Civil Rights Coalition Urges Swift Passage of Meaningful Election Reform that Ensures Accessibility and Accuracy for All Voters
Feature Story by Civilrights.org staff - 11/15/2001
Civil Rights Coalition Urges Swift Passage of Meaningful Election Reform that Ensures Accessibility and Accuracy for All VotersWashington, DC, November 15, 2001 - As a House committee prepared today to mark up one election reform bill, a coalition of civil rights organizations outlined key elements they believe must be included in election reform to remedy the shortcomings of current voting systems in the U.S. The groups urged Congress to enact comprehensive reform this year to ensure improvement by the next presidential election.
"Voting is at the core of our democracy," said Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR). "Congress has an obligation to ensure that voting is fair and accurate for all. Americans are rightly concerned about the new challenges facing our democracy. Our leaders need also to tend to long-standing obstacles to democracy here at home. Meaningful election reform should not be delayed."
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) and other civil rights groups expressed concerns about a new bill introduced yesterday by Reps. Robert Ney (R-OH) and Steny Hoyer (D-MD), believing that it offers an inadequate solution. "Congressmen Ney and Hoyer should be commended for their intent and bipartisan effort, but their bill as currently drafted does not fully protect the Constitutional right to vote for all," Henderson said.
"I strongly believe that we must support efforts to get a bipartisan bill passed before Congress adjourns this year and we commend those members who have undertaken these efforts," echoed Barbara R. Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "Unfortunately, the current Ney-Hoyer bill heads in the wrong direction. It simply fails to address the grave problems so many Americans faced in the 2000 elections and continued to face just this year in New Jersey and Virginia. Among other elements, comprehensive reform must ensure that all voters are notified of and given the opportunity to cast provisional ballots, and are informed of their rights under state and federal law."
The House Administration Committee is scheduled to mark up that measure today. Instead, these groups support negotiations in the Senate between Senators Christopher Dodd (D-CT), Christopher Bond (R-MO), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Charles Schumer (D-NY). This bill has a House companion, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI).
Other speakers at the event included representatives from the NAACP, National Council of La Raza, League of Women Voters, American Association of Persons with Disabilities, the American Civil Liberties Union and the AFL-CIO.
The organizations stated that meaningful reform must allow all voters an opportunity to cast ballots as they intend and to make corrections to any errors before leaving their polling site. To do this, election reform must set minimum federal standards for voting machines; the machines must work properly, record votes accurately, have a low error rate and be fully accessible to voters with disabilities. The groups do not support voluntary election reform efforts because they do not guarantee that the constitutional right to vote will be protected.
The news consortium study released this week about the 2000 presidential election offered proof that the current system is inadequate and unfair, documenting many voting irregularities which led to the disenfranchisement of eligible voters. Such inadequacies have a disproportionate impact on people of color and voters with disabilities.
Lloyd Leonard, legislative director of the League of Women Voters, expressed concern that the proposed Ney-Hoyer legislation is a "prescription for continued confusion in our nation's system of election administration."
"The bill fails to have federal standards to ensure that voting machines will work for American voters," Leonard said. "It undermines protections of existing law that protect voters against erroneous purges. With the negotiations in the Senate, we are at a critical juncture. We need election reform, not election deform."
"People with disabilities have been forced to vote at the back door, or in some polling places have been unable to vote at all because of inaccessibility, and we're tired of that," said Jim Dickson, vice president, American Association of Persons with Disabilities. "The Ney-Hoyer bill keeps them at the back door."
"Representatives Hoyer and Ney's election reform legislation is well-intentioned but not nearly strong enough to fix the myriad of problems that occurred during the 2000 presidential election," said Angela Arboleda, civil rights policy analyst at the National Council of La Raza. "The bottom line is that the bill fails to address or prevent discrimination against Latinos and other language minority voters."
"The NAACP recognizes that Congress as well as the nation has been forced to focus attention on other matters for the past six weeks," said Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau, NAACP. "While we applaud the speed and resilience with which the government has addressed the terrorism that plagues our nation, we do not want other pressing issues that threaten our democracy to be overlooked."
"We need aggressive comprehensive election reforms in place before the next election if we are to regain the trust and participation of the millions of communities across the country that were disenfranchised or discouraged after the last election," Shelton said. "We believe that only the Dodd-Conyers measure is strong enough to adequately tackle the problems that arose in the 2000 presidential election."
"Unfortunately, the Ney-Hoyer bill isn't sufficient to fix the very serious voting rights problems in America," said LaShawn Warren, an ACLU legislative counsel. "Free and equitable elections are at the very heart of our political system and a bill that allows states to opt out of crucial federal standards is not good enough."
