisan panel to set national rules is needed
We got away with it this time. The nation’s Rube Goldberg system for democracy’s most basic function — casting and counting our ballots — created very long waits and confusion in some states, but fortunately led to no major disasters Tuesday. But it has in the past, and it will again, unless we fix it.
Goldberg was a popular 20th century cartoonist whose specialty was illustrating outrageously complicated ways to do simple things. Our voting system — with its long list of screwups Tuesday — looked like one of his cartoons: absurdly long lines, official misinformation about poll opening times, spurious identification requirements, voting machine glitches. Why can’t we get this right?
EARLY VOTING ON THE RISE
And this year, many more voters — including President Obama — took advantage of the opportunity to vote early. Absentee voting is also on the rise. Yet long lines and machine breakdowns on Election Day were all too common.
Another source of the problem is groups trying to rig the system for their own advantage. Throughout history going back to the Civil War, attempts have been made to keep blacks from voting. In time, the Supreme Court ended each practice.
When the tactics of the poll tax and the literacy test were used, it became necessary to federalize the voting process to some extent. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 gave the national government an active role in those states where fewer than 50% of voting-age residents were registered. Any new voter qualification laws had to be approved by the the federal district court ofWashington, D.C.
FACTIONS TRY TO GAME SYSTEM
Today, the problem isn’t racial discrimination so much as the ingenuity of increasingly polarized factions trying to rig the system for their own benefit. If a high voter turnout helps your side, you want to make voting easier. If not, you want fewer polling places and shorter hours.
Sheer incompetence is also involved, as was the case in Palm Beach’s infamous butterfly ballot that lured inattentive voters into picking Pat Buchanan in 2000. A post-election analysis by The Palm Beach (Fla.) Post concluded that the design flaw had cost Al Gore 6,607 votes — enough to make him president instead of GeorgeW. Bush.
As parties and factions seek more maneuvers to manipulate elections, and as more states show an inability to ensure reliability of their voting machines or reasonable waits, it is time for federal intervention once again. We need an independent, bipartisan election commission to set national standards for such things as voting machines, number of polling places and the design of ballots.
Before the 2016 battle lines form, before new factions harden, is a good time to fix our voting system at the national level. Let’s do it.