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 Lessons of Election 2000
by John Samples, Tom G. Palmer, and Patrick Basham
 John Samples is director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Representative Government; Tom G. Palmer is fellow insocial thought at Cato; and Patrick Basham is senior fellow at the Center for Representative Government.
No. 59
Many people believe that Election 2000proved only how divided the nation is over poli-tics and policy. In contrast, this study draws sixlessons from Election 2000.
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Congress should set up a commission torecommend changes in the electoral system;the states should have the choice of acceptingthe reforms and the obligation to pay forthem.
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The Electoral College should be preserved.The framers designed the Electoral College tolimit arbitrary power. Abolishing theElectoral College would weaken the statesand damage federalism.
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The United States is a constitutional repub-lic, not a regime based on “the will of the peo-ple.” Several politicians have appealed to thewill of the people in the Florida struggle. Thewill of the people is a concept alien to theAmerican political tradition of limited, con-stitutional government.
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Underlying public attitudes strongly sup-ported limited government in Election 2000.Both the platforms of the candidates andpublic opinion polls indicate that the public’sskepticism about government remains high.
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Campaign spending enhanced turnout andparticipation in Election 2000. Both theNAACP and unions spent lavishly on gettingout the vote. If campaign spending is restrict-ed, turnout will fall, contrary to the professeddesire of advocates of campaign financerestrictions.
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Congress should not hold hearings aboutmedia mistakes. Any punishment for errorsor bias by the networks on election nightshould be left to public opinion.
January 2, 2001
 
Introduction
Many people now believe that Election2000 in the United States yielded no clearguidance for the world’s leading democracy.The grounds for this view are not hard to dis-cern: the narrow presidential election and theensuing struggle in Florida combined withan evenly divided Senate and a smallRepublican majority in the House of Representatives. Accordingly, many peoplenow predict gridlock and rising partisanship.We believe that the unrelenting focus onthe struggle in Florida for the presidency hasobscured the deeper meaning of Election2000. This paper will explore six importantlessons from the election.
CongressionalCommission
Congress should set up a commission torecommend changes in the nation’s electoralsystems; the states should have the choice of accepting the reforms and the obligation topay for them.Florida is not the only state that has prob-lems with its election system. Other stateshave reported claims of multiple voting, mul-tiple voter registrations, voting by unquali-fied persons (including legally disenfran-chised felons), and other problems with theirvoting systems and procedures.
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AlthoughArticle I, section 4, of the U.S. Constitutionvests the power to prescribe the times, places,and manner of holding elections for senatorsand representatives in the state legislatures, italso states, “but the Congress may at anytime by Law make or alter such Regulations,except as to the Place of chusing Senators.”The power to make or alter regulations cer-tainly encompasses the power to make rec-ommendations to the state and local govern-ments on the holding of elections.It should be borne in mind, however, thatArticle II, section 1, of the Constitution veststhe power to appoint electors for the office of president exclusively in the state legislatures.Article IV, section 4, of the Constitution alsoguarantees “to every State in this Union aRepublican Form of Government,” whichcertainly grants to Congress the power tocommission a report containing detailedadvice on how presidential elections shouldbe carried out.We call, therefore, upon Congress toappoint a commission for the purpose of examining the procedures for the popularelection of electors in the several states and tomake recommendations in at least four areas:
Registration Procedures
Reports of legally disenfranchised citizensor of noncitizens casting ballots indicate thatadditional safeguards may be necessary toprotect the integrity of the ballot. In somecases, unqualified persons may believe thatthey are in fact qualified to vote; in othercases, they may intend to corrupt the process.In either case, such “voting” cannot be toler-ated in a constitutional republic based on theconcept of citizenship.
Voting Technology
Many American citizens were startled tolearn that the technology for casting andrecording votes in many areas of the countryis twice as old as some of the voters. AsFlorida proves, such technology can becomean issue when the vote totals are extraordi-narily close. Antiquated technology can leadto both possible voter confusion and subjec-tive judgments by canvassing officials, whoare called upon to “divine” the intent of thevoters in the cases of disputed ballots. Agedtechnology thus brought us the “dimpledchad,” a term that should be dropped fromthe vocabulary of American elections. Thecommission should examine the potential of voting by computer and, more cautiously, theprospects of Internet voting.
Identification of Qualified Voters
The process of receiving and casting bal-lots is absurdly lax and must be reformed. Inmost areas, people wishing to cast ballots
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Florida is not theonly state that hasproblems with itselection system.
 
need give the local election workers only aname and an address to be issued a ballot. Noidentification is requested. One could quiteeasily vote a number of times merely by giv-ing the names and addresses of registeredvoters at a number of polling places. Further,giving only a name and an address wouldallow one to cast the ballot of another personwho might come in to vote later, only to findthat his or her ballot had already been cast.
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Absentee Ballots
The drive in recent years to increase theuse of absentee ballots has both diminishedthe significance of a major act of citizenshipand opened many opportunities for electoralfraud. Absentee ballots should be availableonly to those who cannot go to a pollingplace because of disability or absence. Theabsentee system opens up great opportuni-ties for dirty tricks and effective disenfran-chisement of voters. For example, such bal-lots in Oregon may have been collected bystrangers posing as election workers, whothen may or may not have mailed the ballots.This form of voting should receive height-ened scrutiny.We wish to stress, however, that the run-ning of elections is the proper province of thestates and localities, as prescribed in eachstate by its legislature. Accordingly, thereport of a congressionally appointed com-mission should be advisory only.Some observers agree with Sen. Charles E.Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has called for federalmatching grants to pay for changes in votingsystems.
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We disagree. The funding of elections,including voting technology, election staffing,and the like, should be left entirely to states andlocalities. The running of elections is a legiti-mate function of state and local governments,and the temptation of a federal budget surplusshould not entice Congress to relieve states andlocalities of their obligation to fund their ownelections. In addition, there is no power enu-merated under Article I, section 8, of the U.S.Constitution or elsewhere in the Constitutionthat would authorize federal funding of elec-tions held at the state or local level.
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Finally, weknow from experience in other policy areas thatfederal funding rarely comes without stringsand that a new federal presence could expand inthe future. A permanent commission funded inpart by the federal government would push usonto a slippery slope toward much greaternational control over all elections. State andlocal governments alone have this constitution-al responsibility.
The Electoral College
The disputed election of 2000 hasbrought many calls for changes in the way weelect our presidents. Shortly after electionday, Senator-elect Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.)proposed abolishing the Electoral College;Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) had already intro-duced a constitutional amendment to thatend. No doubt the Electoral College may pro-duce a president-elect who did not win a plu-rality of the popular vote. No doubt that’sunfortunate. Is it enough to justify gettingrid of the Electoral College? Hardly. TheElectoral College still has several advantagesover direct election of the president.
Restraining Power
The framers of the U.S. Constitution wereworried that, like the republics of antiquity,the new nation could degenerate over timeinto a political tyranny. They sought to con-strain and limit the exercise of arbitrary polit-ical power through constitutional checksand balances. Their debates about how toelect the president focused primarily on lim-iting power. They worried that if the presi-dent were too strong, he might threaten indi-vidual liberty. They knew also that the powerof Congress needed to be checked by thepresident. As Gouverneur Morris noted, if the president were not independent of Congress, “usurpation and tyranny on thepart of the Legislature [would] be the conse-quence.” The state legislatures at the timehad, in Madison’s words, “betrayed a strongpropensity to a variety of pernicious mea-sures,” a tendency that should be checked by
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The ElectoralCollege still hasseveral advan-tages over directelection of thepresident.
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