In light of the controversy surrounding one of the most debated presidential elections in American history, a panel gathered last night in Jefferson Hall to discuss problems with and possible reforms to the election process.
The panel, sponsored by the Center for Governmental Studies, included Ronald Klain, Al Gore's legal adviser; Doug Lewis, executive director of the Election Center; Robert Montjoy, assistant vice president for outreach and professor of political science at Auburn University; Trevor Potter, former commissioner and chairman of the Federal Election Commission; and George Terwilliger, lead attorney for President Bush during the election recount.
The panel began as mediator Larry J. Sabato, professor of government and foreign affairs and Center director, pitted Klain and Terwilliger against each other in a discussion over possible fraud in Florida vote counting.
While both agreed they had found no real evidence of fraud in the Florida recounts, Klain said he had questions about the partisan manner in which the recount was conducted.
"I thought everything coming out of the Secretary of State's [Kathleen Harris (R)] office was suspicious," Klain said.
But Terwilliger said he thought everyone involved in the election recount proceedings, including Harris, "exercised restraint."
The panel agreed one of the biggest problems with the Florida recount was not punch card ballots, but that there were no definite rules or standards on how to conduct a recount.
"When no rules exist, [election] administrators have to make up rules," Lewis said.
"The fact of the matter was there were no rules," Klain said.
The panel also settled many issues that it claimed the media confused or blew out of proportion during the election. Potter pointed out that the Federal Election Commission had nothing to do with vote counting and that it was a myth created during the Florida debacle.
Also, the future for online voting looks to be very far away, Lewis said.
"It took me five months to convince the media that optical scan was more inaccurate than punch cards," Lewis added.
The debate also focused on voter education and determining voter intent on ballots that may not have been correctly punched.
"A voter should be able to fill in a box," Terwilliger said.
Potter said people "tend to forget that voting is a right for every person ... it doesn't matter if they can read instructions or not."
The discussion also focused on the actual election counting, including the technology involved in the process. The panelists debated the possibility of tampering with vote counting software.
"Anything devised by man, can be broken by man," but "it's one of those things that is very difficult to do," Lewis said.
Possible corrections in the voting systems also were considered including educating voters and standardizing vote counting.
"Whatever system we get will never have zero percent error," Lewis said.
"In any close election, you're going to have problems," Potter said. However, the panel did agree that there are numerous ways to improve voting systems.
Cameron Quinn, secretary of the State Board of Elections in Virginia, attended the panel and said the board has been attempting to update its elections procedures in light of the problems in the Florida recount.
Virginia has real-time updates on voter registration preventing voting fraud and now has rules in place to deal with recounts, a problem that the panel focused on throughout the night.
"There is no perfect election, but we can do better," Sabato said to close the evening on what he called "one of te best panels we've had in years"
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