Groups eager to provide solutions to voting problems

• Diffusion of authority over voting causes confusion but creates chances for innovation, experts say
• ACLU wants legislation to create uniform standards for voting in federal elections
• Long lines, confusion over ID rules and equipment failures were some of Election Day problems

President Obama has yet to say how he will fulfill his election night pledge to fix voting problems that caused hours-long waits to cast ballots on Nov. 6 – but plenty of other people have suggestions.

"All of the groups in Washington that work on voting rights have seized this opportunity to put forth our agenda for reform,'' says Susannah Goodman, head of the election reform program for Common Cause, a Washington-based advocacy group.

Six-hour waits to cast votes in Florida, confusion over identification requirements at Pennsylvania polls, and crashed computers from hurricane-displaced voters trying to e-mail ballots in New Jersey all drew sharp attention to the difficulties of state voting systems in a closely contested presidential election year. Though the outcome of the presidential race wasn't delayed – as it was by vote-counting problems in 2000 – the problems were sufficiently severe that Obama mentioned the long voter lines in his victory speech. "We have to fix that,'' he said.

"Some of the concerns really pierced the public consciousness in this election that they have not before,'' says Deborah Vagins, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), one of the groups with recommendations for election changes.

"You saw breakdowns of machines, you saw people running out of paper ballots, you saw problems with both. You saw some polling places closing their doors, where if you're in line you have the right to vote," Vagins says. "Not every place had all of these problems but all of these problems were represented somewhere.''

The solutions, say voters rights groups, are for states to expand early voting, especially over the weekend before Election Day, to avoid a crush of people trying to vote in one day. States should streamline voter registration and allow voters to receive absentee ballots without restrictions, called "no excuse" absentee voting.

Voting machine breakdowns also caused long lines at polls. While many states bought new voting machines with funds from the 2002 Help America Vote Act, those machines are now aging, says Pamela Smith of the Verified Voting Foundation. Poll workers need more training to handle emergency ballots, backup paper ballots, and provisional ballots.

The ACLU seeks federal legislation to create uniform standards for voting in federal elections, including the length of early voting.

"We have a patchwork of state laws that cover federal elections,'' Vagins says. "There are many states that are getting it right and there are many, many well-intentioned states that are not.''

Legislation proposed by Democrats earlier this year, the Voter Empowerment Act, would also allow online voter registration and same-day registration and outline standards for voting machines.

One standard does not work for all states, says Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller, president of the National Association of Secretaries of State. "We've learned that it is very difficult, if not almost impossible, to implement a national electoral administration process. Running elections is very much done at the local level in this country. While it's not impossible to implement large-scale change in that process, different states have different considerations that have to be accounted for.''

The decentralized authority over voting is one of the reasons things get confused at the polling place, says Goodman. "That's a problem and it's also the solution,'' she says. With each jurisdiction setting its own rules, "you don't get uniformity of problems and the same mistakes across the board. You get innovation. … A good election administrator is like a godsend.''

That's the thinking behind legislation proposed last week that would give grants to states that improve the efficiency of their voting systems in a competition similar to the Race to the Top federal educational grants. The bill would encourage states to make voter registration more flexible, expand early voting, allow no-excuse absentee voting, train poll workers, and create contingency plans for voting after natural disasters.

"There were challenges and problems in voter access all over the country. I don't think we should be satisfied with that just because it didn't cause a 35-day delay'' in determining the next president,'' says the bill's author, Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del.

He calls the voting chaos "embarrassing'' to the United States in the eyes of the world. "It's more concerning than ever that a dozen years later we really haven't fixed this problem.''