We Must Have Election Reform

There has been a lot of blogging and even some actual MSM reporting on the problems the U.S. has with holding a legitimate election. Katrina Vanden Heuvel from The Nation has put together a no nonsense "guide" on what needs to be done to secure our elections. Establish national standards and require reliable voting machines with a paper trail for starters. This issue MUST be addressed. Local election boards have control over their own elections. This has proven to be unacceptable. NATIONAL standards must be set. Private companies CANNOT be allowed to run our elections with nothing more than "TRUST ME" for security. Bring Democracy Home by KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL [from the November 20, 2006 issue] Former President Jimmy Carter, who is arguably more identified with the struggle to guarantee free and fair elections than anyone in the world, gets an interesting response these days when he talks about observing voting overseas. "The Carter Center has monitored more than fifty elections, all of them held under contentious, troubled or dangerous conditions," he says. "When I describe these activities, either in the US or in foreign forums, the almost inevitable questions are Why don't you observe the election in Florida? and How do you explain the serious problems with elections there?" The American people are waking up and realizing that for all the Bush Administration's talk of promoting democracy abroad, the US electoral system fails to do the same at home. With the approach of the midterm elections, there is justified alarm about how easy it is to hack electronic voting machines and that in many states these machines have no paper trail. While it is heartening to see the increased focus on the vulnerabilities and flaws of these machines, these are not the only problems that cry out for reform. What about voting districts that are rigged to be uncompetitive? What about loopholes in campaign finance law that give corporations huge influence over legislation? What about partisan secretaries of state who decide who can vote and which votes will be counted? What about modern-day Jim Crow laws and tactics that suppress the vote? Isn't it time we did some democracy promotion at home? Here are ten ideas for how to repair and strengthen our broken voting system: 1.Establish an election day holiday. Our nation has one of the lowest voter-participation rates in the world. Puerto Rico, where election day is a holiday, has one of the highest. Shouldn't we make this basic commitment so that it is as easy as possible for voters to get to the polls? Read More: The Nation