Another blue ribbon study for the dusty pile
Tuesday, Dec 4, 2007 - Posted by Rich Miller
* Yet another good government study has come up with yet another set of reform proposals for Illinois…
The eight-member, bipartisan Illinois State Board of Elections should be replaced with a nonpartisan elections director, and administration of elections should be more uniform across the state, a new study says.
The study, by researchers at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, found that the biggest problem Illinois has is that the election system, overseen by more than 100 county clerks and other election authorities, “is decentralized with insufficient state-level leadership or guidance,” according to Edward Foley of the election law center at the college in Columbus, Ohio.
Foley said in an interview that the selection of a nonpartisan director of elections could be done with recommendations from legislative leaders to a governor, or by a governor with supermajority support — perhaps 75 percent — from both legislative chambers.
* Yet, when you look at the study’s summary (the full analysis has not been posted yet, even though I received two press releases about this issue yesterday), it goes beyond just recommending ways to reduce fraud, including this idea…
States should work to improve access to voting by relaxing barriers to voter registration. Both Minnesota and Wisconsin allow Election Day Registration and the study found no increased fraud under these systems. Other states reluctant to embrace this reform might consider Michigan’s system of affidavit voting, which protects voters whose names are not on the voter rolls even though they have attempted to register.
This makes me think there’s another agenda at play here.
* The Illinois State Board of Elections was created as a reform in 1970. Elections oversight had been one of the powers of the secretary of state, but that office was considered inappropriate for the office. Yet, there are some reformers who would go back to the old days…
Kent Redfield, professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Springfield and an election-reform advocate, said he thinks a constitutional change to make the secretary of state the top election official would be a way to have someone accountable for fair elections who could also seek adequate funding.
Redfield said the people who get appointed to the eight-member board now “tend to be establishment Democrats or Republicans … vested in the current system.”
With a secretary of state in charge, he said, “If elections are screwed up, then you have somebody who’s accountable” and who could be voted out themselves.
That worked real well in Ohio.
* More recommendations from the study…
* Increase the trust in the integrity of state elections by making local elections officials more accountable. Illinois is one of a few states that allow local election boards to be dominated by one political party or another, which jeopardizes the credibility of the boards’ work. Audits are also often poorly executed by local boards because of the lack of accountability.
* Create nonpartisan tribunals to resolve election disputes.
- jerry 101 - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 10:25 am:
taking advice from Ohio on elections is very bad idea.
ohio offers a case study on how NOT to administer elections.
- Greg - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 10:30 am:
Oregon’s vote by mail has worked wonderfully. On the other hand, it doesn’t have IL’s history of fraud.
- Ghost - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 10:32 am:
I disagree with the assumtpoion thet being partisan somehow makes one unable to be involved in the election system. Non-partisans also include people who are disaffected with the election system and have an agenda that is harmful to the current law as written.
Keep in mind the current system makes the local elected officials accountable for what happens in a county. There should be a little more uniformity and oversight, but we do have accountability.
- Anon - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 10:38 am:
Just watched “And So Goes the Nation” last night. It demonstrates exactly why the SoS is the wrong office to oversee voting in any state. If you havent seen the movie, I highly recommend it.
- PhilCollins - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 10:55 am:
The election board should change the numbers of petition signatures that are required for each office. Statewide candidates must submit at least 5,000 signatures, and candidates for Chicago mayor must submit more signatures than statewide candidates. All candidates should be required to submit a number of signatures which is the same percentage of the vote in the last election, for that office. In 2004, about five million people voted for Barack Obama or Alan Keyes, and 5,000 is an appropriate number of signatures for statewide candidates. The signature requirement should be at least 0.01% of the number of people who voted in the most recent election, for that race.
- capitol view - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 11:01 am:
Florida has the SOS as head of elections. That worked well in 2002, didn’t it? The Republican in charge set a goal of 25,000 probable Democrats being removed from the voting lists, and kept at it. Not enough ex-cons thrown off the ballot? Look for persons in the same family unit, and then those with the same last name. Persons showed up to vote and were told that they had been struck from the roles for not being eligible to vote — when they clearly were. Was the Florida SOS held accountable? Sure - she was elected to Congress in a safe seat after the next redistricting, as her reward.
Let the election oversight authority be balanced, not led by the partisan interests of one elected official.
I will suggest one new reform — let any party eligible for the lesser quailifications for being on the next ballot also sit on the Illinois Election Board for that next election cycle — in this case, the Green Party.
- Sacks Romana - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 11:33 am:
Having had a lot of interaction with the SBE as a Green, I actually think that the numerous hearing officers, officials, and even the board do a good job. I absolutely believe the board should be non-partisan. Having the people who control elections not be partisan seems like a pretty fundamental element of democracy. However, many of the issues I have with the way the ISBE conducts itself have to do with the backwards Illinois election code and not the board itself.
Also keep in mind that the various county clerks and city election authorities have a lot more to do with fair elections than the ISBE.
Finding a way to make a bi-partisan board non-partisan sounds good. Replacing an 8 person bi-partisan board with just the Secretary of State is a horrible idea. The Secretary of State is a partisan position! That’s a centralization of power into the hands of a single partisan office instead of a bi-partisan commission. That’s much worse even if as a Green neither of those parties are mine. As someone pointed out above, how well did that work out in Florida and Ohio with Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell.
- Unreliable Sources - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 12:03 pm:
Good point that the SBE’s creation was a reform from the 1970s. It seems the study’s point of making one elected political official as the one responsible party is a flimsy one. I don’t see “centralized” election administration as a good thing, especially when you have a couple of large jurisdictions with unique problems and over 100 smaller jurisdictions with their own problems. It seems one solution would be to adequately fund all the county offices, and maybe draw more attention to the people appointed to the SBE before they are confirmed. Now they are mostly just anonymous political hacks like just about every other state panel.
- Anonymous - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 12:14 pm:
Suggestion to posters: use SBEL when referring to the State Board of Elections to avoid confusion with the State Board of Education (usually abbreviated SBE or ISBE)
- Snidely Whiplash - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 1:14 pm:
I like the first set of suggestions. However, affidavit voting and same day registration is likely to be abused in northern Illinois. It would also give a HUGE advantage to the Machine, which could simply send cars of precinct workers out to apartment buildings, projects and trailer parks to pressure or entice people to hop on in, register and vote for the Machine candidates.
I wonder how much familiarity those doing the study REALLY have with Illinois and, if they ARE familiar, just what their agenda really is.
- Snidely Whiplash - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 1:16 pm:
Come to think of it, I wouldn’t put it past them to use school district and township buses to go out to those locals on election day for that purpose, and play it off as a “service” to the residents (rather than a service to themselves).
- Chad - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 1:19 pm:
Election day (”same-day”) registration and similar structures which allow persons to cast ballots without advance registration have been abused in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The researchers are suggesting a loosening of registration standards that could cause similar abuses here. In combination with one-party control of elections in the hands of the SOS, we could have some real problems. Can you imagine George in charge and someone like Fawell or Tristano in charge of determining whose votes will count? I will take the generally well-informed ISBE board members over that risk any day. Also, we already have provisional voting in place to preserve the rights of properly-registered people to vote on election day.
- Anon from BB - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 1:38 pm:
In Will County, we get a card from the clerk showing that we are registered, where our polling place is located, and which districts we are represented by. The card costs nothing.
Do other counties in the state do this? We got our new cards about four months ago. If you don’t get your card, you call the county clerk and check to make sure there hasn’t been a mistake. If there is an oversight, you re-register and a card is issued.
If your name is not on the roll when you go to the polling place, or you are challenged at the poll, you produce the card to show that you are registered to vote in that precinct.
Pretty simple, really.
- Snidely Whiplash - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 3:30 pm:
“In Will County, we get a card from the clerk showing that we are registered, where our polling place is located, and which districts we are represented by. The card costs nothing.
Do other counties in the state do this?”
Yes, and it’s more than adequate. Hell, they’ve even found ways to abuse THAT in the past!
- steve schnorf - Tuesday, Dec 4, 07 @ 10:37 pm:
God save us from the goo-goos.