Civilrights.org

On December 7, 2004, The Century Foundation, Common Cause, and The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights sponsored a historic daylong forum entitled "Voting in 2004: A Report to the Natin on America's Election Process."

This event was truly unique: its focus was not on having a partisan fight over the election or the election results. Its mandate rather was to gather together all of the organizations and experts who were actually on the ground monitoring the process during the election to report concrete data and information they collected, and in this manner get a realistic portrait of what actually transpired in the presidential election of 2004.

Held in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill, the nine-hour event drew more than 500 concerned citizens, activists, members of Congress, and congressional staff who packed the large hearing room. It was standing room only for many of the sessions that featured nearly three dozen panelists--election administrators, voting experts, advocates and voting monitors--who spoke about their Election Day observations.
Conference participants included election administrators from Illinois and Nevada, academics individually involved in vote monitoring, and panelists from organizations including the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, the People for the American Way, the Brennan Center, Redeem the Vote, Rock the Vote, Verified Voting.org, the Advancement Project, the Native American Bar Association of DC, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, the NAACP, the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, Electionline.org, and the Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

Due to widespread media coverage the important discussion held that day was not limited to the live audience. C-SPAN covered the entire day, and broadcast parts of the conference repeatedly over the ensuing days. C-SPAN radio broadcast the event live. The Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, the Miami Herald, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and National Public Radio were among the media that covered the event.

The "Report to the Nation" featured seven panels of experts and voting rights advocates who spoke in detail about problems experienced before and on Election Day, including problems with registration, absentee ballots, provisional ballots, voter suppression and intimidation, and voting machine issues. Through the course of our discussion, several themes emerged; major election problems were identified; and some ideas for future reform were suggested.