HAVA authorized the EAC only through 2005. Since then, Carbó said, the commission’s longevity has been an “open question.” A provision in an election reform bill now in Congress (H.R. 811, called the Holt Bill) would extend the commission’s authorization, and the Carter-Baker Commission on election reform recommends greater rulemaking authority for the EAC. These developments worry some voting rights activists.
“If you had asked me two years ago whether giving the EAC rulemaking authority is a good idea, I would have said yes without reservation,” Carbó said. But now he worries that the commission will use its authority to further partisan or political ends and feels that the EAC can serve the voters only if both the president and Congress are willing to put aside political interests in the appointment of commissioners and in appropriations for its operation.
Problems in election administration didn’t begin with the hanging-chads debacle; rather, Florida 2000 opened a window on an already broken electoral system and opened the door to initiatives that threaten to harm it even more. EAC oversight, electronic voting machines, stricter voter ID rules, consolidation of statewide voter lists—all are outcomes of HAVA that may have been proposed with good intentions but that can make way for less transparency in elections and for disfranchisement of eligible voters. “Elections should be fair and consistent,” Ingrid Reed, director of the New Jersey Project for the Eagleton Institute of Politics, said in a February 2007 interview. “We should know what the rules are, and we should be sure election administrators are following them. That’s what Buster was concerned about and is concerned about. This system is not one he feels is reliable.”
This article originally appeared in the ePistle, the online newsletter of Evangelicals for Social Action. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.
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