As I read the Democracy Index, I found myself discouraged and sometimes angry at what I felt were misrepresentations of various issues.  I’ve written about a number of them.

Sometimes though, I just found a disagreement that could only be called philosophical such as this statement.

“Any outsider to this debate would think that we are required to make some existential choice–convenience or integrity, making it easier to vote or preventing fraud–in creating an election system.  But both values matter, and the best we can do is make sensible trade-offs between them.” (Page 30)

Integrity is a value, convenience is not.  When I go to the store to get a gallon of milk at 1am, that’s convenient.  When the storekeeper charges me the advertised price, that’s integrity.  If he decides to close at 9pm and not stay open all night, he’s not a bad person.  There’s no lack of values there.  If he knowingly charges me more than he advertised, there is a lack of values.

Convenience and integrity should not be placed on the same plane.

Gerken’s the attorney, but I believe in a legal setting, when discussing our rights as individuals, we typically would not talk about convenience, but rather about burdens.  I have a right to petition my Congressman.  That right does not extend to providing me free postage which would make it much more convenient.  At the same time, it does mean that I don’t have to be unduly burdened, let’s say by presentation of an ID with my letter.

Now, is convenience something that we should be striving for in elections?  Yes, but it’s not traded off against integrity but rather against cost and against the rights of others.  For example, early voting is growing increasingly popular across the country.  It has certainly made voting more convenient for people.  At the same time, it comes with additional costs.  Are election administrators to spare no cost in the provision of early voting?  Of course not.  So we all, in conjunction with input from our elected representatives and the public, make a determination as to how much money we want to spend to increase convenience.

Now let’s say that in order to protect the integrity of ballots, each early voting center has to have a representative judge from the Democratic and Republican parties.  There’s a fixed amount of money in the budget that allows for five early voting sites.  It’s possible to double the sites, if we just agree to forego the two party requirement and allow just one party to be represented at each site.  Hopefully, that’s a tradeoff that no one would agree to.

Further, increasing conveniences can actually do damage to the rights of others.  Illinois just passed a law that allows absentee voting, without excuse, up until the day before the election.  We can guess that we’ll have an hour to two hour wait in a presidential election year on that day as we did the last day of early voting last year.  Typically however, in the last days of absentee voting we see people with emergencies come to our office.  A death in the family is taking them out of town or an unplanned business trip is thrust upon them.  We literally have had people stop by our office on the way out of town.  Many of those people are now going to stop by to find a line an hour long and not be able to stay.  The  convenience provided to some has burdened another person’s right.

Similarly, proposals to alter the registration process and do things automatically will no doubt be more convenient for some people.  However, in the ensuing chaos I anticipate many voters to be burdened as their registration is mistakenly updated.

Integrity involves many items.  It should mean only eligible people vote.  It should mean that every ballot is counted as intended by the voter.  It should mean that the winners of elections actually won.  While we shouldn’t unduly burden voters or election administrators to achieve these integrity goals, we also shouldn’t relax rules so far that integrity is compromised or to the point that the public loses faith in the integrity of the system.  Spending more money to expand the convenience of the voting process but then having battle after battle in the country over the integrity of the process is not a tradeoff that I want to see made.  Let’s make voting more convenient without giving ground on integrity.

Heather Gerken points to localism and partisanship as the primary barriers to better elections in America.  One of her arguments is that both result in a lack of professionalism in the administration of elections.

“Though McCormack is too generous to admit it, the lack of professionalism is a problem that runs through the system.  Even at the local level, the overriding qualification for administering elections is often party membership, not professional qualifications.  As a result, local election administrators are usually amateurs.  They are people of good faith, but they lack the professional training or experience enjoyed by election administrators in other mature democracies.”  Page 18-19

In some ways, I’m People’s Exhibit A when it comes to noncareer people in election administration.  I came from a largely political background.  My experience in elections was primarily in running campaigns, although I certainly had dabbled into the legal side as well.

Three times voters have taken a look at my performance and decided to return me to office.  I think in part is because of my professionalism, even if in the first years it wasn’t evidenced by long service in an election office.

Experience in election administration can certainly be a benefit to anyone coming into the position of County Clerk in Illinois.  But it’s not the only thing that matters.  An ability to manage staff, openness to new ideas, a history of good public service, and a commitment to integrity are more important.

Interestingly, while Gerken bemoans the lack of professionals in broad terms, she has high praise for a number of people who didn’t have a background in elections prior to taking over an election administrator position.

“Just ask Joe Mansky, who moved from a career in hydrology to become a highly respected elections official in Minnesota.”  Page 19

“Smith became director of elections after retiring from a high-powered position in the private sector, where he oversaw international operations for a company with 250,000 employees.” Page 22

What’s interesting is that so-called professionals have overseen some of the biggest election administration debacles in the last few years.  Theresa Lepore had 15 years experience rising up through the election administration system before designing the butterfly ballot.  Dean Logan had a checkered history in King County Washington, moved to Los Angeles County and presided over the so called double bubble ballot.  A host of other “professionals” have poor records.

Of course, the same can be said about the elected administrators. Though unlike appointed administrators, voters can dismiss an elected administrator that fails to meet professional standards.  In L.A. County, just months after presiding over the double bubble ballot, Logan moved from interim registrar to permanent.  LePore, on the other hand, lost her seat after her debacle.

Within the Democracy Index, Gerken calls for more training.  That would be welcome in a host of areas.  But professional qualifications and certificates only go so far.  Additionally, more training comes with a price tag.  Many times I’ve seen the brochures for the training conducted by the Election Center and had to pass due to county finances.  I also am concerned when training that takes a narrow view of the job.

For example, one of the skills I brought to this office is a relational database programming background.  It’s hard to imagine that many election administrator training sessions are going to focus on that.  But it’s also hard to imagine that I could have made some of the progress I’ve made here without that.  Other County Clerks in Illinois bring other skill sets to their jobs that I don’t have.  One of the advantages of bringing in individuals from outside the realm of election administrators is that you get thinking from outside that realm as well.  It’s interesting, that Gerken makes much of the resistance to change of election administrators.  I certainly have seen some of that.  I think however, that fresh people from outside the election administrator establishment are the ones to shake up the system.  Gerken herself points this out.

So to greater training, I give a big yes.  To a good old boy system among election administrators I say no.  Let’s find the best, most innovative, and honest people we can and give them the training and tools to succeed in their positions.

In her book the Democracy Index, Heather Gerken makes a lengthy argument against partisan election administrators.  A large percentage of the people who run elections in America are elected officials who run under a party label.  In her view, which I’ve critiqued, this is not a good idea.

While I think that her criticism was over the top and largely unsubstantiated, I can understand the reasonable argument that elections are better run without partisan concern.  What I have more trouble understanding is how the most partisan processes in America, Congress and the state legislatures,  largely get a pass from Gerken.  It is those processes that impede election reform far more than election administrators.

I trust the Democratic Cook County Clerk to act in the interest of Cook County voters far more than I trust either the Illinois Legislature or Congress.  Likewise with the other County Clerks around this state.  Gerken makes unfounded claims of partisan bias against election administrators.  I can cite demonstrable bias on the part of legislative bodies.  I have already written about the undervote provision in Illinois election law that is Speaker Michael Madigan’s pet proposal.

This year I went to Springfield to testify on a bill to require voter registration organizations to turn in the forms they collect in a timely manner.  Once again, as it has in every other year that it’s been proposed, the bill was not even called for a vote.

In 2007, Speaker Madigan transparently admitted that he was moving the Illinois primary in an effort to help Barack Obama’s presidential bid.

Of course, the partisanship within the legislative process is exacerbated by a lack of awareness about election administration that leads to burdensome laws that do little to serve voters.  Our County Clerk’s association has tried to get both the State Board of Elections rules or the Illinois Statutes relaxed to allow us to remove a voter based on an obituary (instead of requiring a death certificate).  This is consistent with the National Voter Registration Act and practices in other states.  A host of excuses as to why election administrators shouldn’t be able to rely on an obituary are given.  None are reasonable.  But we remain stuck with an unnecessary burden which is sometimes costly.

The legislature actually gave fixed hours for early voting on weekends.  For example, we are forced to be open from 9am to noon on for two early voting Sundays.  Not 10am to 1pm.  Not noon to 3pm.  The legislature instead decided to mandate three hours that most election officials believe are not good hours for the voters in their counties.

Sometimes the actions of the legislature read like a script from a slapstick comedy as in the provisions for judges to return provisional ballots from the polling place.

(6) After the person has completed marking his or her provisional ballot, he or she shall place the marked ballot inside of the provisional ballot envelope, close and seal the envelope, and return the envelope to an election judge, who shall then deposit the sealed provisional ballot envelope into a securable container separately identified and utilized for containing sealed provisional ballot envelopes. Upon the closing of the polls, the securable container shall be sealed with filament tape provided for that purpose, which shall be wrapped around the box lengthwise and crosswise, at least twice each way, and each of the election judges shall sign the seal.

Don’t you feel safer already?

Election administrators are hardly alone among professions in seeing unnecessary burdens placed upon them by legislative bodies.  I’m sure every profession has similar stories.  What’s interesting is that Gerken glosses over the legislative branch almost entirely and goes straight to the administrators.  The combination of unnecessary and partisan provisions in the Election code deserve more examination if one is truly going to address what Gerken’s book sets out to do: “Why our election system is failing and how to fix it.”

I’m for all three.  But integrity and transparency don’t need to suffer to achieve any of these goals.  In fact, increasing integrity and increasing transparency are the most critical elements necessary to increase the confidence of people in our voting systems, from registration to final vote canvass.

My criticism of the Democracy Index by Heather Gerken comes along with some praise.  My criticism of the data collection project also comes with praise.  I’ve been at the forefront of a number of reforms in the State of Illinois.  But I won’t stand aside to give acquiescence to reforms I think will do harm to the system.

So as my posts trickle out over the next three weeks, please watch for the positive as well as the negative.  I truly hope to achieve all the goals above.  At the same time, the practical concerns of election officials seem to get minimal hearing as policy makers proceed.   Those practical concerns will at least get a hearing at this venue.

If there is one adjective citizens want to be able to attach to their election systems it is integrity.  Efficient, cost effective, diverse, progressive, and a host of other adjectives have value to various people.  But nothing can compare with integrity.

Heather Gerken’s point, in the Democracy Index, is that by electing partisans to the positions that administer elections we are compromising the integrity of the system.  Gerken’s criticisms come down primarily to two points.  First, she believes partisan Election Authorities are more answerable to party leaders than to the public.  Second, she believes that they have agendas that don’t generally include well run elections.   She gives surprisingly little attention to the issue of the public perception of partisans running elections.  That particular issue actually has more credence to me.

I probably know 60 or 70 county clerks in Illinois.  Perhaps more.  Gerken’s cynical assessment of them isn’t based in reality.  It would be interesting to really delve into why she holds election administrators in such low regard.  What is her empirical knowledge that backs her assertions.  It is unfortunate that Gerken seems to assign motives to  partisan Election Authorities based on a few select quotes from a few select interviews.

For example, she quotes Chris Johnson, Secretary of State from South Dakota.  “Being nonpartisan doesn’t earn a lot of points with the party faithful.”  Okay, perhaps that’s true.  How exactly is it relevant?  Shouldn’t the question be whether elected election administrators are more interested in pleasing party officials than in serving and pleasing the public?  There isn’t an official, elected or appointed, in this country who doesn’t face this issue on every single issue before them.  As citizens we judge our officials to some degree on their ability to rise above partisan pressures to do the right thing.  That the pressure exists doesn’t prove that people are giving in to the pressure.

Gerken suggests that those who are elected are more beholden to the party leaders.  I disagree.  I don’t know of a single County Clerk in this state, Democrat or Republican, who toes the party line to the detriment of fair and honest elections.  In fact, if you surveyed County Clerks, you’d probably find that each and every one of them thought that their electoral success, either for the office they hold now or the office they might want to seek in the future, would be enhanced by a reputation for fairness in election administration.

Of course, Gerken can no doubt find election officials that are motivated more by partisanship than public service.  But I’d suggest that it’s much less prevalent among partisan election administrators than among politicians and public servants in other areas.  There is no insulating partisanship from the actions of government because virtually everyone involved in government at a level of at least modest policy making influence, is likely to have a political philosophy that will to some degree inform their decisionmaking.  The absence of an R or D next to their name doesn’t change that.

Gerken goes on to make other claims that aren’t substantiated.  She suggests that the parties want the status quo.  Is this information gleaned from partisans?  Because we have partisans on both sides of the aisle who very clearly want changes in various rules regarding election administration.  One statement in particular from Gerken struck me as absurd beyond description.  “If you granted politicians one wish for the next election, they’d all ask for the same thing: a voting pool that looks exactly like it did in the last election.  You don’t want anyone new from the other party to vote.  And adding more members of your own party to the voter rolls might just invite a primary challenge.” (Page 19)  Granted, I’m not privy to the strategy sessions of Democrats who may feel this way.  But I can assure Gerken that no Republican I know is thinking that way and I’d be shocked if many politicians are thinking that way.

Gerken descends even deeper into her cynical criticism of partisan election officials on page 16.  “Because people can be deterred by long lines, you will want to reduce the number of polling places or voting machines in areas where your opponent’s supporters live.”  Not a single instance of this happening is given.  If she came to Champaign County she could chat with people in Champaign 2, Champaign 7, or a host of Mahomet precincts where there have been long lines of Republican leaning voters.  And yes, there have been lines in Democratic leaning campus precincts as well.  My point is that the lines are less about someone’s partisan manipulation and more about circumstances, sometimes unforeseen, sometimes unavoidable.  But once again, my experience is primarily in the state of Illinois.  Perhaps Gerken has been talking to election administrators who are doing exactly what she claims.

It’s hard to pin down Gerken’s most cynical assessments.  This line certainly is in the running.  “Politics, after all, is a game devoted to helping your friends and hurting your enemies.”  (Page 16) People are welcome to use that filter to assess what the government is doing.  I’m a little more optimistic than that.  But let’s say that is really true.  How does its application to elections differ from its application to energy policy, road construction, mideast foreign policy, or any other area that we elect our leaders to represent us.   Are we really to look at the current health care debate not on the merits but rather, are we to look at both sides and decide who we want to help and who we want to hurt?

I’d like to think that grander motives can exist.  I know they exist in election administration and hope that they exist in other areas.  Hopefully they exist at Yale Law School, where Gerken teaches, and where hopefully teaching is not about “helping your friends and hurting your enemies,” although I’m not sure why I should trust law professors in this regard any more than she trusts election administrators.

Voters want honest and fair elections.  The integrity of the process is critical to them.  The elimination of partisan labels might enhance the confidence of people in the system, although I think any increase in confidence will last only until the next problem.  For a real solution, Gerken, almost unwittingly, quotes Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson, who she deems to be “dynamic”.  “Grayson aruges that you can’t take the politics out of these decisions and you shouldn’t pretend there’s not a problem.  Transparency, he insists, is the only solution.”  Gerken would do well to devote more time to Grayson’s point and less to her misguided intuition about the failings of election officials.

I’ve often noted that the hidden motives of people are most to be feared.  We recently had a debate in Illinois about the propriety of registered sex offenders voting at polling places in schools.  Educators were concerned about the safety of children.  My point was that any school serving as a polling place should operate under the premise that a sex offender is going to be in their building that day.  Sure, you can act to keep out registered offenders, but more dangerous are those whose pictures haven’t been plastered on the internet sex offender registry.

Likewise with partisanship.  Citizens in Champaign County are well aware of my partisan leanings.  To the extent people are concerned about that there should be more openness and more oversight.  Eliminating the party labels in election administration will hardly eliminate partisanship, it will only give it a cloak of nonpartisanship that will obscure real problems underneath.

Gerken continues with the claim that partisans are not particularly interested in doing a good job.   “What matters most for the many secretaries of state who want to run for governor or Congress? Political support, not professional performance.”  Once again, this opinion I believe is divorced from reality.  In fact, she makes a point of criticizing Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell for his partisanship while brushing over the fact that a significant factor in his loss in the 2006 Governor’s race was his conduct as the chief election official in Ohio.

One quote cited by Gerken shows a little more insight into the partisan problem.  “In the course of conducting this study, it has been disconcerting to learn the extent to which the mindset of elected policymakers is not on how to design the voting process for the public’s benefit, but rather on how to advance one’s candidacy or party. Perhaps it is too much to expect state legislators and other political actors to think about the public interest, rather than their own interests…” (Page 16)  Indeed.  To the extent partisanship is a problem, it lies primarily with the policy makers in the legislatures at the federal and state levels.  The concerns of election officials are routinely ignored by legislators.  Impractical and costly burdens are placed on the process, and yes, often with the goal of helping one party or the other.

The Democracy Index crafts a weak and incomplete argument that partisanship and localism are the reason that our “Election System is Failing.”  In upcoming posts I will examine  the missing, the  incomplete, and the good elements from Gerken’s book.

The Committee to Modernize Voter Registration makes claims that their system will enhance our ability to keep noncitizens off the voter rolls.  In fact, by their own admission, the voter rolls will be loaded with noncitizens.

In their Frequently Asked Questions they address citizenship with this less than encouraging answer.

“Most of the voters who will be automatically added to the voter registration list come from other databases that contain information about citizenship status based on documentation provided by the voter.  []  Those voters whose citizenship status cannot be confirmed automatically can be allowed to affirm their citizenship and eligibility before they cast a ballot.”

The problem is that many of the largest states are not tracking this citizenship information.  Illinois is one of them.  New York as well.  I have written other states and the responses are slow in returning.  But Washington state is another.  In these three states, any noncitizen who gets a driver’s license will be automatically added to the voter registration rolls with no mechanism to remove them.

Then, on election day, they would be presumably stopped by the mere act of affirming their citizenship before they cast a ballot.  Presumably, this will be an extra step that other voters won’t have to take.  But if there is an extra step, it is one that every new voter in that state will have to execute, requiring more paperwork at the polling place and creating burdens on judges that will lengthen lines.

Over time, millions of noncitizens will be added to the rolls.  Each of these noncitizens will receive a voter identification card.   Each will receive mailings when election districts change or when polling places change.

Meanwhile, because they are on the voter registration rolls with no indication to anyone that they aren’t citizens, they will be receiving mailings and phone calls from the various political campaigns.  The political parties will be spending millions trying to convince noncitizens to show up and vote for their candidate.

The integrity of the system depends upon these millions of noncitizens being innundated with dozens of campaign contacts deciding not to show up at the polls, or if they show up, not being willing to sign a form that they may not even understand.

I have written the Committee to ask them for the list of states who do not track citizenship.  To date, I haven’t received it.  I’ll publish it when they provide it for me.  People have a right to know which states will have voter rolls with noncitizens on them before they sign off on this proposal.  And the Committee themselves should just eliminate this sentence from their website which is just ridiculous.   “Automatic and permanent voter registration offers even more protections against non-citizens being added to the rolls than our current, paper based registration system.”  It’s not accurate, and even the most cursory examination reveals it.  It’s insulting to pretend the problem won’t exist.  Tell us how you’re really going to address it.

In her book, The Democracy Index, Heather Gerken points to localism as one of the two obstacles to improving election administration in America.  (The other, partisanship, will be examined in my next post.)

First, I’d contend that there is not an area of government administration that couldn’t use improvement.  I’ve certainly voiced plenty of concerns about government administration in my 30 year political career, so I’m sympathetic to those who want to examine my operations.  The criticisms of Gerken that I’d find valid, I likely would find valid in examining a host of other government agencies.  I don’t Gerken presents a compelling reason to single out election administrators.

Gerken’s point on localism is that it impedes good election administration because locals are starved for resources and that because the administration of elections comes to the mind of citizens just once or twice a year, there isn’t much incentive to push for change.  Gerken goes so far as to call it “failed federalism”.

But there’s not much to back up those concerns and not much to give hope that greater centralization would resolve her concerns.  I can give a host of examples where localism improves the process.  Can you imagine a federal or state agency trying to create a database of valid residential addresses?  Can you imagine voter cards being turned in to a state election office in Springfield instead of to a local registrar?  We make calls to local fire districts to confirm that a residence is in that district.  We make calls to the Emergency Services Agency to verify an address.

Gerken also expresses concern that localism impedes the sharing of best practices.  My solution there is to respond not with greater centralization, but to encourage greater collaboration.  To her credit, Gerken acknowledges that in other parts of the book.  What she doesn’t acknowledge is that harmful effects of centralized policy making that makes the job of election officials so difficult.

And in the area of best practices, centralized policy making has been an impediment.  Federal and state regulations have made it challenging to keep our voter registration rolls clean.  Some of the changes that I have implemented have needed to be worked around current state law.  For example, our redundant recount after the election is limited by the precincts that the state picks for us.  Left to our own design, we’d give the political parties the option of picking other precincts not selected by the State.

And once again, centralizing best practices offers little promise for local officials because there is widespread belief, often demonstrable, that those in central positions are just unaware of the challenges we are facing at a local level.  Time and time again I’ve sat in rooms with elected and appointed policy makers who just don’t get it.

Here are a number of letters I sent to various Washington attorneys seeking clarification regarding the new rules for removing voters under HAVA.  The lack of response coupled with responses that didn’t actually answer my question were remarkable.  It was clear that no one in Washington really understood what was happening in our office and seemed either unwilling or incapable of addressing our concerns.  We finally decided to implement a program that we knew to be fair and that in our estimation complied with the law.

Of course, you can find some examples of locals who are resistant to change, as Gerken suggests.  You can also find some number of local jurisdictions where elections have gotten the short end of the funding stick.  But are we really to believe that those issues can’t be found in other areas?  For each of the local officials you can find that is resistant to change, I can find a Washington bureaucrat who exhibits the same problem.  For every local election office that is underfunded, I can find a Washington bureau that is underfunded.

Centralization is no panacea for expanding best practices or for resolving funding problems.

When I’ve spoken to groups of University of Illinois students, I generally ask who is registered in Champaign County and who is registered at their “home”.  It usually splits about half and half.  As I heard about the proposal to “modernize” our voter registration system, I contemplated its impact on students.  My research shows that it will cause about half the students to be disenfranchised.

My sample is small, but I think representative.  I used the University of Illinois Student Senate.  I was able to find 33 voters among the Senators.  Some names I was not able to locate in the statewide voter file or in the Champaign County voter file.  They may be registered in another state or may be noncitizens.

Of the 33 identified, 16 were registered and voted in other counties.  17 were registered and voted in Champaign County.  Under the “modern” program, those 16 students registered from what I presume to be their “home” address will have their registration switched, automatically, to their University address.  Their right to vote in the district they live in, perhaps intend to stay in, serve their community in, etc. will be taken away in the name of modernization.   Some of these people will lose their right to vote for friends and family.  Some who are registered in other states might lose their “swing” voter status.  (If you were a resident of Virginia, going to an out of state school, don’t you think you’d want to vote in Virginia?)

Don’t forget, this update is “conveniently” done without the knowledge of the voter.  Can you imagine registering from your home, coming down to the University, mailing in your absentee request, and then finding out that, unbeknownst to you, your registration in your home has been cancelled.  Provisional voting for most is not going to be allowed through the mail.  So you’re stuck voting where you don’t want to vote, on races you may have little interest in, all because someone presumed you to be too lazy or irresponsible to do the relatively simple task of keeping your registration up to date.

We’ve done a number of things to ease the registration process.  And we’ll continue to pursue more ways to make it easier for people to register to vote.  But no steps should be taken to increase convenience when it results in the disenfranchisement of others.

The Committee to Modernize Voter Registration would like policy makers to believe that automatically updating voter registrations through government agencies will somehow miraculously make the voter rolls more accurate.  In truth, relying on the driver’s license is no panacea for clean voter files.

A study by the Center for Election Integrity at Cleveland State University estimates that in the State of Ohio hundreds of thousands of people would be disenfranchised by such a system.

The number of persons attempting to vote in November with a driver’s license ID with a former address is  approximately 511,000 using the midpoint of Method 1 estimates and approximately 406,000 using the  midpoint of Method 2 estimates. An average of these two independent methods is approximately 458,000. The number could also be as high as approximately 638,000 or as low as 325,000 given the data and  assumptions used in this analysis.

The study points out that many people wait a substantial amount of time to update their driver’s license after they move.   There are costs to the update the license and the hassle of going to the driver’s license facility.   Of course some number of people have neither an ID or driver’s license.

Presumably, in the whole context of “modernization”, these people will be able to still update their registrations.  But what then has been solved?  Election officials are still dealing with a large influx of registrations toward the end of the period.  Voters are still having to take action to get their registration updated.

Incredibly, what we’ll actually see is an increase in work.  A voter who moves and sends a notice to our office that they’ve moved will have a new address change processed.  Some number of months later, they’ll update their address at the driver’s license facility.  This duplicate registration will be sent to our office and reviewed.  Twice the work.

From the time students returned from summer break in late August of 2008, until the closing of the voter registration rolls about two months later, staff in the Champaign County Clerk’s office processed over 20,000 voter registration applications.  That number was actually reduced for both the 2004 and 2000 election years.  Nevertheless, it represented a monumental task that necessitated long hours for my staff.  It seems that there is now a move afoot to that claims to reduce the burden on election officials by developing a process for automatic registration.  As I’ve seen it presented, it’s a recipe for disaster.

According to the United States Census Bureau, fewer than one million people self reported a problem with their registration that caused them to be unable to vote.  That number dropped from 1.1 million in 2004 and 1.3 million in 2000.  Since this number is self reported, it is likely to be inflated.  Of course, there is no registration problem that should result in a voter not being able to cast at least a provisional ballot.  What constitutes a “registration problem” is ambiguous.  If you asked me how many people in Champaign County were not able to cast a ballot because of “registration problems” I would put the number at under 10.  As we would define a problem, it would allow a person to cast a vote provisionally.  If the problem is more broadly defined and includes such things as “I forgot to put the form in the mail” or “I didn’t know I had to change my address when I moved” then the number of registration “problems” in the County would increase, although the responsibility for the problem obviously doesn’t lie with the election official.

The same Census Bureau survey reports that approximately 60 million citizens over 18 are not registered.

Now comes the Committee to Modernize Voter Registration.  Their stated goal is two fold. The first is to relieve election officials of the task of inputting voter registration information.  The second is to relieve voters of the responsibility of informing the election authority about where they live.  While largely unstated, I believe that they have a third goal to put people on the voter registration rolls who to date have shown no indication that they want to be on the voter registration rolls.

To the first I’d say, thanks but no thanks.  Each and every year we have made improvements in how we collect and process voter registrations.  Yes, it requires work.  But the work is worth it when it results in accurate voter registration rolls.  Yes, we make mistakes and those bother us.  But the mistakes are minimal, and the number of those mistakes is dwindling as computer programs and processes improve.  Time and time again I have heard election reformers claim that certain parts of the election process are too important to let money stand in the way.  Accurate voter registration rolls that reduce the burden for voters on election day are worth the efforts made by election officials.

Spend a week in our office and see how registrations are processed.  You’ll see hundreds of forms that require decisions from trained staff in order to get the registration done correctly.  Quite simply, no computer program can be created that can substitute for the sound and experienced judgement of election administration staff.

To the second, I’d say that a little voter responsibility is worth the benefit of greater accuracy and higher integrity.  The system as envisioned by this committee would take information from various government databases and apply them to the voter registration database.  If this happens, I anticipate provisional ballots increasing dramatically around the country.  No doubt, some greater number of voters will be captured on the voter registration rolls, although it is doubtful that many of these will be people that will vote.  On the flip side, millions of people will have their voter registrations updated in ways that they may not have anticipated.

To the third, I’d say that the Committee is attacking a symptom of a greater problem.  There is no lack of registration opportunities for people.  Certainly there is merit in looking at ways to create more opportunities to register.  In our county, for example, we have developed a voter registration kiosk that is available in three different locations.  But to force people on to the rolls is unnecessary.  When combined with the certainty that you will be adding illegals to the rolls makes the proposition unwise.  The near certainty that the process will improperly alter the registration status of people who have taken the time to register in other ways is unfair (and fraught with legal dangers).

Interestingly, there is little evidence that anyone is not registering to vote because of a lack of opportunity.  In fact, it appears the Census Bureau, doesn’t even ask nonregistered voters why they didn’t register.  So this proposal is made in the absence of any data identifying a problem.

Perhaps the most interesting and distressing aspect of this to me is that actual data may not be desired.  Heather Gerken’s Democracy Index calls for better data.  One of the chairs of the Committee to Modernize Voter Registration just coincidentally coauthored an oped in Roll Call magazine that endorsed Gerken’s idea.  Here is one quote from their oped:

“With better data, we should be able to avoid fruitless discussions about the things that don’t matter and focus on the things that do. Reliable performance data, in our view, would make visible the costs associated with our current registration system, potentially moving us toward a system of automatic voter registration by states, which in turn would help eliminate the conflicts over the role of private registration activity.”

Apparently, these two, and others, have already decided what the data they have yet to collect will tell them.  The desire to collect that data is not to help craft good policy.  Rather it is to support their own agenda to dramatically alter our voter registration system.   There are any number of pieces of data that could be collected that would probably doom this Committee’s proposal.  For example, how many noncitizens are on the driver’s license rolls?  How many people appear in the databases of two different government agencies?  Will these two key pieces of data be sought?  Automatic voter registration might result in a few more people voting.  In addition however, it may result in as many or more not voting because of problems with their voter registration.  It has a potential to reduce costs, but just as easily could increase costs.

My greatest concern is about the confidence of voters in the election system.  We increase people’s faith in the system by having it respond to their actions.  People want to fill in the oval on their ballot, and know that the vote was counted for their choice.  People want to submit a voter registration, and know that it results in action by the election authority.  The more times that voters have their actions overridden by either technology or the bureaucracy, the more they lose confidence that the system is working.  A system that reduces voter control, which this proposal clearly does, is a system that will reduce confidence and increase cynicism.