Witnesses:

Lance Ward, Secretary Oklahoma State Election Board; Henry Cuellar, Texas Secretary of State; Carolyn Jefferson-Jenkins League of Women Voters

Mr. Lloyd Cutler: Good morning everyone. My name is Lloyd Cutler, and I�m co-chairman of this commission on federal election reform. To my left is Bob Michel, who was drafted and accepted the post as the Republican [co-chair], after Howard Baker got drafted to be the Ambassador to Japan. And on my right is Philip Zelikow, who is the director of the commission staff. First, I�d like to ask Harry Middleton if he would say a word. Harry Middleton, as you all know, is the director of the LBJ Library, and we have all benefited from these many tours and this beautiful museum and everything else that has been done under his direction. Harry, would you want to say a word?

Mr. Harry Middleton: I�d just like to welcome you here. I�m delighted that you are here doing this important work at the LBJ Library, and I�m glad that we are allied with you on this commission. Welcome.

Mr. Lloyd Cutler: Thank you very much. We have several panels here today, and we will get right to it. I�d just wanted to make a couple of introductory remarks. The commission was started after the very close results of the last election and the numerous procedural difficulties that came to light in how we run elections and how important those difficulties can be when elections are as close and the population, the voting public, is as equally divided as it was in the year 2000. We have a commission chaired by President Carter and President Ford, as honorary co-chairs, and Bob Michel and myself, at the moment, as the working co-chairs of the commission. We are a very, very nonpartisan group, if I can use that phrase. We come from all political elements in the country. Many of us have had previous experience as elected officials. Some have had experience as secretaries of state, of various states, supervising the election processes in their own states. Some are very distinguished academics and historians.

It is a commission to examine the results of this last election, not to retry it or to decide whether it came out properly or whether the votes were properly counted, but to look to the future to determine what procedural changes ought to be made in the national election process to avoid some of the things that happened last time. It�s a forward-looking, not a backward-looking, commission. We have decided to hold these hearings, such as this one, at all Presidential libraries. We began with President Carter�s library. We had a very good hearing, and President Carter took part in that. We then had a very good hearing at the Ronald Reagan Library. We�re having this one at the LBJ Library. We are going to have one at President Ford�s library in Michigan in a few weeks, or so, from now.

The issues that we are trying to concentrate on are: Who votes? Do older people have difficulty in getting access to the polls? What is the role of absentee ballots? What about the people on military service? How are votes cast and counted: and we saw in this last election what a wide variety of different kinds of counting and re-counting machinery and voting machinery exists even within single states, not to mention the country as a whole. How are disputes about the outcome of elections resolved, disputes as to whether undercounts or overcounts occurred? How are results reported by the media: are they reported too early, are exit polls misused? And what is the appropriate role of the federal government in a process that has been largely run by the states because elections go on at least every two years or so, not only for federal and congressional officials, but also for a wide variety of local officials.

And I�ll stop there for a moment and ask Bob Michel to say a few words, in particular about today�s hearing and what we are going to hear.

Rep. Bob Michel: Well, Mr. Chairman, I think you played it out very well and we need not belabor the point. I�m looking forward, as I�m sure the commission�s members are, to the witnesses that we have brought before us today. So that we give them ample time, I�m all for beginning.

Mr. Lloyd Cutler: Well then, Phil, would you get panel one started?

Mr. Philip Zelikow: I�m happy to, Mr. Cutler. We welcome now the witnesses we have before us on the panel, Sharon Priest, Lance Ward, Henry Cuellar, and Caroline Jefferson-Jenkins. On our schedule, I think the first witness is Sharon Priest.

Ms. Sharon Priest: Thank you. Good morning. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I�m very pleased to be here representing the National Association of Secretaries of State and, of course, my own proud state of Arkansas. I want you to know that the secretaries believe that elections are the core of our democracy, and if there is something wrong with the process, it taints everything that follows that. It taints my election as secretary of state. It taints legislative bodies and virtually every decision that is made from that point forward. So we are resolved to do some work in the area of elections. I also want you to know that secretaries didn�t just wake up on November 8th and find out that there were problems. These are problems that secretaries have been aware of for many years, which made coming out with a broad resolution in February an easy thing for us to do. What was missing prior to that was the forum for people to hear and understand what the problems were and a willingness to do something about those problems. The secretaries had a sixteen-point resolution, four of those relating to what the federal government can do. Perhaps some of those will come out during questions.

The very first resolution we made was that there should be non-discriminatory access to the election process, on the part of minorities, on the part of the elderly, on the part of the handicapped, and on the part of the military overseas. It is unconscionable that in our country today that minorities would be turned away from the polls because they are minorities. It is unconscionable that we don�t give access to the elderly. It is not a very difficult thing to do to help people have access to reading the ballot. There was another law on overseas ballots that nobody realized until this election: that they weren�t counted unless they made a difference in the outcome of elections. So that was the very first thing that the secretaries put strong emphasis on.

There is a provision in the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) for provisional ballots. Unfortunately, not all states have adopted that, and the secretaries feel very strongly that all states should adopt the provisional ballot. Uniform state standards, we think, are very important in the conduct of elections. I will tell you though, just as there is friction between the state and federal government, there is friction between the local and state governments, particularly when it comes to a uniform ballot. However, I think that even though the equal protection issue that came out in Bush v. Gore was depending on who you talk to, one ticket, one time, one train, in actual fact, I think it will be used quite a bit in the future on close elections and any election that crosses a county line.

The secretaries feel that voter education is critical to good elections. We feel that, not only do we have a responsibility to make sure that people get information about candidates and issues, but how to register to vote, the process of voting, how to use the equipment, which I think was very critical in these elections. Keep in mind that voting equipment was designed so that we could have instant results. It was not designed to be voter-friendly. So that�s an area that we feel we must work on to make sure that first-time voters know how to use the equipment, and that is going to be a very aggressive program of outreach.

Poll worker recruitment and training is something else that we feel is important. We virtually hold poll workers prisoner for fifteen hours on Election Day because there is a shortage of poll workers in many states. The poll worker population is aging, and it is unfair to keep them there for so many hours on Election Day. So recruitment is something secretaries are going to be working very hard on. Training: in order to provide citizens, voters, with a good experience on Election Day, we think that poll worker training is very, very important so that they know when a voter comes in and the name is not on the list, that that voter is not turned away. They are the front line on elections, and the voter is more likely to take that anger out on the poll worker than call the secretary of state or the election commission. So we feel that it is important to give poll workers all that they need to conduct an election on Election Day. It is unrealistic to think that we can train them in all of the election laws, but I think in the conduct of the election on Election Day, we can make a big difference there.

Let me talk a little bit about funding. Although the secretaries feel that funding is important, we also feel that it is just one piece of the puzzle. Secretaries believe very strongly that there are three things that go into elections: people, process, and technology. And all of them have to work together to have a good election. So the equipment part of it, I will have to tell you that the jury is still out in terms of what is the best equipment. I think you have had testimony from Cathy Cox and the secretary of state in Georgia to that end, and we don�t expect the federal government to do the whole thing. We want to work in partnership. We believe that state and local governments need to step up to the plate. But our main goal, as chief election officials for our states, is to insure that voters are informed, confident, and satisfied with their experience on Election Day.

Thank you.

Mr. Philip Zelikow: Thank you, Ms. Priest. I should add for the benefit of the audience that Sharon Priest is secretary of state of Arkansas, but she is also president of the National Association of Secretaries of State and so her views have a wider resonance and the principles she enunciates represent a wide constituency. We are going to take the opening statements in order and then open up for questions from the whole panel to all the witnesses. Our next witness is Lance Ward. Lance Ward is the secretary of the Oklahoma State Election Board and secretary of the Oklahoma Senate. He is also the co-chair of the Election Center�s National Task Force on Election Reform.

Mr. Ward.

Mr. Lance Ward: Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, I appreciate this opportunity to come and address you on why Oklahoma is number one, and to my friends from Texas and a few other states, I�m not going to talk about football. Oklahoma has one way of doing elections. Not just one voting system to count ballots, but one way of doing everything related to elections. For the entire state, and every county, and every precinct, and every jurisdiction, there is one uniform set of laws, one uniform set of rules, one uniform set of procedures, one uniform set of standards for everything related to elections. It is not one size fits all, but it is uniform, statewide. I oppose a national elections system for a lot of reasons I don�t have the time to get into. I think it is a bad idea. But I also think that a state-unified, uniform election system, is a great idea.

Many of my peers say that �it won�t work in my state,� or they�ll say something like one of my election administrator friends from Florida, by the way, who said, �I�m all for uniformity as long as everyone else does it my way.� I can tell you it will work in a state with 2.2 million registered voters, with 77 counties that include 2,200 precincts. The smallest county has 2,000 registered voters, the largest has 400,000. We conduct all official elections for all jurisdictions using the same standards for all elections. The state, to this day, owns the equipment, maintains it, supports it, prints the ballots, and pays the salaries of some of the county election administrators. In three years, starting in 1989, the state bought computers, the same computers, and put them in all the counties; bought software, the same software, and put them in all the counties; bought voting devices, the same voting devices, and put them in all of the counties; and, in each instance, used voter registration on a statewide basis for the first time in any state ever, and I think that we are still the only state to have one computer system statewide for voter registration.

We computerized election administration, and I think to this day we are still the only state that has uniform election administration across the state. And, of course, we made voting devices and vote counting uniform across the state. We are still one of the very few states that has done that. In three giant steps Oklahoma went from last in the use of voting technology to first, and I think that we are still number one. We have one set of standards for how we treat voters, for how we treat candidates, for how we treat the media, for how we treat taxpayers, for how we treat the public. Statewide, for every voter in every precinct and every county, there is one voting system, one kind of ballot, one way of voting, one way of counting ballots, and one way of re-counting ballots. Oklahoma election officials use one computer system statewide, they use one kind of software, they have one set of laws, one set of rules, one set of regulations, one set of standards, and one set of training materials. Oklahoma has one statewide elections system, and it has worked very successfully for a decade.

Thank you.

Mr. Philip Zelikow: Our next witness is Henry Cuellar who runs elections in the very state we are in today. He is the secretary of state of Texas, appointed to that office by Governor Perry and sworn in earlier this year. Mr. Cuellar, thank you for joining us.

Mr. Henry Cuellar: Thank you, Philip, and it�s nice seeing you again. I think that the last time we saw each other was in San Antonio, Texas. To the members of the commission, I also welcome you to Texas. If you look around, I think we all have a tremendous opportunity to really look at the electoral process that we have, whether it is from a national perspective or from a state perspective, or even from a local perspective. Regardless of the results in Florida, I think that the silver lining in that particular situation is that it became a catalyst for all to look at this electoral process. This is exciting because if you look at what secretaries of state are doing across the nation, and, of course, here in the state of Texas, we�re happy with some of the changes we�ve been making. Let me talk about some of the changes that we have here in the state of Texas.

As the secretary of state here in the state of Texas, I am the chief election officer. Governor Perry, who is a Republican, appointed me, and I am a Democrat. I was a state representative for fourteen years. We believe in this type of bipartisanship. What we saw here was that as the chief election officer, I will remain neutral and nonpartisan in carrying out my responsibilities. I will remain faithful to our Constitution and our statutes. Texas has a strong record as an innovator and a leader in elections. In fact, with House Bill 1053 that we passed a couple years ago, Texas was the first state in the nation to establish accessibility and requirements for disabled voters to vote a secret ballot. Again, that was the work of a task force that was put together from different advocates.

As you know also, the U.S. Supreme Court sent a very strong message to all the states in Bush v. Gore "to examine ways to improve the mechanisms and machinery for voting," and I think this is why we are all here. In Texas, as soon as I got appointed, in looking at that decision, I went ahead and asked my staff to review the issues that we saw in Florida, and we came up with some recommendations. We looked at the issues that were brought up in Florida and looked at the Texas current system. In many ways Texas was ahead of that particular system. I don�t want to go into the ten-point report, but we do have that available, but I will go over a couple of things.

First thing, Mr. Cutler, as you mentioned, is this issue about counting and having uniformity. In the state of Texas, if there was a statewide need to do a re-count, the secretary of state in Texas would be the statewide coordinator. We would have the ability to send our people off to the different counties to make sure that there would be uniformity in the re-count, and, of course, as the chief election officer, I would have the authority to issue advisory opinions on issues that we need to cover. So in addressing that issue, we certainly looked at Florida and used it as a way to learn how we can improve our system. We did come up with some suggestions, and, in fact, some of those bills are almost passed in the legislature. As you know, our legislature will be finished by May 28, which is this coming Monday. The legislature did look at some of the suggestions and again, because of the time limit, I will leave this as part of the handout that has been provided to you, but I will cover a couple things.

We also looked at undervotes and overvotes. I think that was something that was important. We did a survey that interestingly shows us that the best or the latest technology doesn�t necessarily equate to the best way of counting, certainly when you look at undervotes and over counts. We did a county-by-county analysis (we have 254 counties and we have 20.8 million individuals here in the state of Texas). I would ask you to look at the handout I have there for you.

Here in the state of Texas, the secretary of state certifies voting systems. I am reviewing the certification process, so instead of saying, "here is a machine that�s been certified and it�s good from now to now, or at least until a problem comes up," we want to do that on a periodic basis. We are looking at the time limits to change our certification process for voting systems here in the state of Texas to provide more integrity.

Another issue that we saw in Florida had to do with the lack of a pre-tabulation review ballot. House Bill 1856, that�s headed to the Governor�s for signature, would require more stringent pre-tabulation review by adding specific central counting station procedures to review all ballots before they are counted to insure that the tabulator will count them. So again, we looked at the specific issues that were brought up in Florida, and either we already had them all along, or we are going to change them by specific legislation, or I will be doing that within my authority as secretary of state.

As for minority voting and military voting, just to highlight a couple of those issues, we also have some legislation to address some of those issues. With voter registration lists, we are using technology to change the system. Instead of reporting and updating our voter registration lists five times a year, we are going do this on a weekly basis. Along with House Bill 3181 that makes that change, we will give the small counties surplus computers and surplus Chapter Nineteen dollars, which are for voter registration. So therefore, we are going to be using technology to make some changes, and we did make some changes through legislation. I�ll be making some changes through my authority as secretary of state. We certainly are not going to look at technology as the only solution. We are going to go into some of the simple ways to make sure that we have a laminated voter assistance sheet, both in English and in Spanish, in every voting booth in the state of Texas.

So again, we are excited with the changes we are making here in the state of Texas, and we are looking forward to working with our colleagues to make sure that we implement this. We�ll be happy to work with you, also, and look at some of the suggestions that you all will be making at a later time.

So again, welcome to Texas.

Mr. Zelikow: Thank you, Mr. Cuellar. Our next witness is Caroline Jefferson-Jenkins. She is the president of the League of Women Voters in the United States and chair of the League of Women Voters Education Fund. While she does not administer elections, her organization is deeply involved in the administration of elections on a voluntary basis throughout the United States. We are glad that you could join us today.

Ms. Caroline Jefferson-Jenkins: Thank you, Philip. Senator Gorton, Mr. Cutler, Mr. Michel, and members of the commission, thank you for giving me the opportunity this morning to represent the League of Women Voters. As you may know, the League is a nonpartisan citizens� organization. We have more than 125,000 members and supporters in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands. For more than 80 years, as Philip has said, we have been working across the country, not only to educate the electorate, but to register voters and make government at all levels more accessible and responsible to citizens. So I am pleased to be here to express the League�s support for election administration reform and to address the critical importance of voter registration and the preservation of voting rights in that process. Both are critical to any legal and administrative considerations. Thank you for your leadership in keeping this important issue at the top of our national agenda.

As we have heard and as we all know, last year�s presidential election called the nation�s attention to the urgent need for the improvements in the methods, practices, and technology through which our elections are administered. Voter registration is a particularly important part of this process. Voter registration is the gateway to participation in our electoral system and the procedural means for preserving a citizen�s right to vote. For all citizens, the voter registration process must be accessible and non-discriminatory. It has not been so, and problems remain.

By 1920, in-person voter registration requirements had been adopted in most of the states. And while there were legitimate concerns about vote fraud and the adoption of voter registration in many areas, voter registration provided an irresistible opportunity for those in power at the state and local level to control the electorate through bureaucratic means. State and local laws and practices severely restricted times and places for registration and required lengthy residency requirements and registration deadlines. Cumbersome and selectively applied identification requirements and other restrictive procedures were used to disenfranchise citizens who were feared by the prevailing political elite. African Americans, immigrants, low-income citizens of all races, people with disabilities, and college students attending school away from home, have all been excluded from the ballot through voter registration practices. Until the enactment of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the National Voting Registration Act in 1993, bureaucratic obstacles to voter registration were commonplace. Literacy tests, poll taxes, selectively applied identification requirements, threats, intimidation, and violence successfully disenfranchised African Americans and others through most of the twentieth century. As you know, the Voting Rights Act prohibits race-based discrimination in elections. The Act also provides language assistance for citizens who otherwise would not be able to participate. Yet we still hear of local jurisdictions that lack the knowledge and the resources to fully comply with language assistance requirements of the law and others that lack the administrative models and training to maintain the voter roles in a non-discriminatory manner.

While a few states have adopted mail-in and active Motor-Voter programs, many continue to employ very restrictive voter registration practices. These practices ranged from requiring notarization of voter registration applications and significantly limiting the times and place for registration, to selectively purging voters� names from the roles and dropping voters from the roles solely because they failed to vote in one election. The need for voter registration reform was debated in Congress for five years. The inability of polling place officials in many locations to check the status of the voters on the official lists must be addressed. Solutions such as low-tech use of provisional ballots, or the high-tech use of laptop computers that provide access to the official list at polling places need to be encouraged. Legally registered voters, including fail-safe voters, should not be turned away at the polls. Those who have properly applied to register should not be denied the opportunity to vote through administrative error or failure to implement the law.

With regard to enforcement, the repeated failure of some driver�s license agencies to transmit voter registration applications in a timely manner must be investigated and corrected. The federal government can no longer afford to leave the financial burden of administering federal elections to state and local jurisdiction. In most states, local jurisdictions alone bear this burden. The disparities in wealth and public revenues from county to county are bound to be reflected in the disparity of resources available for election administration procedures and voting technologies from one county to the next. This is not only a question of equity among levels of government, but of the necessity for insuring that all of our citizens are able to register, vote, and have their votes counted in federal elections, with a minimum of administrative error. As a result of this, the League is supporting the McConnell-Schumer bill because it establishes a limited term, bipartisan study commission to review and make recommendations on administrative election reform. In addition, the legislation provides for best practices, performance standards for methods of voting and administering of elections, based on clear criteria as conditioned for grant eligibility.

So in conclusion, the League of Women Voters believes that the Congress and the President must act now. Act now. The problems facing the administration of federal elections are immediate and serious. Federal financial assistance to state and local governments is a necessary part of any meaningful election administration reform proposal. Passage of election administration reform legislation will reassure voters that both major political parties are willing to act in the best interest of all citizens and restore confidence in our most basic democratic principle: the right to vote.

On behalf of the League, I want to thank you for your attention, and I welcome questions from the commission.

Mr. Cutler: Thank you, Miss Jefferson-Jenkins. We�ll now proceed to questions to the panel, from the commission to members of the panel. To simplify things, we�ll just start at the left and come right across.

Ms. Colleen McAndrews: I�m Colleen McAndrews from California. I�m a political and election law lawyer there. At our last hearing at the Reagan library, some questions came up about voting rights of felons. I�ve done a small amount of research since and understand that the states all treat this differently, so I was curious if each of you could explain what the rights of felons are to vote in your state and what sort of reinstatement procedures exist or do not exist, just as sort of a tutorial for the commission so that we can understand the various practices across the nation.

Ms. Priest: Thank you. In Arkansas, felons, once they have paid their fine-they have to totally discharge their fine and their time-they can be reinstated as voters. In terms of purging, we get information from the Department of Justice and from the district courts that we then dispense out to the appropriate county in order to remove felons from the list. But they can be reinstated without any major problems.

Mr. Lance Ward: To switch hats just briefly, Philip introduced me as co-chair of the Election Center�s national task force; they take the position that every state should allow felons to be reinstated, but they leave it to the state on how to do this. Obviously, some states still don�t. In Oklahoma, felons lose their ability to be registered to vote upon final conviction; that eligibility is reinstated upon the conclusion of their original sentence. Which means, if I am sentenced to fifteen years and parole in five, I am still not eligible to register again until fifteen. However, we also, as Arkansas and I suspect most other states, receive information on felony convictions from our Department of Corrections and from its equivalent federal agency. I have talked to the federal attorneys a lot on this issue, and they are notoriously incorrect. We in the election system cannot tolerate anything but precise information. We cannot remove a voter because it looks like they might have died or they might have been convicted of a felony. We�ve got to be certain. Our experience has been that we have not been able to rely on information from our state and federal corrections officials and, therefore, have had to use information that is precise but much less inclusive than the federal and state lists. My suggestion would be, let�s come up with a way to get that information in a precise, accurate way.

Mr. Cuellar: Texas House Bill 3181 that I mentioned, this will help us update the voter registration on a quicker basis than what we used to do. We�ll be able to do that on a weekly basis for the majority of the counties. In the state of Texas, about 1.5 million registered voters are on what we call the online system. The rest of the voters, a little bit over ten million registered voters I should say, are on the off-line counties. Under this new bill we�ll be able to update the voter registration that includes the felons. As to how we treat them afterwards in the state of Texas, Texas has moved towards the step, now, that once you have served your time, you can go ahead and start voting after that.

Ms. McAndrews: Do you know how many states deny felons the right to vote permanently?

Ms Priest: The only state that I am aware of is Massachusetts, and I might add that Connecticut passed a law during this session that would allow parolee felons to vote.

Ms. McAndrews: Thank you.

Mr. Cutler: Senator Boschwitz.

Senator Rudy Boschwitz: One of the questions that was important on the last hearing was voter ID. Would you tell us in the states of Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, what requirement do you have? What requirement do you have, particularly in Oklahoma where you have this uniform requirement, about identification at the polling place?

Mr. Ward: We have gray-haired election officials who know their voters for the most part. That is fairly common in most states, by the way, that your precinct officials are your first line of defense against voter fraud. But more specifically, responsibly, the only requirement in Oklahoma for a voter is that they be on the official list of voters at that polling place, and upon announcing their name, if the precinct official can find that person�s name, all they have to do is to sign their signature and receive a ballot. If the person�s name is not on the list, there are some alternatives to allow them to qualify to receive a ballot under certain conditions. But there is no requirement for proof of identification at the polling place.

Senator Boschwitz: And in Arkansas?

Ms. Priest: In Arkansas, Senator, we do have an identification process. It does not have to be a picture ID, and we accept everything, from driver�s license to state ID, hunting licenses, fishing licenses, student ID card, almost anything will serve for ID.

Senator Boschwitz: And in Texas?

Mr. Cuellar: Same thing, pretty much, as Arkansas.

Mr. Boschwitz: In Oklahoma, I was fascinated by the fact that you have this uniform standard. Do you have one list for the whole state? Are the precincts and counties interlocked? Does each county just formulate its own list in the approved procedure?

Mr. Ward: We have one list composed of 77 parts. Each of the counties is responsible for maintenance of their registered voters within their county, but the state has a mirror copy of that. The state then can manipulate that statewide database in a variety of ways, such as identification of duplicates across county lines.

Senator Boschwitz: What kind of equipment do you use in Oklahoma? It is uniform throughout the entire state?

Mr. Ward: Yes. It is ten-year-old Digital Equipment Corporation stuff. As you may know, they went out of business two or three years ago. The hardware is dinosaur age by computer standards, but it was purchased to do certain things and it still does those things very well. We aren�t going to have to replace it.

Senator Boschwitz: Do you have punch card, or do you have the optical scanner?

Mr. Ward: I�m sorry; the voting technology is precinct-count optical scan.

Senator Boschwitz: Scan?

Mr. Ward: Yes.

Senator Boschwitz: I wanted to ask, in Texas, I didn�t understand this, what is DRE?

Mr. Cuellar: This is the touch screen direct voting.

Senator Boschwitz: Oh.

Senator Boschwitz: Like an ATM machine.

Mr. Cuellar: Yes, Sir.

Senator Boschwitz: I see.

Mr. Cuellar: There�s money that comes out of it when you press on it (Laughter).

Senator Boschwitz: You would get a better turn out. (Laughter)

Mr. Cuellar: We are thinking about putting ATMs and DREs at the same place. (Laughter)

Senator Boschwitz: I noticed the number of votes cast, and the registered voters under the DRE seemed to indicate that only 11 or 12% of the voters were voting and normally in the same county, and the numbers are duplicated in both the optical scan and the DRE. You spoke, Miss Priest, about the poll worker training and that the poll workers are becoming older. I suppose I am experiencing the same thing I might say, but do secretaries of state in general find it difficult to recruit poll workers?

Ms. Sharon Priest: Senator, secretaries generally are not responsible for recruitment of poll workers; it is usually done by the local election commission. But yes, it�s almost, if they have a pulse, they�re hired.

Senator Boschwitz: They what?

Ms. Priest: If they have a pulse, they�re hired because it is so difficult to find people to work the polls. In Arkansas-one of the things when you are speaking for the national association, you don�t always get to brag on your own state-but I am pleased to tell you that I did get mandatory poll worker training passed in Arkansas during this session and funding to pay trained poll workers, and I�m very pleased about that. But the big issue, beyond training, is recruitment. And I have committed to go to two- and four-year college campuses to recruit, as well as to the corporate and private sector, allowing them to wear their bank t-shirts or their fraternity t-shirts or sorority t-shirts because that is not the issue that is important to me. What is important to me is to have a good pool of able poll workers on Election Day.

Senator Rudy Boschwitz: I might say that I was a director of a bank, and when the work force was so tight, and it still is, we used to use that same language. If they had a pulse, we�d hire them. But, would the other secretaries of state also comment about poll workers, and also Miss Jefferson-Jenkins, because I know that, I�m sure that, the League provides many poll workers. And before we turn to the other secretaries of state, do you pay your poll workers, Ms. Priest?

Ms. Priest: The poll workers are paid minimum wage.

Senator Boschwitz: And if each of you would also comment on an idea that came up last time-that it be made a holiday for federal workers-if federal workers chose to become poll watchers or poll workers, that they could take the day off. If you would comment on that and comment about poll workers in each one of your jurisdictions.

Ms. Priest: If the federal government and the state governments-I think state governments also ought to be involved-would allow their employees to take a paid day off to work the polls, that would be very helpful to all of us, I think.

Senator Boschwitz: That�s a good idea.

Mr. Ward: Mr. Senator, recruiting and retaining poll workers is a problem, I think in every state. It certainly is in Oklahoma. We pay them just about a minimum wage. I�m not sure it reaches that sometimes. The state has mandatory training, and the state pays for that training. But nevertheless, recruiting poll workers is an on-going problem in every state. There�s a lot of loyalty there which keeps people there who otherwise wouldn�t do it, I think. Patriotism. On the federal holiday issue, it is something our task force went in with a very positive perspective, I think, and perhaps a bias but quickly came to the conclusion that there are some very significant negatives to be considered. For one thing, a holiday for voting has some of the same aspects as weekend voting: people would rather do other things on holidays and weekends than go vote. We believe that it will have very little effect on turnout, although the idea sounds great and we believe it's worth investigating. Some of the downside will be that if in fact it is a holiday, state and or federal, these same precinct officials who now are barely getting perhaps minimum wage, would they be there to do that? And secondly, what would we have to pay them?

Senator Boschwitz: Well, I didn�t ask whether or not it should be a holiday, but whether or not a state-and Miss Priest added the state workers-but federal and state worker, if they became poll workers, should receive a paid day: that is a good idea.

Mr. Ward: Thank you. I think that it might be. I think it should be.

Mr. Cuellar: In Texas, of course, the recruitment is done by the local officials, but the training is done by the secretary of state�s office. We are in the process of reviewing and making changes to what we call the "Election, Judges, Clerks" training video productions; we are making some changes on that. We are going to be conducting, also, regional training for schools of election officials and especially emphasize the issues that we saw in Florida. Again, it goes back to Florida. Learn some things there. For example, Texas does have the challenge process, the provisional ballot. And one of the things that we want to make sure is that when we educate our election officials on how to offer the challenge process, that they don�t intimidate the voters on that particular process. So we are making some changes here, and I think that the important part is to realize that you will see errors occur either in the equipment itself, either in the process, which is here with the election officials, or with the voter. We are trying to address all of those three areas. But in the second area, which is the one you are asking on Senator, we will be looking at the training and the education to make sure that we address some of the issues that we learned from Florida. I would also say that I did support providing a pay increase to the poll workers, to hopefully increase them, but the legislature, with our tight budget, was not able to do it this particular year.

Senator Boschwitz: Does the League get involved in recruiting poll workers?

Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins: Actually, we get involved at all levels. We actually held a symposium in Washington on the election work force because we felt that that was a key, a critical piece of what is going on. And we found three things. The aging election work force is going to require some alternative strategies. Some of the recommendations that came forth from the symposium were that we use college students. Just as you said, Senator, perhaps corporate kinds of people could be used on that day. The second thing we concentrated on was the education and the training of the poll workers. Poll workers reported to us that training is a critical piece and that training is not consistent, nor is it detailed enough for them to make the decisions. On a very superficial level the training was adequate, but when it came to troubleshooting and problem solving and purging of lists and names that weren�t there, that is where the problems came.

And from a very practical aspect, and I will share with the secretaries of state, their biggest complaint was that when they called to get some kind of reconciliation and answer, the lines were busy. They all were going into one line. So they couldn�t resolve the issue at that point because nobody could answer their question. So that�s a consideration that we need; we have the technology. Clearly we can do more than one phone line. So we need to make sure that in the training process for our poll workers, that they know what the alternatives are. Now that is going to require more, more than just a warm body; it is going to require some commitment from those people as they prepare to be a part of this important process.

Senator Boschwitz: Final question, Mr. Chairman, and that is would each of you, I presume that you have looked a the various types of voting machines that abound, could each of you give us, and you in Texas apparently have some of the scanners and some of the new DRE machines�

Mr. Ward: Touch screen.

Senator Boschwitz: Touch screen. Could you each give us your opinion? I presume that you have studied the issue of the various types of equipment?

Ms. Priest: Senator, it is my belief that there is no one system that everybody agrees is the best system. Some systems work well under certain circumstances. Optical scan for example, as you heard in Georgia, in one county the minority precincts made more errors than the majority precincts did. The same thing with punch cards. I frankly think that punch cards maybe took a beating in this election that was unfair. Touch screen, there is some discussion as to whether or not touch screen is as helpful to the handicapped as optical scan, and vice versa. So there is still a lot of discussion there. Cal-Tech and MIT are doing a study on equipment, perhaps they will come out with some definitive answer.

If I may go back a little bit to what Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins said, I think that it is important for all of us to understand that there are three entities involved in elections: the secretaries of state who generally just administer election law; the election commissions who deal with the day-to-day operation, what happens on Election Day at a precinct; and the county clerks or auditors, or recorders, who deal with voter registration, early voting, and absentee voting. So when they are making phone calls, they are not making them to the secretary of state�s office, unless they cannot get through to the county clerk�s office or the county election commission. So that is a local issue that we are committed to trying to help resolve that issue by putting computers at precincts. But it is important to understand that not every county has an Internet service provider that could provide direct access or modems or telephones. I mean, we have some precincts in Arkansas that don�t even have telephone access so that they could be set up on modems.

Mr. Ward: I would agree with Secretary Priest that I think there is no consensus on what is the best or worst system. They each have advantages and disadvantages. Oklahoma has used for ten years an optical, a precinct count, optical scan system, which by the way is what some secretaries in some states are recommending what they go to now. We did it for several reasons. We did, in fact, ten years ago look at some other technologies, including the touch screen systems that existed at the time. Our biggest factor was that we wanted a paper trail. We wanted the voter�s mark on a piece of paper, so that-and at the time I think it would have been correct-if people didn�t trust the technology, they would at least see the vote on the piece of paper that could be hand-counted. The bigger issue, I think today, is not the type of technology, but how it is used. Standard operating procedures can cure a lot of ills with technology, and I think that what we saw with the November 7 election was a lack of standards in how to use the technology, not necessarily a technology problem.

Senator Boschwitz: May I just ask one further question of you, Mr. Ward, and that is, were you there ten years ago when these choices were made?

Mr. Ward: I was. I wish no offense to our secretary of state for my opinions. Yes, I was there, and yes, I had a major role in making the decision on the technology we adopted.

Mr. Cuellar: In Texas there are five ways of voting. 137 counties use the optical scan for the largest number of votes cast, there�s a little over 4 million. The DREs, the Direct Record, the touch screens, we have five counties using that and about 320,000 votes were cast using that. Punch cards, we still have 14 counties and about 1.6 million registered voters using those. And then you have the lever election. And then, of course, the fifth one is the old ballot, you know you sign and they count them by hand. The survey . . . and again to answer your question as to what we prefer, there is no consensus here, even though the majority of the voters are under the optical scan. Looking at the survey that we looked at, the undercount percentages, the optical scan had the lowest amount of undercount. They had .51 percent. The touch screen, which is the newest technology, had a .89 percent, which is higher than the optical scan, and then, of course, the punch card had a 1.53 percent undervote. So, therefore, this is a preliminary survey that we did, but in Texas there is no consensus as to the types of machine. The legislature also decided not to get rid of the punch cards, even though there was one particular bill that was filed, but I think that they are trying to ease that out.

But I think that the secretary of state�s office here certainly plays a role in the machines, so this is one the reasons why I want to review the certification process that we have in the state of Texas instead of saying we certify that this particular machine, whether it is the touch screen or the optical scan, is good 'til a problem arises. What I�m looking at is looking at periodic reviews to address the issues.

Mr. Cutler: We are running somewhat beyond our time for this panel, so I�m going to ask the other commissioners if they would, to observe a five-minute rule, including the answers.

Senator Gorton.

Senator Slade Gorton: Good suggestion. Mr. Cuellar, one thing one can say about the touch screen is that you can�t overvote, can you?

Mr. Cuellar: That is correct.

Mr. Gorton: Presumably, with respect to undervotes, they are deliberate.

Mr. Cuellar: Well, an undervote is not necessarily a mistake.

Senator Gorton: That is what I�m saying. They are deliberate.

Mr. Cuellar: And that�s what I am saying, I agree with you. It could be a mistake, or it could be a direct, or a conscious effort by the voter.

Senator Gorton: Now I�m going to go to a different subject, if I�ve got a few more minutes, I�ll come back to one other question on this one. But the different subject is for the three of you here who are state election officials. How do you deal with making sure that your count is accurate in an extremely close election? And what improvement should we propose in connection with those extremely close elections?

Ms. Priest: With respect for your time, Senator, in Arkansas we have standard re-count procedure, and that is that your vote, your re-count, is counted the same way it was counted the first time. So if it was done electronically or by machine, it will be done by machine. Only if the election commission determines that there is a problem with the equipment, would a manual count be done, and counts are; the cost is borne by the candidate who is requesting the count. It is my intention to relate it to the error rate of the equipment so that it would trigger an automatic re-count if the election were within the error rate of the equipment.

Mr. Ward: There are specific standards on what is a valid mark. Training of people involved in the process is the key, but the basis has to be specific standards on valid marks, and if those are in place and people follow those standards, there shouldn�t be much question. People always attempt to question, of course, but there shouldn�t be much question about the accuracy of the outcome or the validity of the process.

Senator Gorton: Mr. Cuellar, you have got five different ways of voting. Do you have five different standards when you have these close elections, or what?

Mr. Cuellar: We have five different ways of voting, but we have a uniform way of applying the law in the state of Texas. We have a uniformity in the state of Texas, so we provide flexibility to our 254 counties to decide what machine they use. But at the same time it is the secretary of state�s office [responsibility], and, of course, the legislature that passes the law, so we can apply those laws fairly. Let me just touch on a couple things.

First thing is, if you recall in Florida, there was a lack of pre-tabulation review of the ballots. The Election Night results and the re-count results were significantly different in Florida because the ballots were not reviewed before they were tabulated for any counting procedures. Here in the state of Texas, especially now with House bill 1856, this will allow more stringent pre-tabulation review by adding those specific central counting station procedures. That is one thing that we look at. The other thing is to assure the voters that they can-we do have a challenge process-[use] a provisional ballot. We have the limited ballot, we have the fail-safe voting, we have the spoil ballot procedures. We have different items in place, laws in place, that would make sure that we count every single vote, regardless of what sort of machine. To look at this, you would have to look at, not only the work that�s done there, but, of course, the work that is done before: the training of the election officials, the education process that I mentioned a few minutes ago, and, of course, certification and policy issues that the secretary of state�s office does. So it is not only that Election Day, but it�s the work that we do before.

Senator Gorton: Do I have any more time left?

Mr. Cutler: One more question.

Senator Gorton: Mr. Ward, your statement of ID, because people know people, is of relatively cold comfort in metropolitan areas and with the increasing number of people who don�t vote at polls at all. Miss Jefferson-Jenkins did not indicate that the League has any concern, from what I heard from her, with large numbers of registered voters who have departed and may have registered somewhere else, with the possibility of fraudulent voting. Do any of you have concerns with constraints placed on you by the federal government with respect to seeing to it that your voting registration records are accurate and up to date?

Ms. Priest: Senator, list maintenance is something that is of grave concern to the secretaries. Clearly what happened in Florida, when they hired an outside firm to purge felons from the list, is not something that we like to deal with. But we do have, there are issues concerning, people moving from state to state. Arkansas also has a statewide system, so we can deal with in-state duplicates. But we can�t deal with it across state lines. Ideally, when NVRA went in, if somebody moved to Oklahoma from Arkansas and filled out a new registration, then they would also show that they had been registered to vote in Arkansas, and that information could have been sent back to the appropriate county. That has not worked as well as we would like.

One of the problems that we have is accurate identification. Name, address, and date of birth is not always adequate with certain names. I don�t know how many Sharon Priest�s there are; I know that there is at least one other. Whether she shares my date of birth, I don�t know. But once you start dealing with, you know, getting down to some of the technicalities, the secretaries feel that it would be very important and very helpful to have, in terms of maintaining accurate lists, to have at least the last four digits of the social security number. And I know that that may not be a popular thing to do, but I think it preserves the privacy of the voter by only having the last four digits, and it would certainly help give us one more point to identify, to accurately identify a voter.

Mr. Ward: I agree with your comment about metropolitan areas and fat registration lists where numerous people are no longer eligible. Prior to the implementation of the National Voter Registration Act, our average-over a period of time-inactive list, which are those people who for the most part simply have not done anything in elections for some period of time, was approximately fifteen percent. Prior to our first allowable purge under the National Voter Registration Act, it had grown to 25 percent. Because of the cumbersome nature and limitation on the ability to purge under the NVRA-and I would suggest that, although I�m not going to get anywhere with it-allowing eventually somebody who simply doesn�t vote is a good idea because we are not going to be able to identify them in some other ways because of the similarity in names and some other reasons why it is really difficult to identify specific individuals sometimes. Trying to get a common identifier for an individual across state lines has a lot of merit. The social security number, of course, is what comes to mind so that we can, within states and across state lines, better identify those people who have in fact moved or perhaps have died and any of other reasons should be removed from our lists, and for any number of reasons now we cannot.

Mr. Cuellar: Attachment four to the handouts that I have provided to the committee members is a memorandum that I put out a couple months ago to the members of the legislature as to the procedures, as to how we purge, how we have the purging of voter registration files. Apparently, there is a lot of misunderstanding that this has to follow both state and federal law. So again, I don�t want to go into this, but we follow what the state and federal law provides on this.

To the accuracy issue, House Bill 3181 will provide us, I believe in my opinion, in the State of Texas more integrity and more accurate voter registration lists because of the technology and because of the help that we are going to be providing some of the counties through the computers, through the monies for technology because there are some counties that don�t even get monies to pay their twenty dollars a month for their Internet connections, which are important for us to update the list. And along with that, of course, to make sure that once they�re there . . . there is an issue as to whether he or she is, a voter is, not on the ballot; as I mentioned there is the limited ballot procedure that we have that allows for when someone moves from one county to another county in the state of Texas within ninety days of the election. There�s also the safe, fail-safe voting which means one person moving from one election precinct. Also, there is the provisional ballot or the challenge procedure where, if they�re not mentioned or they�re not on the list, of course, they have a right to file that affadavit and vote at that particular time. So we are working on the registration, but at the same time we have certain procedures in law right now to provide that protection to make sure that nobody is disenfranchised in any way or form.

Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins: Senator, if I may respond, please. The League is concerned with the accuracy of lists and I may not have emphasized that clearly, but we also are concerned with the implementation of the National Voter Registration Act and the Voting Rights Act. And as long as those laws are implemented, all of the rest of this will fall into line. What we are keenly concerned about is the arbitrary way in which people are removed and not allowed to vote. And so as we look at the implementation of the law and the accuracy of the lists, what we are advocating for is a statewide, computerized list of voters so that when you go to any polling place, your name will appear on that statewide computerized list as an eligible voter and then you are able to vote. The fail-safe activities need to be in place, the affidavits, the provisional ballots, all kinds of things need to happen. So we are keenly interested in making sure that eligible voters vote.

Mr. Cutler: Congressman Michel.

Congressman Bob Michel: Let me first complement the witnesses this morning on the brevity and content of your opening statements and responding to the questions here. Miss Priest, you say the secretaries of state are those in charge of election machinery, and you have accepted the fact that there are serious problems within several states, particularly brought to light in view of what happened in Florida. And Mr. Ward, talking about uniformity-my home state of Illinois, I don�t know how far away from your standard ours is-but each of you, and I think any other of the witnesses we have would say, "But Feds stay out of our business. We know how best to run it." And we are in a commission on federal election reform. Now I�m not one of those advocates to tell you all in the states what to do and how to do it and setting all the standards, but I think we have to give consideration, in view of the lack of uniformity among the states, to at least address something. For example, there are already federal election laws on the books that don�t seem to be enforced. For example, the disabled individual should have access to all polling places, as I read this statute. And we know that isn�t enforced. My one question: is there any way for us to see that what we passed in that regard, which seemed to be very laudable-that no disabled person be denied an opportunity to vote at any polling place-is it enforced?

Ms. Priest: Congressman, I think that part of the reason it hasn�t been enforced is, up until recently, and not for all disablities now, there has not been equipment available that would allow all disabilities to vote independently and secretly. So I think that has been one of the issues. Another one of the issues is, when you get into rural areas of states, that many times people are voting in somebody�s little grocery store or somebody�s home, and state and locals don�t have the authority to provide improvement to those places for the disabled with public dollars. But I will tell you that the secretaries are committed to insuring that the disabled have an opportunity to vote as independently and with as much secrecy as is possible.

Congressman Michel: Mr. Ward, do you have any comment?

Mr. Ward: Yes, sir. On two levels, if I may. First, I strongly encourage this commission to encourage a federal role in elections, but that should be in some very specific areas, I think. One is-the National Association of State Election Directors has been involved-technical standards for voting systems. We believe that should be incorporated into the federal law and made a responsibility of the Federal Election Commission, or some federal commission. The Office of Election Administration within the Federal Election Commission is really your expert. And furthermore, in addition to the technical standards, which exist to some degree now, there should be operational standards, also promulgated by the federal government and now through the Office of Election Administration.

However, both of those I recommend be voluntary standards for the states to adopt, or not, and woe be it to those which do not. I think that�s somewhat the case now. But I do think that is an important role that the federal government should play. Furthermore, we believe that the federal government should have some database or repository of information on what states, or which jurisdictions, have what kind of equipment. It is almost impossible now to get that kind of information. Because if Oklahoma wishes to investigate touch screen technology, we want to know first who�s got it and how they are using it and how satisfied are they with it.

Congressman Michel: How can you guarantee the accuracy of your ten-year-old machines?

Mr. Ward: By hand-counting the results.

Congressman Michel: And if you wanted�and at that margin of error, is there any kind of standard that is unacceptable to you?

Mr. Ward: No margin is acceptable.

Congressman Michel: If you thought the figures showed that you had an inaccurate account that raised some eyebrows, what would you do? Go to the governor, the state legislature, and say we�ve got to update this equipment? We are not doing the job right.

Mr. Ward: If the equipment, if it was the hardware or the software, some sort of the technology which was failing, first, of course, we�d want to make sure that it was not an operational failure, and I would guess that would be the first place to look. And if it was in fact the technology, then we would correct the technology, fix it, or replace it. And, of course, the legislature would have to be the answer.

Congressman Michel: Sure. Henry?

Mr. Cuellar: I believe the task of this commission, in my opinion, will be to decide where they should provide a federal perspective and what should stay with the states.

Congressman Michel: Would you say that depends on money?

Mr. Cuellar: No

Congressman Michel: OK.

Mr. Cuellar: Nope, certainly not. I would say that there are certain areas, I agree, that a database, because as you know we do live in a fifty state laboratory that allows us to learn from different states, and I think that if we had a database, as Lance said a few minutes ago, I think that would be very helpful for us to work along with the National Conference of State Secretaries to learn from each other. I think that kind of inventory would be very helpful.

There are certain areas that I definitely feel the federal government can help us. One that was touched upon was the Federal Election Commission. Our state voluntarily adopted the voluntary voting systems standards issued by the Federal Election Commission in 1990. I believe that one of the things that you all could help us with is surely that if the decade-old standards were updated to accurately test the new electronic systems and any changes: I think that is something that could help us by looking at those voluntary standards. That would certainly just give us a floor; then, of course, it�s up to us to go above that floor, but I think that is one specific area, along with the inventory of what the fifty states are doing, could certainly help us a lot to learn from each other. But I think the task, in my opinion, if you would allow me to provide this suggestion, is to decide where you come in and where the states do. I think that is the difficult part. That�s up to the chairman to decide.

Mr. Cutler: I�m going to pass the baton directly to Professor Edley.

Mr. Edley: Let me just preface my remarks by saying that I have been trying to listen as best I could, very carefully, with only one cup of coffee. And I�m not hearing very clearly what it is in your state systems-a little bit better for Texas, but not for Arkansas and Oklahoma-I�m not hearing clearly what safeguards you have in your state systems that would make something like what happened in Florida impossible. In fact, almost every statement that you have made about how your states [run elections] are things that Katherine Harris could have said about Florida. So with that caveat, let me try to ask again what Congressmen Michel tried to ask, and let me go at it this way. Is there any guarantee provided by your three states for the ability of people with disabilities or people who do not speak English that goes beyond what is required by federal law? Do your states take it upon themselves to go beyond what is required in insuring the franchise for people with disabilities or people with limited English proficiency?

Ms. Priest: Mr. Edley, I will tell you that in Arkansas it is our practice to carry out the spirit of the law and not the letter of the law.

Mr. Edley: And what do you do to make sure that that happens? I understand that that�s your aspiration, but what specifically do you do?

Ms. Priest: Our state board monitors precincts throughout the state to make sure that they are accessible. We do not have equipment that is available in every precinct. However, every election commission, under the authority of the state board of election commissioners, is required to print in a newspaper: if people need special accommodation that they are to contact the election commission so that those accommodations can be met.

Mr. Edley: So it . . . and so what do you do to actually . . . you say you monitor these precincts.

Ms. Priest: We physically go and visit them.

Mr. Edley: And what fraction of the precincts do you think are not accessible, say to people with physical disabilities? Roughly?

Ms. Priest: Roughly, I would say that out of the two thousand precincts we have in Arkansas, there are probably about one hundred that are not in full compliance.

Mr. Edley: Now nationally, my understanding is that the participation rate of people with disabilities is something like six percent, seven percent nationally. I mean it�s incredibly low. What is it in Arkansas?

Ms. Priest: I�m sorry; I don�t know.

Mr. Edley: Do you know, sir, in Oklahoma?

Mr. Ward: [Answer unintelligible]

Mr. Edley: In Texas, do you have any sense what the participation is? Do you know, is there anything you do in Texas to insure that people with limited English proficiency, in fact, can exercise the franchise? Do you have anything in law or regulation that goes beyond the requirements of the Voting Rights Act?

Mr. Cuellar: We do emphasize, as you know we have a huge Hispanic population here.

Mr. Edley: Exactly, right.

Mr. Cuellar: One of the things I�m doing right know is changing and reviewing the information that we provide. First, to make it easier to understand, and second, to make sure that we have it in Spanish, and we do have items in Spanish already. We are changing our web page also, changing it into Spanish. With our toll free number, we are going to make sure that whenever anyone calls, we have people that speak both English and Spanish.

Mr. Edley: But at the county level, these poor counties that we are all worried about, do you pay for translators to be available, do you pay for materials to be understandable in different languages?

Mr. Cuellar: Well, of course, anything that we provide is in English and Spanish.

Mr. Edley: Right, anything that you provide, but I�m saying at the county level in terms of what happens when somebody walks into a precinct and they speak another language; let�s say Vietnamese? What happens?

Mr. Cuellar: That would be something . . . I don�t know how that is handled on a local basis, but I do know that when it comes to the Spanish language, in areas where there is a large Hispanic voting population-whether it is the south Texas border, the border area-the people that work there do certainly know Spanish at that time. We also would be looking at the, especially on the border areas, areas where you have minorities, we are looking at a couple things. The first thing I did was to look at what Florida, what happened in Florida, and we went over ten specific points. There is an analysis that�s part of our web page, and I believe maybe a copy of it should be with you.

Mr. Edley: I saw that.

Mr. Cuellar: We specifically went over there instead of going a general, you know this is a general concept, we went into specific issues. And our analysis goes into specific issues, compares it to Texas law, and what we are looking at. For example, one area was the concern of having different types of machines in minority districts. We haven�t seen this in the state of Texas, but we made a recommendation that it be changed. There is a bill that is almost about to be passed that says that if you have for, the commissioners precinct to be treated equally and that the minorities are all given the less�

Mr. Edley: Let me just ask this because I think it is important to try to nail down the principle. Would any of you disagree with the proposition that it is a responsibility of the public sector, we can worry about which level later, to see to it that people with disabilities, and qualified voters who do not speak English, that all practicable steps are taken to insure that they have an ability to exercise the franchise.

All: Sure.

Mr. Edley: Anyone disagree with that proposition? Then let me ask one final question because I know we are short on time. County financing, I don�t get it. Now, I understand historically why this made sense, but if we were reinventing the system for the twenty-first century, could any of you please offer me a rationale as to why the great bulk of responsibility for financing the infrastructure of democracy should rest on county governments when there are such extraordinary disparities in fiscal capacity, looking around the country?

Ms. Priest: Historically, sir, I couldn�t answer that. If I were starting over again, I do believe that we need uniform state equipment and balance.

Mr. Edley: Anyone disagree with that? Thank you.

Ms. Priest: There will be folks at the local level who will disagree with that by the way.

Mr. Edley: Oh, of course, of course. I have no doubt.

Mr. Ward: Professor, let me add, just on that point, part of my legislative package-last year and again this year, and it will be until we get it done-is full state funding for the Oklahoma state system of elections. And we now pay a major part of it.

Mr. Cuellar: Professor, also, I would ask you to look at attachment 1, which is the bill that we passed, which is our law that established accessibility requirements for disabled voters to vote.

Mr. Cutler: Professor Diane Ravitch.

Ms. Ravitch: Thank you. Thank you very much for being here today. It�s great to be back in my home state of Texas; I live in New York. I wanted to ask, I�m in education, so I go back to the question of voter education and civic education, and I want to link it to something that you said, Miss Priest. You talked about the poll workers and there being an aging population and about their having to work fifteen hour days and not really being able to pay them adequately for their time, and it occurred to me that we have this huge number of young people who are about to become voters who will have historically low participation rates. The last number I saw was 1998, that of the young voters between 18 and 24, only seventeen percent of them turned out to vote, which was less than half the national average and far below older citizens. And it occurred to me that, given this great need for voter education and civic education, that one of the great ways that I hope you will think about this, is to go to the high schools and get the civics teachers, who are very concerned about how to get kids interested in what they are doing, and involve them in poll working. It seems to me that would be a great source of people to do the job, smart young men and women, and they would be learning about how our democracy works.

Ms. Priest: And there are several states that allow high school students to work the polls on Election Day. Many states require that you be a qualified elector in order to work the polls, meaning you have to be eighteen. So it would take, in many states, state law changes. But I don�t think that should be a real barrier in making that happen. And I frankly think that one of the things we need to do in schools today, many times civics education stops at the ninth grade, and it needs to go on and be carried through-not only in Arkansas-fifth grade, ninth grade, but I think that it should go all the way to the twelfth grade.

Ms. Ravitch: I would just urge you to look on them as a great pool of poll workers if you can change that law. Secondly, you know, this discussion about how you qualify, or how you come to vote, and you say you can use hunting license, fishing license, and it seems to me that it is harder to buy a bottle of beer than it is to vote. Or that if you go on an airplane, you have to show a photo ID-I don�t understand why. It would seem to me that you would have a lot of problems with people voting who are not citizens. That is the fundamental requirement as I understand it, but you have no way of checking whether people are eligible to vote because any piece of paper will do, and no piece of paper will do. So I�m a little puzzled about that. And lastly, I guess I�m responding to something Professor Edley said, living in New York City, where there are over one hundred different languages spoken, I actually don�t understand how you could have people at every poll.

Mr. Edley: Technology. Technology. You push a button on a DRE machine, and it changes languages. And at least for state and federal level elections, I think in this century, technology would get us a lot the way. At least we ought to explore the feasibility. I�m sorry.

Ms. Ravitch: And I just wanted to ask you all, if you could just respond to the question of how do you assure that people are not voting in two or three different polling places and that people who vote are eligible by the fundamental requirement of citizenship.

Ms. Priest: Professor, under NVRA, we are not allowed to question somebody�s citizenship. The voter application does say, and people sign under oath, that they are qualified, that they are citizens, they are not convicted felons, they are mentally competent, all that. So under NVRA we are not allowed to question citizenship. The ID at the polls is a way to help identify that that person is who they say, and our poll workers frankly find that it is quite helpful, especially with people who have hard-to-pronounce names, if they see something in writing, it�s much easier for them to connect the names. There was another law that I was going to refer you to, which escapes me right now. Sorry.

Ms. Ravitch: Thank you.

Mr. Cuellar: Let me just�(TAPE BREAK) in Spanish. We�re also . . . we believe that we want to include our young people also. And in fact, just a couple weeks ago we sent off to every high school senior a message. One, is, �Congratulations, you are about to graduate.� Two, �Make sure that you go off to college, which is very important.� And then the third thing is, �Make sure you register to vote.� And we put this in both English and Spanish, and you have the registration ballot where they can fill it out. In Texas, we were reminding our high school principals that under Texas law they are deputy registrars, which means that they are supposed to be giving out this card. So we are going to help them make sure that they carry through on this.

In education, we have a series of items that we want to do. We are going to have videos, we are going to be working with the toll free number, we are going to emphasize that toll free number a lot more than we have already. We are going to do public service announcements with our Texas Cable Associations and other associations to urge people not only register, but also to go vote. Utility bills, stuff for a campaign also, we�ll be doing that also. We will be doing, also, a voter registration week, also. We�re changing our brochures to make sure people understand them, instead of having to find legal language there. But the most important one is dealing with the young voters is we have a project called Project Vote which focuses on voters of tomorrow through education. Right now we have a thousand and forty eight school districts in the state of Texas. I looked at the map where they have schools; there are areas on the border that are missing and other parts, and what we want to do is, my goal is, to make sure that every single school district here has this Project Vote, which is basically a curriculum for students to make sure that they start off at a young age so that they can get involved with democracy. So this is something education�s going to play a very important role in our administration.

Mr. Cutler: John.

Mr. Siegenthaler: Mr. Chairman, in the interest of time and in light of the fact that southern boys speak so slowly, I�ll pass to my colleague Michael Steele. (Laughter)

Mr. Steele: I�ll pass too, but before I do, I just want to make one observation that I really think kind of goes to a point that Miss Jefferson-Jenkins raised initially and dealing with the disenfranchisement of minority voters. To me it seems to be a question of education and technology and not some deliberate act to prevent blacks from voting, or Hispanics from voting, or standing in the polling place with, you know, chains on the doors. And it seems that, at least from what I am hearing from the four of you, that a greater emphasis needs to be placed on bringing together those two components, technology and education, thereby re-enfranchising, and in some cases, enfranchising for the first time, voters who otherwise feel locked out of the process. Is that a fair overall assessment of what has been said?

Ms. Jefferson-Jenkins: I would say that it is, from our perspective. Just from a very fundamental point, there are voters who don�t realize that if they make a mistake on a ballot, that they can ask for another one. I mean things that are as simple as that, that are forms of disenfranchisement. And you are absolutely right, it�s education on all levels: it�s education on the issues and the candidates, but it�s also education on the process, and it�s education from the election workers� point of view, from the voters� point of view, from all elected officials� point of view. People need to know what their rights are when they go in, they need to know where to get information, they need to have that information in a variety of formats that they can access. So it is fairness, access, and accountability.

Mr. Cuellar: Not only education and technology, but you certainly have to have the laws in place. I mean here in Texas we do have the challenge, the limited ballot, the fail-safe voting, the spoiled ballot procedures, which is basically in our new ballot, in the education. Here in the state of Texas a lot of people don�t know this, but if they do make a mistake, they certainly have a right to get up to three total ballots. We are going to be providing that simple education to them. So it is not only the education and technology, but you have to have the commitment by the legislature in statutes.

Ms. Priest: And many things would be dealt with if the laws were enforced. Even during this election, if the laws had been properly enforced, then it would have avoided a whole lot of problems. So I think there has to be a mechanism. You know it is already illegal in this country to discriminate against people. It may not be as . . . it�s not as enforced as it should be, but . . . and poll workers are responsible for that. If they discriminate against somebody, they probably don�t know this, but they are held personally liable if they are found guilty of that. So we . . . those are areas that the education part plays a very important role. And, Professor Ravitch, to your . . . and I remember what the other one was, it is a law in this country, a federal law, that if you have five percent of the people in a county who speak another language, you are required to provide election materials, including the ballot, in that language.

Ms. Ravitch: OK, if I could just make one point, because I got a census report from the staff, and it said, which I find fascinating, it shows all the different participation rates for people ranked by education, race, ethnicity, income. It says, race differences in voting participation diminished when other characteristics are taken into account. And it says, for people with similar characteristics, age, educational attainment, family income, and tenure-for example, the pattern of voting participation was similar for non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks-the big difference being educational attainment.

Mr. Zelikow: We�d like to thank, on behalf of the commission, the panel for having offered their statements and submitting themselves to a rigorous interrogation from the commission. Thank you very much for appearing. We are going to go directly to panel two. We are starting panel two late, but we are going to go directly to it nonetheless.