Inept administration threatens votes

Young people will be a powerful force in this election. No one knows for sure just how many of us registered to vote in 2004. What we do know is that links to voter registration forms were emailed around faster than facebook invitations and that the presidential debates have become must see TV. Here in Princeton, nearly 1,300 students registered to vote for the first time. The horse race polls that predict close wins for Kerry or Bush only survey likely voters, people who have voted in the last three elections. That means they aren't accounting for your vote or mine, and no one really knows how this election will turn out. We could elect ourselves a president, as long as we show up and are counted.

But being counted isn't quite as easy as it should be these days. After 2000, Americans knew we had to reform our electoral systems to avoid another recount debacle. Congress did what it does best. It passed a bill with a happy sounding name, threw money at the problem, and moved on to issues that resonate with the public more often than once every four years. The Help America Vote Act sent nearly $4 billion to states to modernize their election systems. In the rush to spend the government's money, many states purchased computerized touchscreen voting machines.

Computer scientists and election officials have cried out that these machines are subject to fraud, viruses and malfunctions, and that because they produce no paper records, are impossible to check. As journalists and pundits rattle on about red states and blue states, the warnings of these critics have gone unheeded. Come Nov. 2, three out of every 10 Americans will cast their votes on electronic machines that are unreliable and unverifiable.

Princeton's Congressman Rush Holt is an astrophysicist and the kind of honest politician few believe exist any more. It seems fitting that he has taken up this unglamorous but crucial issue. Holt has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to require computerized machines to produce a paper record of every vote cast, so that individuals can confirm that their votes were recorded correctly, and election officials can check to make sure the machines are working. The House has not held a single hearing on Congressman Holt's bill. A man wants to require a piece of paper to ensure that democratic processes are fair. One wonders what Congress is doing that is more important than this.

The battle for election reform is not just about paper. In many college towns, like Prairie View, Texas, and Clinton, N.Y., local election officials won't allow students to register to vote. These four-year residents, whom the Supreme Court has guaranteed the right to vote in their school's town are being disenfranchised. In some states, partisan operatives distribute misinformation about when elections are being held and ask minority voters to produce forms of identification not required by law. In others, voter registration forms submitted by political groups are never entered into the system. In Florida, the secretary of state attempted to cloak an effort to purge qualified minority voters by producing a flawed list of felons ineligible to vote. Ohio's secretary of state rejected thousands of voter registration forms because they weren't submitted on 80-pound stock paper.

Once every four years, we go to the polls and behind a drab blue curtain,we pull a lever or press a button that conveys our hope for the future of this country. Nothing is more American. We must make sure that our votes are counted accurately, and that everyone who has the right to be heard, is. This is fundamental. It is easy to get distracted once elections are over, to forget that reforms are desperately needed. Our generation is just beginning to vote, and from the looks of this election, we will do so in record numbers. Election reform may not be glamorous, or even partisan, but we ought to demand that our leaders address the issue in a meaningful way, putting political interests aside and agreeing that everyone's votes should be counted. We ought to volunteer to work the polls and help our fellow citizens get to their voting booths. There's no telling how the millions of young voters in this country will shape the 2004 election. If we take up the issue of election reform, we could shape the democratic process, as well. Katherine Reilly is a Wilson School major from Short Hills, N.J. She can be reached at kcreilly@princeton.edu. Her column runs every other Wednesday.