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By Brian Friel
February 24, 2007

What issue should top liberals' agenda now that Democrats are in control of Congress? Education? Health care?

How about election reform? "This has to be the No. 1 domestic priority of the progressive movement," Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, declared at a gathering of liberal interest groups on February 12. Wait a minute. Election reform should be a higher priority than education, or health care, or immigration? "Everything you're talking about, they also depend in significant measure on what happens in the elections in 2008," Neas told National Journal in response to that question. "Nothing less than the integrity and the fairness of the 2008 elections is at stake."

Indeed, from e-voting paper trails to Election Day registration to new voter-protection measures, the Left is pushing a wide array of election reform proposals in Congress and state legislatures. Emboldened by Democratic takeovers in Washington and in state capitals, and energized by election snafus in Florida's Sarasota County last November, a growing coalition is urging lawmakers to act before the end of 2007.

In response, Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., is promoting a bill to require paper trails for electronic voting machines. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has introduced legislation to toughen restrictions on practices designed to intimidate or mislead voters. Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, and Democratic Reps. John Conyers of Michigan, Zoe Lofgren of California, Juanita Millender-McDonald of California, and Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio are also working to change election law. (In the last Congress, Clinton introduced a bill to make Election Day a federal holiday, promote voting by mail, and allow voters to register on Election Day.)

Holt echoes Neas's sense of urgency: "It's at such a crisis stage that I think the lack of trust in the process could be -- could be -- the undoing of our self-government."

Miles Rapoport, president of Demos, a New York City-based liberal advocacy group, said that election reform ideas generally fall into three categories. The first involves election administration issues, such as the trustworthiness of electronic voting machines, poll worker training, and the accessibility of voting equipment to people with disabilities. The second covers efforts to encourage voting, such as Election Day registration and mail-in ballots. The third category involves restrictions aimed at reducing fraud by, for example, requiring people to produce a photo ID to vote or proof of citizenship to register. Several dozen left-leaning organizations generally advocate ideas in the first two categories and oppose those in the third. These groups include the Brennan Center for Justice, the Center for American Progress, Common Cause, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the NAACP, and VerifiedVoting.org.

Worries about election administration go back to the 2000 presidential election and Florida's hanging chads. Then-Vice President Gore's defeat sparked liberals' interest in the nation's electoral systems, which are largely administered at the local level and governed by state laws. In 2002, the federal government weighed in with the Help America Vote Act, a law that urged jurisdictions to modernize their election equipment. By the 2006 election, about 57 percent of U.S. counties had upgraded their equipment.

As jurisdictions adopted electronic voting machines to eliminate the possibility of hanging chads, groups that distrust the new machines formed a countermovement. For example, VerifiedVoting.org, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, advocates a return to paper ballots. Other groups want mandatory paper printouts of votes cast on electronic machines.

The 2006 election - particularly the House race in Florida's 13th Congressional District -- helped to galvanize the groups. State officials certified Republican Vern Buchanan as the winner by 369 votes over Democrat Christine Jennings. But an estimated 18,000 voters who used electronic voting machines -- most of them in Democratic-leaning areas of Sarasota County -- did not register a choice in that contest even though they did record votes in other high-profile races, such those for governor and senator. The House seated Buchanan, but Jennings is suing, and she has haunted the U.S. Capitol for several months. People for the American Way and Demos have called for a new election in the 13th District.

Regardless of whether Buchanan remains seated, advocates of paper trails are turning "Remember Sarasota" into their rallying cry. "The Florida 13th congressional race really gets at the heart of what this is about, because if things stand as they are now, no one will ever know whom the voters intended to send to represent them in the House," Holt testified at a February 7 hearing of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, which Feinstein chairs.

At the hearing on paper trails, Feinstein agreed with Holt that voters should be able to verify that their ballots were recorded as they intended. "I'm from the school that likes to see their mark," she said. "I'm from the school that wants to know that I voted."

Holt's bill already has 192 co-sponsors, including 17 Republicans. But it is running into opposition from advocates for disabled voters. Jim Dixon, vice president of the American Association of People With Disabilities, argues that Holt's goal of having paper- trail equipment ready for the 2008 election is unrealistic. Advocates for the disabled worry that a rush to require paper trails could undermine the gains they've achieved in making voting equipment more accessible. Electronic machines are generally easy for blind voters to operate, for example.

Although Holt says that he wants to keep his legislation focused solely on paper trails, Congress could package a variety of election issues into one bill before the end of the year. Obama's proposal seeks to outlaw the kind of misleading tactics that made headlines last year: Voters in Prince George's County, Md., were sent fliers falsely suggesting that some of the state's top Democrats had endorsed the Republican nominees for governor and senator. In Southern California, a Republican congressional candidate's campaign sent Hispanic citizens a letter falsely suggesting they could be prosecuted for voting.

Voting reform is also gaining traction at the state level, where Democrats took over six governorships and 10 legislative chambers in the 2006 elections. "There is a very broad agenda, all of which is around lowering barriers to participation," Rapoport said in a February 14 conference call organized by the Progressive States Network, a New York City-based advocacy group that is pushing election reform in state legislatures.

Traditionally, liberal groups have rallied around "access" issues aimed at increasing voter participation, and conservative groups have focused on eliminating voter fraud. In 2006, when Republicans controlled Congress and held a slight edge in state legislatures, much election reform focused on voter identification. The House approved a bill in September that would have required voters in federal elections to show a photo ID. The bill passed, virtually along party lines, with Republicans arguing that it would increase confidence in election outcomes and Democrats retorting that it would unduly burden minority voters because they were less likely to have driver's licenses. The Senate did not take up the bill.

If Democrats push access legislation, Republicans are likely to demand that some security measures be included. Jonathan Bechtle, director of the Voting Integrity Project at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, an Olympia, Wash.-based policy group, said that ensuring access isn't enough. Legislation "really needs to make sure there's security to protect people who legally vote who don't want their votes diluted by people who illegally vote," Bechtle said. Various groups across the political spectrum are reviewing last year's election results to determine the impact of the voter ID rules that were in effect in Indiana and Arizona.

Even if Congress passes reform legislation in time to be implemented before the 2008 election, voting problems won't disappear, emphasizes Robert Pastor, director of the Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University in Washington. "The good news is, there is a growing realization that our election machinery and administration are not up to the standards of a great democracy," Pastor said. "The Congress is continuing to grope for a magic formula to transform our electoral system. So far, it hasn't found one."