U.S. Election System Still Broken
The New York Times Editorial
In last year’s presidential election, as many as three million registered voters were not allowed to cast ballots and millions more chose not to because of extremely long lines and other frustrating obstacles. Ever since the 2000 election in Florida, the serious flaws in the voting system have been abundantly clear. More than eight years later, Congress must finally deliver on its promise of electoral reform.
At a hearing last week, the Senate Rules Committee released a report sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the sorry state of voting. It said that administrative barriers, such as error-filled voting lists or wrongful purges of voter rolls prevented as many as three million registered voters from casting ballots. Another two million to four million registered voters were discouraged from even trying to vote because of difficulty obtaining an absentee ballot, voter ID issues and other problems.
The bad news didn’t end there. According to the report, another nine million eligible voters tried to register but failed to because of a variety of hurdles, including missed deadlines or changes in residence.
The new study adds to a hefty, and rapidly growing, literature on voting problems. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida just issued a report on the many difficulties that ex-felons in that state face when they try to register, a process that is filled with needless paperwork and bureaucratic confusion. A newly released report drafted at the request of Ohio’s secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, surveys many problems in her state’s voting last year, including a large number of errors in the state’s computer database of eligible voters.
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