Reply #1: Nice excerpt for the reform movement [View All]

[Wilms]

Since the disputed election of 2000, many American citizens and advocacy groups have been pressing for reforms to our electoral institutions – reforms that would go well beyond those legislated by some states and by Congress through HAVA. Movements for electoral reform of this type have a venerable (and honorable) history in the United States.

In addition to expanding the franchise so that excluded groups became eligible to vote, these movements have also sought to safeguard the honesty of elections, protect the rights of individual voters, and facilitate access to the polls. Among the many achievements of such movements have been the secret ballot itself, registration laws, and the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (the "Motor Voter Bill"). Democracy in the United States has never consisted of a fixed set of institutions and procedures; change has been the norm, and many of the most important changes have occurred in the wake of elections in which latent problems rose to the surface and became visible.

It is the view of this Commission that significant reforms in American electoral institutions are very much needed at this juncture in American political history. There is ample evidence that our electoral system does not match – and sometimes frustrates – the promise of American democracy.3 There is also abundant anecdotal evidence that many Americans have lost confidence in the fairness and neutrality of our electoral processes: one of the more notable features of the weeks immediately following the November election was the proliferation of theories and claims that the presidential election had been stolen.4