Chris Berry On The Net

I am not ordinarily in favor of Federal laws designed to supersede the authority of the States, but several recent controversies regarding voter registration procedures point to the need for uniform standards when conducting national elections. When choosing candidates for our highest offices, we should not rely on a patchwork of State and local rules designed and implemented by partisan apparatchiks.

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 was intended to address some of these issues by requiring that voter registration rolls be maintained at the statewide level, rather than by local election boards. We still have a problem however, in that interpretation of the laws is left largely in the hands of local election officials. There is still plenty of opportunity for purely partisan interference in the voter registration process.

These problems have been highlighted in our region by the difficulties encountered by out of state students at Virginia Tech and Radford University attempting to register as Virginia voters. The fact that there is no uniform standard for residency requirements from one state to the next leaves these students and others across the nation in a state of uncertainty regarding their ability to participate in the electoral process.

Virginia is one of a handful of battleground states that will determine the outcome in our upcoming election. This has led to partisan operatives on both sides taking an active role in attempting to qualify or disqualify these young and likely Democratic voters. The fact that their votes will probably have a greater impact in Virginia than in their home states points out another absurdity in our electoral process, but the question of their eligibility should not be left to local registrars and partisan hacks. A uniform Federal standard would answer the question once and for all.

Allegations of voter fraud and abuse have marred our last two presidential elections, but it is impossible to determine whether the alleged problems actually had any influence on the outcome of either race. Since it is clear that we remain very evenly divided as a nation, however, it is essential that we do everything in our power to eliminate the opportunity for, and the appearance of impropriety. The fact that many in our country still have not gotten over the bitterness of the 2000 election is an indication that we need to do more to ensure the integrity of our electoral process. Failure to do so will only serve to undermine the ability of future elected leaders to serve effectively.

Investigations are currently underway in nine states regarding the efforts by ACORN to register new voters. The group claims to have signed up 1.3 million new voters in 21 states, but the legitimacy of many of those new registrations is being called into question. In some jurisdictions, as many as half of the registrations turned in by the group have already been determined to be ineligible or fraudulent. It is not clear at this point whether the problems indicate a concerted effort by ACORN, or if they are simply the result of workers being paid based on the number of new voters they sign up. In either event, this kind of large scale registration drive by partisan groups requires closer scrutiny, and once again points to the need for uniform eligibility standards at the Federal level.