Reuters
Thursday November 15
Bipartisan
U.S. Election Reform Bill Gains Steam
By Thomas Ferraro
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - A U.S. House of Representatives committee
on Thursday became the first congressional panel to
approve bipartisan election reform legislation since
last year's disputed presidential contest. By an 8-0
vote, the House Committee on Administration sent to
the full House for consideration a $2.65 billion measure
that would implement one of the biggest overhauls of
the U.S. election system. House Speaker Dennis Hastert,
an Illinois Republican, declined to say if his chamber
would consider the bill before it recessed for the year
next month, but vowed to bring it up as soon as possible.
"The quicker we can move on it, the quicker we
can start to make preparations'' for changes that will
assure the nation "of good, sound elections,''
Hastert said. While federal elections have been traditionally
handled and funded by states and localities, the bill
would provide states with $2.25 billion over three years
for new equipment and a number of other improvements.
In
addition, states would be required to adopt minimum
election standards, ranging from defining what constitutes
a vote on various machines, to giving voters a chance
to fix errors, to maintaining voter registration records.
The measure would also provide $400 million to buy out
and replace old punch-card voting machines, whose many
problems were documented by the thousands of disputed
ballots in Florida last year.
Senate
Democrats Offer Own Plan
There have been dozens of election reform bills introduced
since the 107th Congress convened in January, a month
after the Supreme Court made Republican George W. Bush
the winner of the 2000 White House contest by refusing
to permit Democrat Al Gore a hand recount of the disputed
Florida ballots. But only one other bill has been reported
out of a committee this year, a measure backed exclusively
by Democrats in the Senate and opposed by virtually
all Senate Republicans.
Senate
Democrats and Republicans are now seeking a compromise
on the measure, which would require states to meet new
election standards in return for funds to implement
them. The bill approved by the House committee would
establish minimum election standards, but, unlike the
Senate measure, leave it up to the states to decide
how to meet them. Before any bill is signed into law
by Bush, both the House and Senate must approve it.
A number of organizations, including the American Civil
Liberties Union, back the Senate measure and reject
the House bill as inadequate. "Ours is a bipartisan
compromise that will do the job,'' said House Administration
Committee Chairman Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican who crafted
the bill with Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the panel's
ranking Democrat. House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt,
a Missouri Democrat, and Senate Majority Leader Tom
Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat, declined to offer
an immediate assessment of the bill.
Regardless, a senior Daschle aide said, the Senate majority
leader has no plans to bring any election reform bill
to the floor of his chamber this year. Ney and Hoyer
released a list of 38 Republican and 36 Democratic co-sponsors,
and predicted House passage of the bill when it reaches
the floor of their chamber. Philip Zelikow, executive
director of the National Commission on Federal Election
Reform, co-chaired by former Presidents Gerald Ford,
a Republican, and Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, hailed the
Ney-Hoyer bill. Zelikow said the measure contained virtually
all the recommendations offered by the commission in
a report in August. At the time, Bush embraced those
recommendations as the ''principles that should guide
us.'' While the Ney-Hoyer bill drew plenty of support,
it also sparked some heated opposition headed by Rep.
John Conyers of Michigan, ranking Democrat on the House
Judiciary Committee. Conyers aimed much of his criticism
at the provision permitting states to determine how
they would meet specified standards.
Other critics included the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People, the American Association
of People with Disabilities and the U.S. Public Interest
Research Group. Lloyd Leonard, legislative director
at the League of Women Voters, ripped into the measure,
saying, "The bill contains more loopholes than
safeguards.'' Ron Thornburgh, president of the National
Association of Secretaries of States, which endorsed
the bill Thursday, disagreed, saying, "It provides
the states the flexibility they need.''
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