Overview: Election Reform

Summary

Anyone who has been engaged in election reform during the last decade has surely noticed that change in this arena does not come rapidly. Even after the dramatic events of 2000, the annus horribilis of modern American electoral history, progress has been stubbornly slow. The Electoral College remains in place, despite popular opinion that favors its disappearance; electoral administration by partisan officials remains the norm; the rules governing national elections still vary by state and sometimes by county; registration lists have not yet been fully modernized; and turnout remains low among the poor and the less educated. Many states, aided by federal funds, did succeed in buying new voting machines, but some of those machines have performed so problematically that they too have had to be (or soon will be) replaced.

Numerous factors have contributed to the gelatinous pace of change. Funds for innovation (for new equipment, personnel, or training) have been scarce; election issues lack salience in the general public in the absence of a recent or imminent crisis; and enacting new laws requires the support of legislators who have won elections under existing rules and conditions. Compounding these problems has been the acrimonious partisan environment that has suffused political life for the last decade and that leaves little room to consider “good government” initiatives that might, in the short run, benefit one party rather than another.