Will Senate Dems torpedo a plan for nonpartisan election officials?

Posted by Joshua Holland at 6:26 AM on January 25, 2007.

Few things make my blood boil quite like Democrats dealing away American democracy for some small electoral advantage.

Here's a potential example* -- something to watch -- from The Hill …

Congressional Democrats, including those with executive-branch aspirations, may offer significant resistance to a Democratic bill that would affect how presidential campaigns operate in 2008.

Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.) introduced legislation that would control and prevent chief state elections officials from actively participating in federal campaigns, responding to the involvement of the Florida and Ohio secretaries of state -- former Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) and Ken Blackwell, respectively -- in the Bush presidential campaigns of 2000 and 2004. However, with Democrats acquiring a majority of statehouses after the recent midterm elections, including those in several battleground states, some party members may object to, or undercut, the legislation before the 2008 races.

Democrats will face intense scrutiny as they largely will determine whether the bill comes up for a vote and how the bill will look in this circumstance, particularly given the promise of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that the current Democratic majority would produce the most open and ethical Congress in history.

Of the six Democratic members of Congress who have declared or are considering running for president -- Sens. Joseph Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) -- and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) -- only the Kerry and Dodd offices responded by press time to questions regarding their support for the bill and their general view of the issue. […]

In other words, this entire column is speculation. Dodd was receptive in principle and Kerry's not running (thank God). Keep that in mind.

The Davis legislation would amend the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 by prohibiting the chief elections official of a given state from actively participating in any campaign for federal office. Such activities would include serving as a member of a campaign committee, using his or her office for soliciting campaign contributions or engaging in partisan political activity. The bill also has a more general provision, precluding the use of an official's authority "for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election for Federal office."

"The main need [for the bill is] so people know that elections will be run thoroughly, that the person running the election does not have a vested interest in the result," a spokesman for Davis, Aaron Hunter, said. "Regardless of evidence showing wrongdoing, when a secretary of state or elected official [is involved in a campaign] it just doesn't look right." Hunter said that Davis did not speak with party leaders prior to introducing the legislation. […]

The political calculus for Democrats, however, has changed significantly since the presidential elections of 2000 and 2004. In addition to winning the majority in the House and Senate, Dems picked up a six-seat edge in statehouses. More notably, Democrats picked up three governorships in battleground states: Mike Beebe in Arkansas, a state recognized as the most Democratic in the Deep South, and Bill Ritter in Colorado and Ted Strickland in Ohio, where the 2004 presidential races were decided by 5 and 2 points, respectively. […]

A voting-rights expert and professor of constitutional law at New York University Law School, Richard Pildes, described the bill as a "small but productive reform" and said it serves to "impose some national standards or principles in the elections for national office." However, he added that the presence of partisan actors and influence is pervasive within the state electoral structure, including at the local level, where important voting policy decisions are made. Pildes went on to say that the design of election-administration structures is "obviously dysfunctional … other countries look and say this makes no sense at all."

Whenever I discuss our electoral system, I always link to this article, "America Observed," by Robert Pastor. Kind of a tradition -- read it if you haven't.

*I'm late on this story, which appeared a week ago.

Tagged as: election reform

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.