A federal agency created to restore confidence in the election
process in the wake of Bush v. Gore sits all but leaderless as the
country approaches Election Day.
As local election officials scramble to sort out last-minute issues — Palm Beach County, Fla., for example, recently hired dozens of workers to hand copy about 27,000 misprinted absentee ballots — the U.S. Election Assistance Commission operates, on its 10th anniversary, as a shell of what Congress designed it to be.
Its four commissioner spots are vacant. The executive director resigned last year. Its general counsel left in May. It has lacked a quorum to conduct official business for almost two years. Congressional gamesmanship has hamstrung the commission by neither giving it necessary resources nor eliminating it outright.
“It’s a national embarrassment that this agency, whose only mission is to provide information, doesn’t have a single commissioner,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine.
Congress created the commission as part of a larger effort to support state-
level election procedures in the aftermath of the contested 2000 presidential election and the subsequent Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore. President George W. Bush signed the Help America Vote Act into law in October 2002, just days after it passed the House and Senate with broad bipartisan support.
The EAC has two Democratic commissioners and two Republican commissioners who are recommended by Congressional leaders, nominated by the White House and confirmed by the Senate. It was given more than $3 billion to dole out to states for improved election administration. Other responsibilities include acting as a repository of effective election processes, developing voluntary voting-system guidelines, setting up procedures to certify the laboratories that test voting equipment and ensuring that states are upgrading their technology.
Read more: http://www.rollcall.com/issues/58_33/Agency-Formed-to-Restore-Confidence-in-Elections-Is-in-Disarray-218616-1.html?pos=htmbtxt
As local election officials scramble to sort out last-minute issues — Palm Beach County, Fla., for example, recently hired dozens of workers to hand copy about 27,000 misprinted absentee ballots — the U.S. Election Assistance Commission operates, on its 10th anniversary, as a shell of what Congress designed it to be.
Its four commissioner spots are vacant. The executive director resigned last year. Its general counsel left in May. It has lacked a quorum to conduct official business for almost two years. Congressional gamesmanship has hamstrung the commission by neither giving it necessary resources nor eliminating it outright.
“It’s a national embarrassment that this agency, whose only mission is to provide information, doesn’t have a single commissioner,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Irvine.
Congress created the commission as part of a larger effort to support state-
level election procedures in the aftermath of the contested 2000 presidential election and the subsequent Supreme Court decision in Bush v. Gore. President George W. Bush signed the Help America Vote Act into law in October 2002, just days after it passed the House and Senate with broad bipartisan support.
The EAC has two Democratic commissioners and two Republican commissioners who are recommended by Congressional leaders, nominated by the White House and confirmed by the Senate. It was given more than $3 billion to dole out to states for improved election administration. Other responsibilities include acting as a repository of effective election processes, developing voluntary voting-system guidelines, setting up procedures to certify the laboratories that test voting equipment and ensuring that states are upgrading their technology.
Read more: http://www.rollcall.com/issues/58_33/Agency-Formed-to-Restore-Confidence-in-Elections-Is-in-Disarray-218616-1.html?pos=htmbtxt
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