"A lot has been done. Very little has changed," said Doug Chapin, director of the Washington-based Election Reform Project, which is funded by the University of Richmond and the Pew Charitable Trusts.

He was referring to the long list of recommendations made by blue-ribbon panels and bills introduced in the House and Senate as a result of last year's ballot recount debacle in Florida. The race between Republican George Bush and Democrat Al Gore was extended by 36 days by court challenges and recounts of confusing ballots in Florida.

"There isn't a lack of commitment and there isn't a lack of will to make voting reforms," Chapin said. "But there is a lack of consensus about what should be done."

At the heart of the issue is disagreement -- mostly between federal lawmakers and their state and county counterparts -- over whether nationwide standards should be put in place to create a uniform election system. Elections currently are administered by state and local officials -- meaning that voting regulations, ballots and polling times generally vary from city to city or state to state.

"This is probably the largest sticking point," said Michael Davidson of the Constitution Project, a non-profit group that examines controversial legal and constitutional issues. "The dialogue has not moved a whit."

By and large, federal lawmakers balk at funding local election systems without simultaneously enacting national standards; state and county officials who have long clamored for much-needed financial aid to boost their balloting plans bristle at being given congressional mandates.

"There are already millions of unfunded mandates" from Washington that local election officials must abide by, said Cameron Quinn of the Virginia State Board of Elections. Moreover, she said, election boards are among the lowest priorities for budget officials. "Typically, elections are not as sexy as roads and education," she said.

Proposals to revamp the election system have run the gamut, from establishing a national ballot and uniform polling hours to replacing all antiquated voting methods with high-tech polling machines. The plan with the most momentum -- at least before the Sept. 11 terror attacks -- was a bill sponsored by Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., to give states and localities $2.5 billion over five years to voluntarily upgrade voting procedures and technology.

But such measures have now been pushed aside, probably for the remainder of the year, as the government focuses on counterterrorism efforts. That means that the flawed election system now in place will still be in effect for the House and Senate races in 2002, said congressional scholar Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Already, there is a "sense that that window of opportunity has closed" for 2002, Mann said. "And the odds of changing the system that most Americans viewed as unacceptable has come and gone."

Quinn said there was great doubt among her elections boards colleagues that widespread and meaningful changes in the law won't be hammered out for many years to come. Creating a better ballot, for example -- in part by abolishing the punch-card system that created havoc in Florida -- "will not be out by next year, not by '04 -- but perhaps by '08 or '10," Quinn said.

Davidson said he does not envision a change before the next presidential election.

©1999-2001 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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