The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Why Election Reform Can't Wait!

Speech by Wade Henderson on November 15, 2001.

Good morning. I'm Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the nation's oldest and largest civil rights coalition. I'm joined today by leaders of national organizations working urgently in support of federal election reform. We represent a cross section of the American people, including those here on behalf of African Americans and Latinos, organized labor, persons with disabilities, civil rights and civil liberties groups, major religious denominations, and those whose organizations specialize in non-partisan voter participation.

Our message today, which is directed to Congress and President Bush, is simple ? voting is the language of democracy; and yet right now, in any election almost anywhere in the country, the voices of the American people aren't guaranteed to be heard. Over the past year, since our last national election, our country has been forced to come to terms with a very painful reality, which is that we are a first world power, but we have a third world election system. The Federal government guarantees every American's right to vote, but it is state governments that bear the responsibility for overseeing the structural aspects of voting; and our election system is broken, and we all know it.

We are here to say that in the final analysis, it's up to Congress to enact a meaningful election reform bill before it adjourns for the year. And it's up to President Bush to express his support, that both a bill this year and money needed to pay for it as a way of encouraging the start of important congressional negotiations.

In the aftermath of the September 11 tragedy the attention of most Americans was rightly turned to important questions of national security and homeland defense. Election reform was knocked off track. And only recently, in the face of mounting job losses and the down-turn in the economy, have we permitted ourselves the necessary task of thinking about the o9ther important policy questions that compete for our attention.

But America's national security interests encompass far more than even the important tasks of protecting our citizens and our property from attack. Protecting American democracy from the corrosive effect of a vote improperly denied is another important element of our homeland defense, and it is no less urgent simply because its impact is less visible.

A report on election reform released by the Advancement Project, a national civil rights research and advocacy organization, characterized the problem I'm referring to with our election system as "structural disenfranchisement", which was likened to the modern equivalent of the now-outlawed poll taxes, grandfather clauses, and literacy tests?quietly invidious, but equally destructive to the bedrock of our democracy. The cumulative effect of multiple problems and breakdowns in election systems, structural disenfranchisement results in millions of Americans being denied their right to vote.
However, unlike with exclusionary voter barriers of the past, there is no one guilty actor or smoking- gun evidence of discriminatory motive. Instead, inequality is built into the system, encompassing conspicuous failures to comply with the motor voter law and legislative gridlock over desperately needed funding for ailing election systems. Structural disenfranchisement also includes the bureaucratic blunders, indifference, and flagrant disregard for voting rights that produced and will continue to produce election day nightmares like we saw in Florida and elsewhere last year.

The patchwork electoral system, both in Florida and elsewhere was especially hard on Minority voters, voters who speak languages other than English, elderly voters and voters with disabilities. A recently complete review by the New York Times and other national newspapers of Florida state voting patterns in law year's election determined that predominately black precincts had more than three times as many rejected votes as white precincts, even after accounting for differences in income, education and voting technology. Similar patterns were found in Hispanic precincts and places with older populations. And virtually no one even challenges the fact that persons with disabilities were known to have been denied their right to cast a secret ballot at a fully accessible polling precinct.

And that's why we're here today. We know that if Congress doesn't act before it leaves town this year, then the chance for comprehensive election reform in the near future is in real trouble. It's not just that Congress will have a more difficult time in passing an election reform bill in an election year; or that even if it does act next year, it won't be in time to affect the 2002 election and may even crowd the preparation for the presidential election for 2004, it's also the fact that the costs of election reform have to be paid for now, while Congress still has the money and before our new war-time federal budget makes the costs of election reform more difficult to achieve. So that's why we're here today with some urgency on an issue that cries out to be heard.

The national civil rights coalition begins with a set of very simple, common-sense principles for reform. First, we believe that the federal government should require polls that are fully accessible to people with disabilities, provide better trained poll workers, computerized statewide voter registration lists, and appropriate assistance to language minorities. People whose eligibility to vote is questioned should be given a provisional ballot. States should deploy only voting equipment that meets the Federal Election Commission's technical standards and that allows voters to recast a ballot if they have mistakenly failed to choose a candidate, or have chosen two.

Second, we know that bipartisan negotiation in both the Senate and the House will be necessary to get an election reform bill this year.

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights is supporting the legislative efforts of Senator Chris Dodd and Congressman John Conyers to get an election reform bill; but equally important, we are supporting the on-going negotiations in the Senate under the leadership of Senators Dodd, McConnell, Bond and Schumer to hammer out an effective bill.

This, of course, brings us to the House mark-up later this morning of the "help America Vote Act", a bill introduced yesterday by Representatives Bob Ney and Steny Hoyer. Let me say at the outset that we commend both Mr. Ney and Mr. Hoyer for the positive intent behind their bill; their bipartisanship is encouraging. But in the end, any bill enacted by Congress this year has to guarantee that the constitutional right to vote will be protected; and in that regard, the Ney/Hoyer bill which raises deep concerns that will be discussed in detail by some colleagues in the next few minutes.