The Hoover Institute published a paper, Restoring Confidence in American Elections, in June 2024. Distinguished Visiting Fellow Ben Ginsberg and Stanford professor Bruce Cain wrote it. The paper explores “the polarization in American election views. It also analyzes where common ground might be found to bring divided factions together.”
As an old political science major, I was interested in what they had to say, even though Hoover was considered “conservative.”
“The core division over election reform is often now characterized as ‘fraud versus suppression,’ and the partisan gap on this issue is wider today than in the past. Public faith in the accuracy of US elections is currently at an historic low, with more than 30 percent of the population doubting the accuracy of elections. If unaddressed, this could severely undermine the US political system and its form of government, which is rooted in the peaceful transfer of power… ” Several surveys in recent years, including from the Ad Council (2023), confirm this.
“Evidence from the MIT Election Data and Science Lab backs this up [finds] that voters are mostly unaware of the many complex and specific procedures that election administrators follow. In some instances, the procedures voters thought would give them more confidence in the election process were already in place.” As a poll worker in 2021, I was impressed by the training beforehand and the intentional redundancy in the counting process. Fraud would be extremely difficult to introduce into the system.
“The current legitimacy crisis over US elections may be more reflective of what voters learned from news coverage, social media, and online sources of information than what they personally experienced.” Or, I would posit, lies told by certain candidates and their surrogates.
Damn federalism!
“The decentralized delegation to the states of many procedural details for state and federal elections means that voters are often surprised to learn that other states have different rules. More than ten thousand jurisdictions are responsible for the casting, counting, and certification of their
communities’ votes.” It IS convoluted.
“The United States’ strong federalist structure may also be a contributing factor to the rise of convenience voting, an increasingly popular but controversial method of balloting. Because the United States has so many elections at all levels of government, voters in many states must
fill out very long and complicated ballots… Understandably, many citizens now prefer the convenience of voting at home and dropping the ballot off at a voting center, rather than navigating the long lines while waiting for other people to work their way through the lengthy list of choices on
Election Day.”
Certain districts also had longer lines, and while some states allow time off to vote, others do not.
“The growing partisan divide on voting rules is also reflected in the pattern of new voting law proposed by each party in the states… Democrats generally propose laws that provide more opportunities for people to vote with fewer requirements, whereas Republicans prefer laws that provide more checks to make it harder for potentially ineligible individuals to vote. The result is significantly more litigation over election laws, as well as a ramping up of partisan campaign rhetoric over “fraud” or “suppression” in get-out-the-vote messaging, all of which contribute to more partisan polarization in the country as a whole.”
Both sidesism
There’s a degree of “both sides” in the argument, which I disagree with.
I admit I’m suspicious of Texas Republicans who are accused of intimidation. The homes of members of the United States’ oldest Latino civil rights organizations were raided over voter fraud claims.
More problematic in terms of the 2024 presidential election involves Georgia. “In a series of meetings in July and August, the Georgia State Election Board voted 3-2 to change the rules governing local election boards. (The three members voting to change the rules all deny that Joe Biden won Georgia in 2020, despite the complete lack of evidence for that view. Trump has given them a shout-out at a political rally. When was the last time a national candidate paid any attention to a state election board?)” If the vote is as close as it was in 2020, expect chaos.
Most infuriating, How Tennessee Keeps Nearly Half a Million People From Voting. “While nearly all states suspend or withdraw people’s right to vote when they are convicted of felonies, most allow restoring that right after they have served their sentences… But Tennessee has moved in the opposite direction, making the process significantly more difficult. (Think: bureaucratic maze from hell.) About 9 percent of the state’s voting-age population is prohibited from voting because of felony convictions.”
Solutions
I’m skipping over the Common Myths section of the Hoover argument, which is interesting but not pivotal. The authors list reasonable suggestions, albeit difficult to achieve.
Enact Legislation to Better Secure the Safety of Election Officials
and Poll Workers
Encourage Greater Uniformity in Electoral Practices through Evidence-Based Assessments of Both Participation and Security Impacts. “The issue should be viewed on two levels. One is differences between the states, which are perhaps inevitable given our history not only in matters involving elections but also in many other matters of governance. More solvable is the lack of uniformity among jurisdictions within a single state, which also causes confusion and, therefore, an erosion of confidence in elections.” Yes. “Uniformity in the administration of a state’s laws and standardization of electoral systems within a state’s jurisdictions could lead to a vast increase in public confidence in elections.”
Outreach to the Public on Voting Administration Should Be Targeted, Tested, and Coordinated
Reliable
Develop Bipartisan “Standards of Reliability” to Reassure the Public of the
Accuracy of Elections. This has several components. Absentee ballot / mail-in ballot validation measures. Prompt reporting of election results. Easily available mail/early voting (no excuse). National voter ID (including one-time initial proof of citizenship for all current voters, available at no cost). Online voter registration. Notice and cure of defective ballots. Drop boxes monitored with video. Voter roll maintenance – a BIG problem. Multistate database to check duplicate voter registrations.
Also: Absentee ballot applications to all voters but not live ballots. No ballot harvesting – I TOTALLY agree with this. Paper trail for all ballots. Postelection risk-limiting audits. Observers allowed in polling places and where votes are tabulated – “Observers should be required to attend a training session to familiarize themselves with the jurisdiction’s processes so they can better understand what they observe.” Adequate funding for elections. Protection for election officials.
Finally
Here’s the conclusion: “Some might conclude that these examples of plausible initial steps of bipartisan election administration are too small and that reform efforts should go big or go home. That would be fine if the country were not deeply polarized and bipartisan consensus was not so difficult to achieve. Cross-party reforms necessarily involve negotiation and building trust by finding the most obvious points of agreement first. Continuing down a path that undermines public faith in democratic institutions is not an acceptable option. Even if small steps do not address
the underlying problems associated with strong federalism or overly partisan officials, they would be a valuable start toward changing the negative direction of contemporary American citizen culture.”
I think it’s a useful document. Coordinating information among the states seems particularly difficult, but the rationale for it makes sense. But what do you think we can/should do to Restore Confidence in American Elections?
