ãThe pointä, I believe, comes from Rick's comments recently about how valuable it is that we had litigation efforts before the election.  Let's expand on that.  How about Bauer and Ginsberg, NOW, start a bipartisan effort to work toward clarifying, facilitating (etc.) lotsa aspects of law and practice so as to reduce problems, hopefully to improve 2006 let alone 2008 ...?  How about an effort that works at both national problems and state-by-state problems?  I address this not only to Bob and
Ben but also Chapin and Winger, because each brings such special expertise and needed perspective.  And of course I'd add to the Platonic Guardians taking this forward, Dan and Rick and Still, Foley and Tokaji, Wang and Wright.  Here at Georgetown we have a number of students who WANT to work on something like this, and I'm hoping our Supreme Court Institute will help.  (After all, this is an effort at preventive medicine, heading off more post-election crises.)  Surely other law schools and poli sci depts also have students ready and eager (e.g., Columbia's Impact 2004, Harvard's Just Democracy, and their many colleagues in many places) to can take on jurisdiction-specific problems as well as parts of the national problems.

    Here's a possible agenda:
        1)  HAVA--
                --clarifications of ambiguities;
                --state laws or regs implementing HAVA.
        2) "HAVA-plus":  matters not touched by HAVA but similar, like--
                --standards for evaluating provisional ballots;
                --deadlines for absentee ballots, and how to handle people who request but don't receive;
                --to avoid running out of ballots or provisional ballots, accessible central reserves;
                --to avoid unduly long lines, back-up alternatives like offering paper-based voting;
                --to avoid confusion about where to vote, a deadline after which precinct and polling-place locations cannot be changed (unless building burns down, etc.);
                öcoordinate better the processing of petitions to get on the ballot, with the deadlines for printing ballots;
                örecruiting and training poll workers;
                ösince early voting and easy absentee ballots are likely to spread, what needs attention?
                öof course, paper trails;
                ögetting voter-list purges out of the dark ages;
                --and, doubtless, others like those.
        3)  Beyond HAVA--
                --providing free ID cards for anyone who wants, at least state-wide (Rick calls for national ones, if I read him right, but why seek only what's probably hardest to get?);
               --reducing the partisanship of election officials.  Again, if I read Rick right, he aims at the Secretaries of State, and heâs not alone on that.  But very few States have any statewide official(s) with significant authority over the conduct of elections (Oklahoma does, Rhode Island, and a handful more).  For all the Florida SecyofStates' visibility, they have very limited authority: there (like most places), it's the 67 county boards that matter ... from designing the ballots, thru recounts.
                  How enormously signficant is the contrast between Ohio's four-person boards, with two from each major party ... versus Florida's, which have three elective officials including one judge who was elected as nonpartisan but is almost always from the dominant local party-- e.g. Broward in 2001 had 75 county judges, of whom 66 were registered Dems.
                  Only 20 or so States have (as of 2002) any requirements, at local or state levels, to assure against the risk of one-party control of election administration.  Changing from one-party control was Recommendation #3 of the 2001 Natl Task Force on Election Reform, who know better than to focus on Secys of States.
               öAnd we need to "elevate the aim" for quality of performance by the local officials who conduct the elections.  Maybe no one can do much about budgets, maybe can't do much about elevating the caliber of the people involved ... but both of those need attention, and certainly much can be done to improve on the current regime in which county after county re-invents the wheel.  Larry Levine puts it well: ãToo many of them have the narrow view that their system ... is better than everyone elseâs and everyone elseâs problems will never happen to them.ä

        4)  Macro--
               --making election day a holiday;
               --reducing the hurdles in the petition-onto-ballot process in order to avoid the awful tangles of delaying final preparation of ballots, wholly apart from the aspects of how third--party and independent candidates should be treated;
               --"Voter Guidesä, like what Oregon/Wash/Calif/Colo/Alaska for generations have mailed to registered voters (and NYC since early 1990s).  Weâve worked so hard on turnout and since 2000 we work so hard on getting the votes cast, but only those States have done anything to get candidate info to voters.  (Such guides are acutely needed for down-ballot offices.  Back in 2001, 17 Chief Justices urged that Congress give a mailing frank to state/local govts that send out Voter Guides (at least for the candidate info), since postage is 1/3 the cost.)
              --again, doubtless others ....

Thanx for yr time!   roy

--
Roy A. Schotland
Professor
Georgetown U. Law Ctr.
600 New Jersey Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001
phone 202/662-9098
fax        662-9680 or -9444