Remember Florida 2000
October 1, 2002

TWO YEARS AGO the nation was consumed with the spectacle of its flawed voting system. The presidential election took 36 days to resolve, and both parties promised federal legislation to fix democracy's glitches.

In July of last year, the impetus toward reform drew strength from a study by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which reported that between 4 million and 6 million votes cast in the 2000 election may not have been counted.

The following December, the House duly passed an election reform bill; the Senate passed one four months later. But since then the reform train has stalled.

Even the spectacle of renewed polling confusion in Florida's primary elections last month has failed to galvanize House and Senate negotiators into repairing the machinery in which their own legitimacy is grounded.

The negotiators see eye to eye on most aspects of the legislation. Both sides agree that federal grants should support state election-reform efforts.

They have agreed on the size of this support: $3.5 billion over five years.

They agree that federal standards should guarantee the basic quality of elections: There should be accurate registers of voters in each state; voters should get a chance to correct their votes if they mess up their ballot first time around; there should be access to the polls for voters with disabilities.

Both sides also agree that the goal of encouraging participation in elections needs to be balanced by vigilance against fraudulent participation. The sticking points are modest by comparison.

Some negotiators, led by Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), are particularly concerned with the possibility of fraud by first-time voters who registered by mail or through the "motor-voter" system; they want voters who registered in these ways to prove their identity at the polls by bringing a driver's license or utility bill. Others sympathize with Mr. Bond's anti-fraud purpose but doubt the device he proposes: Poor or disabled voters might have difficulty producing the required documents and thus be deterred from voting.

The other point of contention concerns the enforcement of the federal voting standards that the legislation would lay down. Mr. Bond is eager to prevent state election officials from being sued for alleged noncompliance with the law. Others object that, without a private right of action, the Justice Department might not enforce the law in cases in which lax implementation happened to suit the party that controlled the White House.

How these issues get resolved matters less than whether they get resolved: The worst of all outcomes is that the legislation dies for lack of negotiating energy. A dozen states have passed election-reform plans that will be implemented only if federal funding is available; if these plans are left to languish, more disputed elections lie in the future.

At a time when the nation's political balance -- both in the House and in the Senate -- is so nearly even, the importance of accurate vote counting ought to be obvious. And at a time when voter turnout is at an all-time low, bolstering public confidence in the machinery of democracy is especially urgent.

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