Eve Samples
Opinion contributor
7:00 a.m. ET Nov. 18, 2018
It is harder to build trust in our election system than it is to destroy it. Still, there are reforms that both parties should be able to support.
AP ELECTION 2018 FLORIDA A USA FL
(Photo: Joe Skipper, AP)
Some things cannot be unseen. Like the vile underbelly of Florida's elections system.
This month's midterms revealed:
►Florida lacks consistent standards for verifying signatures on absentee ballots. (Former Congressman Patrick Murphy said his ballot was tossed due to a signature discrepancy, as was the case with at least 3,600 others statewide.) The issue is now the subject of a lawsuit.
►Voting machines in some of Florida's biggest counties are inadequate for performing timely recounts. (Palm Beach County's overworked machines literally overheated last week).
►Flawed ballot design remains a problem, even after the 2000 "hanging chad" debacle. In Broward County, the U.S. Senate race was listed below ballot instructions, making it easier to overlook.)
►Some voters were allowed to submit ballots via email, a violation of state law. (Bay County's supervisor of elections defended the move as an effort to help voters displaced by Hurricane Michael.)
There's more, but you get the point.
How can we restore faith in such a deeply flawed system?
“Restoring trust is so much more difficult than destroying trust,” said Pippa Norris, an elections expert and professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. "It’s like an escalator that goes downhill.”
That's not to say it's impossible. There are three places we can start, as Norris sees it.
1. Standardize election procedures
Instead of requiring uniform election rules, the U.S. allows vital decisions such as ballot design and voting hours to be made at local and state levels. In Florida, the result is a crazy-quilt pattern of practices across 67 counties.
Compare that with Canada, which has national election rules that standardize early voting days and voter identification requirements from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU's School of Law. The result is less voter confusion.
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"Home rule" makes a lot of sense for planning-and-zoning and property tax decisions. Not so much for the complicated business of elections.
The U.S. lacks consistent best practices across the 50 states.
“The fact that America is voting with machines that still run on Windows 2000 is just incredible,” Norris said.
2. Nix partisan politics
The people who oversee elections in 66 of Florida's 67 counties are themselves elected officials with party affiliations (only in Miami-Dade is the supervisor appointed). For example, the much-criticized Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes is a Democrat. Mark Andersen, the Bay County Supervisor of Elections who allowed email voting, is a Republican.
Why are these offices partisan, when candidates for school boards and city councils are nonpartisan in Florida?
Most elected supervisors of elections do a fine job in Florida — particularly in smaller counties with fewer votes to count — but when results are disputed, their party affiliations create a perception of bias.
Elections supervisors should be impartial watchdogs, not political players.
3. Better behavior from elected leaders
President Donald Trump tweeted that "an honest vote count is no longer possible" in Florida. He called for sticking with the election night front-runners, who also are his preferred candidates: Rick Scott for U.S. Senate and Ron DeSantis for governor.
By Wednesday, in an interview with the Daily Caller, Trump alleged some voters were wearing disguises to vote repeatedly. He did not cite any evidence.
Sowing doubt about elections results, even as ballots are still being counted, does long-term damage to democracy. Restoring faith in Florida's elections will require stepping away from partisan accusations.
Traditionally, Republicans are most concerned about elections security and preventing voter fraud; Democrats tend to focus on avoiding disenfranchisement and eliminating barriers to voting.
“You need to have both," Norris said.
She pointed to India, where the government issues photo ID cards to every registered voter in an attempt to reduce fraud.
“If one of the poorest countries in the world can have a very effective electoral commission ... then I think America can do this as well,” Norris said.
A success story in the U.S. illustrates how we can eliminate barriers: The state of Oregon implemented a "Motor Voter" law in 2016, automatically registering eligible voters when they get or renew their driver's licenses (unless they opt out). Oregon also conducts its elections entirely by mail.
"Everybody in Oregon is now used to that system," Norris said. "It works very effectively."
Confidence in the honesty of U.S. elections has declined precipitously over the past decade, according to the Gallup World Poll. Only 30 percent of U.S. respondents in 2016 said they had confidence elections were honest, compared with 52 percent in 2006.
Confidence is consistently higher in Canada, Ireland, Australia and the United Kingdom — above 60 percent in all of those places in 2016.
After all the ballots are finally counted in Florida, we will desperately need a bipartisan effort to strengthen and standardize voting practices.
Eve Samples is opinion and audience engagement editor for TCPalm/Treasure Coast Newspapers, where this column originally appeared. Contact her at eve.samples@tcpalm.com or @EveSamples on Twitter.
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