| In Elections, 'Who Counts?'
With Fred Silverman
Producer, "Who Counts? Election Reform in America"
and Alex Keyssar
Kennedy School of Government
Monday, Oct. 21, 2002; 2 p.m. ET The 2000 presidential election: was it real, or was it a sketch comedy just writing itself? As 36 days ticked by, the chads were counted and the votes certified, just what happened to our electoral process? And how do we keep it from happening again? Hosted by journalist Frank Sesno, "Who Counts? Election Reform in America," which aired on PBS on Thursday, Oct. 17, took a look at the 2000 election -- both the news and the absurd. Journalists, pundits and politicians including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Florida Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis told the story of the election -- from the morning of Nov. 8, 2000, the first day without a winner, to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Dec. 12, 2000. Along the way, pieces from "The Daily Show" and "Saturday Night Live" punctuated the action, with comedian Darryl Hammond portraying Al Gore, Dick Cheney and President Bill Clinton. Producer Fred Silverman and political expert Alex Keyssar were online on Monday, Oct. 21, to talk about the 2000 debacle, election reforms and getting some laughs along the way. The transcript follows. Editor's Note: Washingtonpost.com moderators retain editorial control over Live Online discussions and choose the most relevant questions for guests and hosts; guests and hosts can decline to answer questions.
washingtonpost.com: Fred, Alex, thank you for joining us today. Can you briefly explain the inspiration for the special and how you arrived at a format that included SNL's Darrell Hammond? Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Fred: One of the reasons we chose to do this program how we did was because we really tried to reach out to a larger audience than public television normally reaches -- particularly young people, who polls show can be cynical about the political process. The feeling was to combine humor with it and it would be more entertaining and present some factual information.
Salem, Ore.: Loved the show -- the comedy bits by Darrell Hammond were excellent, especially the ending where he complained about all the time it took to perfect his Al Gore impression! Seriously, though, I am glad Congress passed an election bill with provisional ballots, money to replace punch cards, etc. In 1992 when someone lost a statewide primary by 330 votes, I was a volunteer observer in my county during the recount for the friend who lost by that tiny margin. Our county clerk did an excellent job (Florida could have used a professional like him in 2000!) and thanked his lucky stars that our county had gotten rid of punch cards in favor of optical scanner ballots (connect parts of an arrow) years ago! I am also concerned about another facet -- the role of polls. Our U.S. Senate incumbent is a rich, handsome member of the president's party who votes independently just often enough to look moderate to some people. He's been running ads since summer. But he can't break out of the margin of error (he has, for instance, 54 percent in a poll with a + or - 4 percent margin of error). Yet too many treat him as the winner already, and also have the attitude that young people who weren't old enough to vote in 1996 won't be voting this year because "young people don't vote". Last time I checked, those registered to vote who care about something on the ballot have the right to vote for US Senate even if the polls don't say many young people will be voting! Not to mention the 57,000 of us who voted 3rd party last time when there were lousy choices among the major party candidates and wonderful 3rd party candidates (the 3rd party candidates this year sound like flakes). What is your comment on "the only poll that counts is the counting of ballots" and how polling can skew reporting on the last weeks of an election? Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Alex: There's obviously a lot to the question, but on polling I think that the questioner is right that polling can influence what happens and is risky for that reason. There's a related and deeper problem, though, which is that polls and poll results are based only on what pollsters believe to be likely voters. And there is a set of social biases built into the notion of likely voters. The young person with less income won't vote for instance. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.
Pollsters say the young won't vote, so the politicians don't address issues for the young.
Herndon, Va.: I must admit, when "chadomania" first hit us, I was totally surprised to learn how many votes are thrown out in each election, not just in the Florida debacle. Was this on your "radar screens" before November, 2000? Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Alex: I can honestly say as a scholar of voting, no it wasn't. It was something -- if pressed, I probably knew, but it was not really on my radar screen. Fred knew all along!
Fred: I didn't realize the issue was this important and such a problem waiting to spring itself as it really turned out to be.
Vienna, Va.: I keep reading in the press about the importance of training poll workers. For what exactly do poll workers need to receive training and how important is this to voting accuracy? Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Alex: Poll workers have to be trained really in two things. One is how the machinery works and how the respond to something doesn't work. And the machinery meaning not the machine itself, but how to sign in, etc. The second part is what the election law is, which is often quite intricate and it really does take some time because there are issues that will arise that will come up against the boundaries of the law. In Florida, we saw many poll workers who did not know the law.
Fred: One of the problems historically is that poll workers are mostly retired individuals and I think there's been a move since 2000 which is to allow corporations to give people a paid day off to work at the polls. One group is trying to foster this idea, so you get a skilled intelligent technically adept pollworker force and we should really look at that. We talk about getting people to the polls, but the pollworker thing is really an element that isn't usually looked at very clearly and accurately.
Tampa, Fla.: The conventional wisdom is that "Florida showed exit polling is flawed, and it must be fixed" It seems to me that the exit polling was more accurate than the official voting, once you factor in the spoiled ballots, the Pat Buchanan mistakes, and so on. Now, an election isn't the census, so you can't just estimate vote totals like this, but I think the recounts show at least that there was nothing wrong with the exit polling on Florida's election night 2000. Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Fred: I agree with that. I kind of felt that in many ways the exit polls did show Al Gore carrying the state and if you went back and looked at all of this, and the Pat Buchanan votes, Al Gore probably would have carried the state.
Alex: It's also the case that exit polling like any polling has a margin of error, but the core problem was that the margin of error was clearly smaller than the polling or the technology.
I think that there's another fact about this exit polling. We learned that all news orgs were relying on the same exit polls, which concentrated a lot of authority. One thing to recognize is that the polls created a political illusion that became very powerful -- the illusion that Bush was ahead and Gore had to catch up. Or that Bush had won and Gore had to reverse it and that was based on the polls more than anything else, so polls played a weird role in this.
Dale City, Va.: What does the future hold for same day voter registration? Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Alex: I would like to see that future be promising, but I think its unlikely we're going to see much about it, because I think many people are concerned about the potential for fraud and it would seem to be a reasonable issue that could deflect changes.
Fred: It's a wonderful process and I think those that have adopted it have a much higher percentage of voter turnout. Does the new legislation address this?
Alex: Nope.
Alexandria, Va.: Good afternoon gentlemen,
If a third world country held an election in which the outcome hung on disputed vote totals from a state governed by one candidate's brother, and that dispute was settled by a court partially appointed by his father, the cries for "regime change" would be echoing through the capitol. Is there any hope for Democrats in Virginia and Republicans in Massachusetts and minorities everywhere that at some point their votes may actually count? Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Alex: I agree absolutely with the premise and want to add that the successful candidate's father was also a former head of a CIA. And I think that many changes are going to be necessary to produce something that looks like a more vital democracy and one that encourages candidates of different ideas. One issue that is very important is to take the apparatus out of the hands of the parties and party officials and try to create something that looks like a politically neutral civil service that runs elections. It wasn't a state where his brother happened to be governor, but the voting apparatus was controlled by someone who was his campaign manager.
Fred: I agree 100 percent. The politicalization of our electoral process has to be reviewed and revised. Or else this will continue the way it is.
Oakton, Va.: There seems to be a disturbing new trend toward settling election disputes in the courts -- obviously, we saw it big-time in 2000, but also recently with the Torricelli question in New Jersey.
While, obviously, something had to be done to settle the Florida dispute, there is really no Constitutional process for courts to meddle in election results. Indeed, in a lot of states, judges are popularly elected and therefore a conflict of interest would exist. This is what Election Boards Election Commissions are for and their decisions need to be exempt from judicial review. Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Alex: I would -- I think that the tendency of elections to end up in the courts is disturbing, but this isn't the first time in American history we've gone through this and I would agree that that is by far not the best way to resolve these disputes and in part, this would go back to the idea of politically neutral civil service election boards, who could offer non-partisan judgments. WIth respect to presidential elections, there is a procedure that involves congress that we never got to in 2000.
Fred: We see that the courts are normally the venue for resolving disputes. Alex said something wonderful, that a lot of the passion people had for the political process got cut off when the issue went to the courts. Historically, this is the place to resolve things, but not to choose the winner of an election.
Harrisburg, Pa.: How about that election in Iraq? Any chance of a recount? Where is Kathleen Harris when we need her? Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Alex: We have to remember that the two parties is only one more than one.
Fred: I think at least there they didn't have to have the court decide.
Alex: Do we think Bush will let everyone out of prison?
Burke, Va.: Why don't we make voting day a national holiday? Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Alex: I think we should make election day a national holiday. Even the Carter/Ford commission recommended that. But Congress was very reluctant to recommend it and kept it out of the bill that was just passed. My own view is that most members of Congress do not want to see the turnout increase that would accompany making election day a national holiday.
Fred: At least the idea of giving people an hour off from work that day, because a difficulty we face is that if you're not going to have the day off you won't have the time to vote. It's very difficult to make the time, and if we do it's at the expense of other things. If we value our democracy, it is the least we could do -- having an hour to have the opportunity to go and vote.
Alex: There have been historical moments in the past when different states did require employers to do that, and this is not without precedent.
Burke, Va.: Has anyone looked at getting simultaneous printouts of electronic votes? It wouldn't be too hard to program a computer to change the results of votes, and if there were no printouts this would be untraceable. Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Fred: I think that there's a real worry in doing this electronically and that there aren't a lot of safeguards in place. The touch screens use phone lines -- and it is not adequately secured and it needs to be looked at.
Somewhere, USA: Technically, as conservatives particularly seem to rush to point out, the U.S. is a republic and not a democracy, thus electing a president with a minority of the popular vote doesn't violate the spirit, much less the letter, of our laws. Yet we tell other countries that democracy is the best system, that the majority will should prevail. Do we not mention the Electoral College system because we don't understand it (how many Americans could explain it) or because it goes against the grain of what we think we are or want to be? Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Alex: I completely agree with the spirit of the question and however accurate it may be to assert that the U.S. is a Republic and not a democracy at its founding, the nation's political culture has changed dramatically in the last 200 years and there is a widespread and public embrace of democratic, rather than republican values. One symbol of this was the Supreme Court's conclusion in the 1960s that one person/one vote had to be the standard in the definition of all electoral districts. Even this movement toward democratization, institutions like the electoral college are embarrassing and I don't think we advertise them to third world countries. One virtue of the last election was that most people -- including college students -- did learn what conference the electoral college played in.
Fairfax, Va.: We seem to be overlooking the role that vote projections and the practice of "calling" states can do -- this is how the whole Florida mess got started. Dan Rather at CBS was so eager to call the state for Gore that it was done before the polls closed in the Florida panhandle. While I myself don't allow the media to influence my vote -- I'm going to vote my conscience, projections or not -- clearly many people DO allow the media to intimidate them. This should not happen, but unfortunately it does. So for the sake of all the sheep that are so easily led along, perhaps it will be necessary to stop the practice of calling the vote before it is actually counted. Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Fred: This has been an ongoing debate -- where do you draw the line. Do you forbid the press from reporting the story. There's not simple answer here?
Canada: Will the election reforms require candidates to reveal all connections to firms like Enron? "The Forbidden Truth" recently published (in France, translated to English) lays out the documented trail of Bush, Cheney, oil, Osama bin Laden connections, and the Saudis. Will this type of incestuous linkage be reported fully in future. America has a President appointed by a Supreme Court, largely appointed by Republican presidents. I think the real question should be the price of integrity, character and honor. How long will the American public going to stick their heads in the sand and allow themselves to be called unpatriotic for asking questions of this president? Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Fred: The current bill addresses none of that. What this bill does is buy fancy new machines for people who don't know how to use them. You're going to give octogenarians ATMS to vote on. It does not look at what the questioners concern at all. The only way concern will be raised is by a real systematic requestioning and reexamination of the foundation of our democracy.
Albany, N.Y.: Sorry I missed the show. Is it available to purchase? I thought the real issue involved in the Florida election was the failure to count every countable vote. You cannot separate the right to vote with the guarantee that your vote will be counted. I am not referring to the Palm Beach County voters who inadvertently voted for Buchanan or the voters who accidentally voted for two candidates. To those voters I say tough noogies, but there were innumerable legal votes that were never counted such as those people who wrote the name of their choice on the ballot. Also the real equal protection problem was the different systems used in the various counties where these systems produced widely divergent error rates. There should be a legal requirement that jurisdictions voting for the same elective office should all use the same voting system. Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Fred: It's available calling PBS home video at 1.800.PLAY.PBS.
Alex: I agree with the questioner about equal protection. And one positive potential outcome of election 2000 is that the Supreme Court's invocation of the equal protection issue, despite its own disclaimer, may yield greater attention to this issue. The new legislation will create pressures -- it doesn't mandate it -- towards producing more uniform voting procedures and methods within the states.
Fred: One of the few things that this new legislation does is to develop guidelines. I thought it was an intelligent way of doing it. I don't think all states have to have to the same equipment. I think that would make fraud easier. There are a number of different workable approaches.
Vienna, Va.: While I personally supported Bush in 2000, I know he might have lost if we had direct popular election of Presidents and Vice-Presidents. However, in spite of this, I think the time has come to amend the Constitution to get rid of the Electoral College and the winner-take-all system once and for all. It is basically a throwback to colonial times, when the country was divided into an aristocratic upper-class and the so-called lower class of merchants and farmers, and really has no place in modern elections.
Virtually every other executive or legislative office in the country is by popular vote -- why not the White House? The Florida fiasco was a struggle for Florida's Electoral votes more than its popular votes, and similar fiascos occurred in other states such as Oregon and New Mexico, yet they got much less publicity. And consider this: we could have probably had a NATIONAL recount in less time than it took to settle the mess that went around in circles in both and out of both the Florida courts, and Federal courts, and the U.S. Supreme Court. Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Alex: I agree absolutely with the questions about the electoral college and the desirability of having our presidents elected by popular vote. I also think that Congress and congressional advocates of getting rid of the electoral college have been too cautious and fearful about promoting a national debate on this issue. In fact, most of the population would like to get rid of the electoral college.
Arlington, Va.: any advice for people who would like to produce documentaries? Do you recommend film school for such a profession? Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Fred: I think Wal-Mart retail jobs pay better. I think in terms of doing documentary work, the best approach is to have a liberal arts education and an innate sense of curiosity about the world. You can learn this job much better in the field -- that's my own personal feeling.
Baltimore, Md.: Gentleman - Kudos for presenting a fair and balanced synopsis regarding the 2000 Presidential election (or selection, depending on your view). This may be too simple a reform to initiate but nevertheless, I'll ask anyway. Since technology is being integrated into the mechanics of voting, why can't we also incorporate a reform of how elections are staffed? Specifically, is it possible that our voting system could be revamped in a manner similar to the jury duty (which has its own flaws, I know). Citizens would be selected from existing voter registration rolls (within their district), trained, and PAID for their time. This reform would achieve two objectives: (1) bring in a more diverse cross-section of people (not just retirees/senior citizens who aren't the most trainable) and (2) give people an additional opportunity to connect with the voting process -- and get paid for doing so. Just a thought but remember new equipment + untrained volunteer staff = a grand mess. Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: Alex: I think that the idea of making it like jury duty at the ground level within the context of what I talked about earlier sounds very interesting. I hadn't thought of that before.
Fred: We do need to address that the politicization of our electoral process really denies voices from being heard.
Washington, D.C.: Missed your show. When will it air in D.C. again? Fred Silverman and Alex Keyssar: You can go to the site and check that information at www.whocounts.org and look at the broadcast schedule. If it's not listed there, please contact us.
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