Five obstacles to overcome for better elections (other than Kobach’s Commission)

The news this week is abuzz with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s recent request for every state voter registration list on behalf of the President’s new commission on voter fraud. Debate rages over the commission’s intent, raising legitimate concerns about privacy and federal overreach, but real issues about elections integrity go unnoticed. These issues are known to local election authorities, election lawyers, and public policy experts, but they don’t elicit the same news coverage. Fixing the five concerns below isn’t easy or exciting, but it is necessary if we truly want to improve the integrity of our elections.

1. Voting equipment is old and it’s breaking. Immediately following the 2000 Presidential Election and ensuing legal drama, Congress realized that, to avoid another ballot debacle, America’s voting equipment needed to be updated and, more importantly, that the federal government needed to contribute financially. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) was born, infusing $3.3 billion of federal money into state and local budgets to help purchase the latest and greatest voting equipment. Now much of that equipment is over 10 years old and hundreds of thousands are voters are casting ballots on obsolete machines. State legislatures lack the political will to fund new equipment, leaving local election authorities— those actually charged with administering elections — scrambling. They know that broken machines can cause long polling place lines or, in the worst cases, inaccurate vote totals. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security recently designated elections systems part of the country’s “critical infrastructure” and, like all infrastructure, it needs maintenance and investment.
2. Congress is trying to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission. Speaking of voting equipment, HAVA’s sweeping elections reforms also included the creation of an independent and bipartisan commission. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) has helped establish voting system guidelines, conduct valuable research, and “administer a national clearinghouse on elections that includes shared practices, information for voters and other resources to improve elections.” Today, states and local election authorities look to the EAC for expertise in voting equipment testing and elections cybersecurity. Despite its accomplishments, Congress is working to defund and disband the EAC, claiming the commission is unnecessary.
3. States are still not fully complying with existing federal elections law. In 1993, Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act to streamline and encourage voter registration across the United States. Under the law, eligible individuals have the option to register to vote when applying for a driver’s license or applying for benefits at public assistance and disability agencies. The law has improved voter registration rates for minorities and persons with disabilities; however, state compliance with the mandate continues to be lackluster. The reasons for noncompliance are varied, although the decentralized nature of voter registration and lack of training for assistance agencies play a role. The Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against a number of states to ensure compliance, but it is incumbent on elected officials in every state to take their role as voter registration liaisons seriously.
4. Gerrymandering is hurting representation. In May, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down two North Carolina congressional districts because lawmakers had racial gerrymandered them. Earlier this year, Virginia’s legislative districts were similarly challenged, as were Alabama’s in 2015. The problem is so pervasive that the Associated Press recently conducted an exhaustive analysis of the 2016 election results and found “four times as many states with Republican-skewed state House or Assembly districts than Democratic ones.” Aside from the obvious partisan consequences, the idea that a district could be manipulated runs contrary to the ideals of representative democracy and contributes to the often-heard lament that an individual’s vote can’t make a difference.
5. Voters aren’t showing up for local races. Ignore, for a moment, the fact that America’s national election turnout is far lower than most other developed countries. The more serious problem is that — at even lower rates — voters aren’t casting ballots for their municipal or county leaders. Local officials create everything from health and zoning ordinances to school policy, yet voters continue to underestimate their power. Local election authorities, for example, have far more control over elections administration than Secretaries of State when it comes to maintaining voter registration lists, assisting voters, and setting up ballots. In Missouri, for example, the local election authority has the final say in whether to remove a voter from their voter registration list. And in Kansas, it was the county clerks that had to juggle Kobach’s unlawful two-tiered voter registration scheme while helping voters navigate the confusing elections system. Voters need to be mindful that these down-ballot county clerks are the last line of defense against voter suppression.

These problems aren’t avoidable—after all, old voting equipment will eventually break — and any earnest effort to improve elections integrity needs to prioritize solving them. However, whether the Kobach Commission plans to address them at its first meeting on July 19th or not, we can do more to improve elections ourselves by calling Congress in support of the EAC or simply casting a vote in the next local election.