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SENATE APPROVES LEGISLATION REFORMING ELECTION SYSTEM Reform Effort Started After Florida Debacle By Edward Walsh, The Washington Post, Reported in Las Vegas Review Journal, 10-17-02, P. A1 WASHINGTON - Almost two years after ballot confusion and mistakes in Florida threw the 2000 presidential election into tumult, the Senate Wednesday passed and sent to President Bush legislation designed to improve the nation's voting procedures and provide the first substantial federal spending for that purpose. The bill, approved 92 to 2, authorizes $3.86 billion over the next four years to upgrade voting equipment, improve election administration and poll-worker training and change some of the ways American's register to vote and cast ballots. The House easily passed identical legislation last week,and Bush has pledged to sign it. Hailing the measure as the "first civil rights act of the 21st century," Senate Rules Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said "the right to cast a ballot is never again going to be denied to anyone in America who shows up" at a polling place. Under the bill, beginning with the 2004 presidential election, the states must provide "provisional ballots" to voters whose names do not appear on registration lists. The ballots would be counted if the voter's registration was later verified. By the 2006 election, each state must have a statewide, computerized voter registration list linked to its driver's license agency, a step that should make it easier to verify the registration of voters whose eligibility is in question. By then, all voting equipment in the country will have to provide for so-called "second chance voting," allowing voters to correct errors in their ballots before they are cast. In addition, every polling place will have to have at least one voting machine accessible to the disabled ad state legislatures will be required to define what constitutes a legal vote for each type of voting machine used in the state. Wednesday's Senate vote culminated an effort set in motion by the extraordinarily close 2000 presidential election in Florida and it's almost comic spectacle of hanging and dangling chads from punchcard ballots and varying standards for counting votes. The Florida deadlock resulted in a recount that kept the nation in suspense for more than a month until a divided Supreme Court halted the process, effectively awarding the presidency to George W. Bush. The turmoil led to wide-spread calls for changing the election system, but that proved more difficult than the initial enthusiasm for reform suggested. Civil rights groups were wary of any changes that might discourage minorities from voting. Organizations representing the disabled demanded guaranteed access to polling places for handicapped voters. State and local elections officials wanted federal cash but feared it would lead to a federal takeover of their functions. The most contentious aspect of the process centered on demands by Senate Republicans, led by Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., that the bill include strong anti-fraud provisions. To satisfy Bond and others, the final compromise version of the bill requires that, beginning Jan. 1, voters registering by mail for the first time in a jurisdiction provide a current photo identification card or other document, such as a utility bill, that includes the applicant's name and address. Beginning Jan. 1, 2004, all new registering voters must provide a driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number. State officials will assign a number to voters who have neither a driver's license nor Social Security number. The bill's identification provisions split the civil rights community. In the House, the Congressional Black Caucus endorsed the overall bill, saying provisional ballots and improved methods to verify a voter's registration will make it more difficult to challenge minority voters. But the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, contending that the identification requirements will disproportionately affect Hispanics and depress Latino voting, opposed it. "Latinos will bear the brunt of this," said Rep. Charles Bonzalez, D-Texas, chairman of the Hispanic Caucus's Civil Rights Task Force. "It sets up the potential for great mischief." While the identification requirements will take effect in 2003 and 2004, he said, sates can wait until 2006 to install statewide, computerized voter registration systems to improve the process of verifying a voter's registration. WORKING TOGETHER TO ATTAIN FAIRNESS | ||
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