Vote Reform Ideas Include a Holiday for Election Day

Voting reform advocates called Monday for government initiatives to reduce long lines at polls and eliminate other glitches that arose in last year’s presidential election. Some proposed a national holiday to increase turnout and cut waiting time.

In 2004, “there were not enough machines in place or enough poll workers to go around,” Kay Maxwell, president of the League of Women Voters, said at the first hearing of a commission led by former President Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III.

Maxwell and other witnesses said the government, which financed election improvements for the first time after the 2000 election, must provide more funding. A government commission separate from the Carter-Baker panel is overseeing efforts to fix problems exposed in 2000, including the “hanging chads” on punch-card ballots in Florida.

Witnesses at the hearing at American University said the Help America Vote Act of 2002, enacted after the disputed 2000 election, should be just a first step in seeking ways to increase voter turnout and to reduce opportunities for election fraud.

The panel weighed ideas that weren’t included in the 2002 law, including making election day a national holiday.

The panel plans to hold a second hearing June 30 at the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston and to submit a report to Congress in September.