Representative Democracy Series:
Electoral Reform
Indianapolis, Indiana
October 6, 2005
Introduction
Jay Hein, President
Sagamore Institute for Policy Research
Greetings. It is my privilege to welcome you to
today’s conversation, which strikes at the heart of one
of nation’s most prized treasures: the right of every
citizen to vote. While our nation has forged arguably
the highest form of democracy known to man, our
system is, of course, a work in progress. We have
corrected many flaws over the years and this work is
unfinished. The tension between ballot integrity and
ballot access presents many continuing challenges.
Indeed, this balance is at heart of the Electoral Reform
Commission’s work and the dialogue that we will
enjoy together today.
I want to thank the Center on Congress at Indiana
University for co-sponsoring this important event.
Lee Hamilton founded this Center upon his retirement
from Congress, where he was known not only for his
honorable service as a member but also for being a
wise and careful student of the institution. So it is
fitting that he continues to teach students and civic
leaders about Congress in particular and legislative
processes more generally. Indeed, today’s event is the
first in a series of events that Sagamore and the Center
plan to host on important topics concerning how our
representative democracy works. As we like to say at
Sagamore, public policy belongs to all of the public,
not just the Beltway insiders or the elite intellectuals.
Our nation was founded on the belief that every
citizen counts and therefore their voice must be heard
and considered.
Returning to today’s topic of voting rights and how
well we are doing in allowing all voices to be heard
and all votes to be counted, two authoritative leaders
are with us today. First, we will hear from Lee
Hamilton, who will discuss his role as a member of
the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election
Reform. Congressman Hamilton is Director of the
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars,
which does so much to advance our collective
understanding of the world’s greatest policy
challenges.
Of course, he’s done much more since leaving
Congress. No issue has been more important to
understand and grapple with in recent years than the
rise of terrorism and the challenges facing our nation’s
security system post-9/11. I’m sure that I speak for all
those assembled here today in thanking Congressman
Hamilton for his invaluable service as co-chairman of
the 9/11 Commission. His thorough investigation and
careful analysis paved the road for us to come to terms
with what happened and to travel a more secure path
forward. We are indeed pleased to welcome you back
home to Indiana to address another important topic to
our nation and our state.
Secretary of State Todd Rokita serves as Indiana’s
chief election official. In addition to administering
basic functions of overseeing the candidate declaration
process, certifying election results and maintaining
campaign finance reports, the Secretary is also
reforming our state’s electoral practices to ensure that
our system is fair, accurate and accessible for all.
Secretary Rokita has embraced new technologies and
strict accountability measures to modernize our system
and thus it will be interesting for us to hear how he
views the Carter-Baker Commission’s
recommendations in light of what we are already
doing and what we have left to do to improve our
system. As a participant in the 2000 election Florida
recount process, Secretary Rokita has seen first-hand a
system that didn’t work for all its citizens. We are
thankful that he oversees one that does, and we look
forward to hearing his views today.
Keynote Address
The Honorable Lee Hamilton, Director
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Thank you very much for coming. I deeply appreciate
your interest in this question of running elections in
the United States so that we have a confidence of the
voters. I know that, many times, elections get rather
boring, but they are terribly important for the
functioning of our democracy. I recently served on the
electoral commission that was headed by former
president Jimmy Carter and former secretary of a good
many things Jim Baker. They gave outstanding
leadership to the election commission.
I have run in 34 elections in my lifetime, and what
impressed me when I went on the Electoral
Commission was how little I knew about the election
laws in this state and in the country. It was quite a
revelation to me as I worked on it. I do not come to
you as any kind of an expert on the election laws of
the United States. My exposure to them has been
relatively brief, but I do speak this afternoon in
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support of the Commission’s recommendations, which
I think are, by and large, sound.
that what do we do in this state and this nation is to
make the election laws better than they are today.
I want to say how very pleased I am that our Secretary
of State is here to talk to you. I just had a
tremendously beneficial conversation with him over
lunch a moment ago, and it is very kind of him to
appear here this afternoon.
I do not come to you thinking that our election system
is about to fall apart. I think it has a lot of strength
still, but I do come to you is one of the things that
incrementally we can take steps to make it better than
it is today.
The Commission wanted to make recommendations to
strengthen the election laws of the United States so
that Americans could be proud of the system that we
have. Our polling indicated that one out of three
Americans do not have confidence in the electoral
system in this country. That is a pretty significant
factor, and we want a voting system where voting is
convenient, efficient and pleasant. We want a voting
system where machines work properly, lines are not
long at the voting polls, where fraud is deterred, and
where disputes are handled fairly and expeditiously.
All of those things are very, very hard to achieve.
A few of the specific recommendations: I said a
moment ago that modernizing the system of voter
registration is key. We came out in favor of what we
call the top-down voter list. Under federal legislation,
states are required now to build top-down voter data
basis. What that does is give state election officers –
not counties – the authority over voter registration. For
a very long time, we have had a system in this country
where local jurisdictions, counties in our state, have
had a lot of control over the registration list. Indiana is
in the forefront here. A lot of progress has been made
in having a top-down voter registration list. If you
don’t have a good voter registration list, you are in
real trouble in terms of putting together a good
election. I think Indiana can be pleased with the
progress that it has made in that respect.
Our focus was to try to do several things: first, to
modernize the system of voter registration and
identification. I think all of us would be in agreement
that the bedrock of good voting system is a good voter
registration system and, of course, the identification of
the voter. So we paid a lot of attention to that. We
wanted to find a way to make voting technology more
secure. This is a kind of a moving target because
voting technology is improving all the time, and, in
our report, we wanted to recognize the fact that it
would improve. Therefore, we did not want to be too
adamant in any recommendations with regard to
voting technology.
We are interested in expanding participation in the
elections. All of us believe that we are the world’s best
and largest democracy, and yet we know that our
voting participation percentages are not nearly as high
as we would like them to be. Indiana does very well
compared to a lot of states, but overall the record is
not all that impressive. We sought to strengthen the
safeguards against fraud.
One of the arguments you could have as you get into
this business of looking at the voting is how much
fraud is there. There are not many cases of fraud in
any given election, but there are some in every
election. We have to appreciate that those cases
usually do not come forward unless the voting is very,
very close; and voting is not always very, very close,
depending on the election that you are talking about.
We had a commission that worked in a very bipartisan
way. I cannot remember a single vote that occurred in
the commission that broke strictly along the party
lines. We all endorsed the 87 recommendations in the
report. One or two or three may be quite controversial.
We had a dissenting view here and there, but by and
large, this report is a product of Republicans and
Democrats working together very closely with the idea
We also recommended that these state lists be
interoperable. Nine million Americans move to
another state every year, and when they move, they
have to reregister. However, these individuals are
often kept on the voter list of the states where they
moved from. We estimated that several hundred
thousand voters in this country are registered in more
than one state, which of course is not desirable. So we
said that the data based on state registration lists need
to be interoperable.
I think the Secretary of State will comment on that in a
few minutes, and he can explain it better than I.
Indiana is moving forward there. But I think all of you
can see the advantage of having interoperable state
lists at a time when Americans are more mobile than
ever before and undoubtedly will continue to be.
We also recommended a voter identification process.
This turned out, I think, to be the most controversial
recommendation that we made. Twenty-four states
now require voters to present identification at the
polls, including the state of Indiana. Twelve more
states have that under consideration. It was the view of
the commission that rather than let ID requirements
proliferate, we would recommend a system of uniform
voter ID. States would require voters to present their
REAL ID card that is already in the federal law today.
We recommended that states provide non-drivers with
free ID for the polls. Voter registration and ID would
be accessible to all eligible citizens with the help of
outreach efforts like mobile offices and other things to
try to assure the broadest possible participation.
ID cards are used in a lot of different contexts in this
country, but there is no doubt that they make a good
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many Americans nervous. We did not recommend a
national ID card, but we did recommend that we have
an ID standardization for these cards. It will come to
us through the REAL ID card. I think the policy
question today is not, “Are you going to have ID
cards?” We think that question has already been
decided in one way or the other. I mentioned that
twenty-four states have already done it. The real
question is, “Will you use the process of ID cards,
currently underway, to help in regards to voter
registration and identification?” At the end of the day,
you ought to be sure that the person who presents
himself or herself at the poll is the person who is on
the registration list and is the person he or she claims
to be.
Another recommendation, I will just cover two or
three more, is the so-called paper trail. Electronic
voting machines used broadly in the state do
malfunction and that raises concerns from time to time
about vote counts and manipulation. Our view was
that Americans will only have confidence in the
electronic machines if they can check that their vote
was recorded accurately and if that record is available
for recounts. So we left it up to the states as to how
they achieve this assurance. We certainly discussed
the idea of a paper trail, and we called upon Congress
to require voter verifiable paper audit trails on all
electronic voting machines. We would leave open the
possibility, as I suggested earlier, of a better system
emerging in the future.
Now another recommendation, which makes some of
the state officials nervous, is with regard to election
administration. In the year 2000 and 2004, both
Republican and Democratic Secretaries of State were
accused of bias. I think all of us recognize that
overwhelmingly our state officials try very hard to be
impartial, but they are political officers. And they are
elected under political balloting. Almost invariably
when you have a close election, there will be charges
of bias on the part of the election officials. So we said
that to give Americans confidence in the fairness of
the process, we should reconstitute election
management institutions on a nonpartisan basis.
There is one other interesting thing here. The average
age of the poll workers in this country today is 71
years of age, and that tells you a lot about the system.
Those people are not going to be here all that much
longer to work these polls. We ask those folks to put
in a very long day. Those of you who have done it
know that it is a fourteen- to fifteen-hour day,
sometimes more. You do not pay them, or you pay
them very little. We must begin thinking about ways
and means of staffing our polls, because you cannot
run an election without good polls. So a good part of
this report is devoted to the whole question of election
administration.
The final point we make is a big one and that is with
regard to presidential primaries. We calculated that
fewer than 8% of eligible voters now cast ballots for
the nominees of their parties before the process is
effectively over. If you want to put it in very specific
terms, it means the Indiana primaries are useless with
regard to presidential selection. I find that figure
deeply disturbing because I think it shuts out of the
process so many people, including Hoosiers, on the
presidential primaries. We had a little argument in the
Commission. I personally do not like the idea of Iowa
and New Hampshire being so prominent in this
choice. It might not shock you to know that Jimmy
Cater thinks it is a pretty good idea because he did all
right in those early primaries. This is one point where
President Carter and I were on opposing sides. Putting
aside the question of Iowa and New Hampshire, the
report accepts the recommendation that we made –
that the National Association of the Secretaries of
State should move toward a regional primary, four,
maybe five regional primaries to make this selection.
There are number of other recommendations that are
before us. I want to be quite candid in saying to you
that when we presented the recommendations to
President Bush, he was very gracious and very
supportive. I do not want to lock him in on his
specifics, but he certainly endorsed the overall thrust
of the report cheerfully and enthusiastically.
Secondly, we met with the leaders of United States
Congress. They too were very complimentary and
very nice about it, but said, in effect, we just do not
have time for it right now, and we will not be taking
these recommendations up in 2005. Frankly, I have
some questions as to whether or not they will address
them in 2006. To put it in another way, I think
electoral reform is not a high priority today in the
United States Congress. I hope this changes, but it is
the status today.
I mentioned a moment ago that we had an excellent
talk with several of these state representatives both
legislative and executive branches in the state. I am
very grateful to them and to our state officials because
I think that overall in Indiana, the state election laws
are in quite good shape.
The final point I would make is that no reform on
elections moves forward unless it is bipartisan. You
have to have bipartisan agreement in order to move
election reform forward. I believe and I fully expect
that we will work together in a very bipartisan way to
achieve that.
Keynote Address
The Honorable Todd Rokita
Indiana Secretary of State
Thank you very much for having me today. I want to
express my personal appreciation for Congressman
Hamilton sitting before us. He is a man all Hoosiers
can be proud of. He is very much the quintessential
definition of a Hoosier statesman. I am not going to
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say “elder statesman” because he looks in such good
shape. I think he could beat me in a foot race. Thank
you, sir, not only for your work on the 9/11
Commission, but for your service to Indiana.
Before Florida 2000, no one paid much attention to
our election system or to the office of Secretary of
State for that matter. That has changed. In Indiana
alone, we have seen more election reform since 2000
than we had seen since the voting rights after 1965.
This is not a perfect science. In Indiana alone, we have
nearly 30,000 poll workers from both parties working
at 5,500 precincts. That is a huge army to be able to
control. As much as I appreciate everyone’s interest in
elections, there is an expectation upon us as human
beings to do something we may never be able to
achieve. I do not say that to be defensive about our
poll workers or make excuses, but there will be
mistakes. We have not had a perfect election in the
history of this country. We have not had a perfect
election in the history of this world.
What our goal has to be, first and foremost, is to
minimize the mistakes. There are mistakes that poll
workers, election officials, candidates, and parties can
control. Other mistakes cannot be controlled so that
will happen. Our goal has to be to minimize those
mistakes that can be controlled; and if mistakes are to
occur, they have got to be mistakes that affect
everybody equally in a nondiscriminatory fashion. If a
battery goes out on a voting system, it has to affect
young people and older people the same way. It has to
affect African Americans the same as it affects
Caucasians. Those kinds of mistakes have to be
minimized, but if they occur, they have to affect
everyone equally. I think that should be the goal. If we
try to obtain perfection, we are never going to get it, as
long as humans are involved.
I think we have processes in place in Indiana. I think
we are the model in several respects for the nation in
terms of our laws. Go back to 2000 in Florida. Florida
would never have happened in Indiana simply because
if a chad is pregnant in Indiana, it is not counted. If a
chad is hanging in Indiana, it is counted. It is right
there in the law, black and white. There is no
discretion. There is nothing to argue over.
In terms of our military and overseas ballots in
Indiana, if those ballots or any absentee ballot is not
received by 6 p.m. on Election Day, it is not counted.
If it is received by 6 p.m., it is counted. We are not on
a postmark standard waiting around for who knows
how long after an election to see if ballots will come
in. So a lot of what we do goes back to controlling the
mistakes and controlling the situation to make the
election process fair for everyone that goes to vote. By
definition, if you do not count every military absentee
ballot, that could be a less than perfect election but the
question is, “Was it fair?”
I think that the Carter-Baker Commission report is a
good balance between accessibility and integrity. I
completely agree with the Congressman when he says
we need a bipartisan approach to any meaningful
election reform. In addition to that, we need to balance
integrity and accessibility. Over the last forty years,
we have been doing things in our election process to
make the ballot more accessible mostly and primarily
with the hope of increasing turnout. Yet in the last
forty years, turnout has not increased. Maybe it is time
to introduce a little bit of balance and integrity into the
system, something like a photo ID. When a voter takes
time from work to go vote and when he or she comes
to the polls, the individual sees that the election
administrators and the poll workers are taking it just as
seriously. Perhaps that will drive up turnout in the
long run. We have to be open to ideas like that.
Most of Indiana’s recent election reforms come from
recommendations of the tri-partisan Vote Indiana
team. It is a team that has been in place now for
several years. I convene it; we work on how to relate it
to American voting issues. Thank you to those team
members who are here today.
With regard to our statewide voter file, currently we
are on budget and on time for a successful roll-out in
early 2006. This could change. But we don’t expect it
to. We have Dave Certo over here from the BMV,
their chief legal counsel. He has been a great help in
making sure that as part of this database we are
integrated well into the BMV. We are also going to be
integrated in real time to the Department of Health and
the Social Security Administration. These two
agencies know before we do most likely when
someone dies. So in the real time, even with the
strictness of Motor Voter, which was put in place in
1993, with that “government evidence” in the form of
data, we can take passed-away voters off the rolls a lot
quicker.
That does two important things. First, it reduces the
temptation for fraudulent voting on someone else’s
name on the poll list, whether they are dead or have
moved away; and that does happen. I do not say that to
disparage Hoosiers. I say it because it happens in
Indiana. It has happened in California. It is happening
in New York, and I think it is happening in Oregon,
where they do not even go to the polls anymore. Every
name on the list gets an absentee ballot. These are
serious issues, and I think Indiana has a fair approach
to them.
Interoperability is the next step after we get this voter
registration done. We want to have a link to not only
92 counties together but to the other agencies. I
believe this will start, and I completely agree with the
Congressmen and the Carter-Baker report that we
have to start moving between states. Being from
Northwest Indiana, I see how many people move from
Illinois and the problems that can be caused. I have
already talked to the Secretaries of State of Michigan
and Kentucky. They have had a statewide voter
system for quite a while. One of the contract demands
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to our vendor was that we be open source to the extent
that we can connect with other states. Illinois is much
farther behind than ours so I have not made that
contact yet but I do think it is important.
A final point with regard to the voter registration was
the second point I was going to make. The first point
was about fraud. The second point was about cost of
government. In Indiana if you have 1,200 names in a
precinct, you have to divide that precinct into two.
But if those 1,200 names are just 900 actual voters,
that means you do not have to divide that precinct,
which means you are not renting extra space, which
means you are not buying extra machines, which
means you are not trying to find more poll workers,
which means you are not trying to take the time and
expense to train them. So there can be some real cost
savings to our government process.
I will save photo ID for questions, other than to say
that we are proceeding at the Secretary of State’s
office as if it is the law because it is. There is a court
case going on. We certainly would respect the
decision of any court case, but I cannot be put in a
position, nor can our county clerks, of waiting perhaps
two weeks before the election to find out that it is still
going to be the law and then expect to educate six
million people. We already have one brochure out to
reach people abroad or who may not know about the
law or who may not have a photo ID.
I put together a task force for the first time of people
who represent communities. They themselves
probably did not like the law. They would not have
voted for it if they were in the General Assembly but I
believe that they are genuinely interested in getting the
message out to especially nontraditional ways to
groups of people who may not see a TV, by using
public service announcements or radio. I will be
getting their ideas and incorporating that into a master
education plan.
We need younger people involved in election
administration. In Indiana, we have a program that
allows sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds to actually
work the polls—and not work the polls in terms of
passing out cards for Lee Hamilton or Todd Rokita—
but to be legally responsible for the election results as
an election worker. I cannot think of a better civics
lesson for our young people than working twelve to
fourteen hours and being legally responsible for the
freedom of our country. We need to do more of that.
The way the law ended up in Indiana, there was a little
bit of a compromise. It is an option for each county. If
the local Election Board – the three member body
made up of a Republican appointee, a Democrat
appointee and the clerk – unanimously votes to
implement such a program, they can do it. If I had my
wish it would be mandatory across the state. Not any
sixteen- or seventeen-year-old can do so. He or she
must have a 3.0 grade point average and must have
permission from parents and the school principal. But
again I cannot think of a better way to get newer
blood, so to speak, in the process. In the very least,
even if they never came back to do it again, I think
they would be hard pressed after spending fourteen
hours in a polling place not to come back and vote
when they are able to do so at eighteen.
_________
In addition to Congressman Hamilton and Secretary
of State Rokita, this SIPR Policy Forum included
Indiana State Representative Ed Mahern; Steve
Schultz, General Counsel to Indiana Governor Mitch
Daniels; David Certo, Chief Legal Counsel for the
Bureau of Motor Vehicles; and Les Miller, Executive
Director, Sycamore Institute.
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