Wednesday, March 14, 2001

Mr. President, today I rise to introduce a commonsense election reform bill which we have entitled the Safeguard the Vote Act. I realize other reform issues have received a lot of media attention, but I think it is vital to focus on the fundamental issue of casting and counting votes honestly and fairly as well.

Over the past months, many Americans saw for the first time how actual vote counting is done or not done. We have had a real-life civics lesson that was as unexpected as it was frustrating. Those of us in positions of responsibility need to fix what needs fixing, reform what needs reforming, and prosecute where actual wrongdoing has occurred.

Voting is the most important civic duty and responsibility for citizens in our form of government. It should not be diluted by fraud, false filings in lawsuits, judges who do not follow the law, politicians who try to profit from confusion, and people who just abuse the system.

Let me be clear, at the same time voters must not be unduly confused by complicated ballots or confounded by inadequate phone lines or voting booths. These barriers to voting are absolutely unacceptable, and we need to make sure they do not exist.

Having said that--and I believe very strongly in it--I also say to some who want to hide the other abuses, do not try to use general confusion as an excuse or a justification for fraud.

I want to make one simple point as I begin. Vote fraud is not about partisanship. It is not about Democrats versus Republicans. It is not about the north side of St. Louis versus the south side of St. Louis. It is not about somebody getting a partisan advantage. It is about justice.

Vote fraud is a criminal not a political act. Illegal votes dilute the value of votes cast legally. When people try to stuff the ballot box, what they are really doing is trying to steal political power from those who follow election laws.

On election night in November of 2000, I was exercised and somewhat upset, one might say, as we learned about what was going on in St. Louis city where orders had been issued to keep the voting booths open in certain areas for an extended period of time. Lawyers appealed that decision, and the Missouri Court of Appeals shut them down. They wrote:

(E)qual vigilance is required to ensure that only those entitled to vote are allowed to cast a ballot. Otherwise, the rights of those lawfully entitled to vote are inevitably diluted.

Unfortunately, what we have seen in St. Louis these past months has been nothing short of breathtaking. Some might say that we have even become a national laughingstock. We have dead people registering by mail.

This city alderman died more than 10 years ago. He was registered to vote on cards turned in just before the March 6 mayoral primary. We had people registering from vacant lots. The media in St. Louis was very aggressive, and they checked on some of the voter addresses. There was no building there. They did not even see the tents in which people were living.

Voter rolls in St. Louis had more names on the registered active and inactive list than there were people in St. Louis city. It begins to raise suspicions.

A city judge exceeded the law by providing extended voting hours for only selected polling places. Then there is the strange story of a plaintiff in that case who claimed he ``has not been able to vote and fears he will not be able to vote because of long lines at the polling places and machine breakdowns.'' It was discovered he had two problems. He was dead, in which case long lines should not have been a problem because he was not going anywhere anyway.

The lawyer then came up with somebody else: Oh, what we really meant to say was a guy whose name is similar to that, so they tracked him out. The problem was he had already voted when the lawyers filed the sworn statement saying that he was worried about not being able to vote , which, I guess, we can only conclude meant he was worried about casting a second illegal ballot.

We have had felons voting, people not even registered voting. Just when you think we have seen it all--this is my favorite--here is the voting registration card that was sent in in October of 1994 by one Ritzy Mekler. The interesting thing about Ritzy Mekler is that Ritzy is a dog. We do not know how many times Ritzy may have voted, but this seems to be an unwarranted extension of the voting franchise. Much as I love dogs, I don't really think they should be voting. This is certainly a new avenue for those who like pets. But that is the kind of thing with which we need to deal.

The end result of all these revelations is that a city grand jury in St. Louis is now investigating fraudulent voter registration, and the lawyers involved have sent the U.S. attorney a 250-page report. People are beginning to take it seriously. You don't have to take my word for it. Local St. Louis city Democrats have had a few things to say.

St. Louis' current mayor, Clarence Harmon, said: I think there is ample, longstanding evidence of voter fraud in our community.

State representative Quincy Troupe said: There is no doubt in any black elected official's mind that the whole process has discouraged honest elections in the city of St. Louis for some time. We know that we have people who cheat in every election. The only way you can win a close election in this town, you have to beat the cheat.

From another side, 11th ward alderman, Matt Villa, said: Who knows who did it. But it is apparent they are trying to cheat and steal this election.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which has been aggressively covering this story, noted on its editorial page: St. Louis appears to have a full-blown election scandal that grows with each newly discovered box of bogus registration cards.

As I noted earlier, I believe it is our duty to fix what needs to be fixed, reform what needs to be reformed, and prosecute where there has been wrongdoing. In St. Louis, I believe criminal prosecutions are being considered. Coupled with the bill I am introducing today, this should go a long way toward cleaning up what has gone wrong in St. Louis.

I might add, just the threat of criminal prosecutions appear to have made a difference in the mayoral primary in St. Louis last week. It was a lot more honest than it has been in a long time. There is nothing like the healthy atmosphere of possible criminal prosecutions to make people think maybe we should not try to steal this election.

Well, let me go through the list of things we found out are contributing to fraud.

The first obvious problem is the blatant fraud of the bogus voter registrations. With dead people reregistering, fake names, phony addresses, and dogs being registered, it is clear the system is being abused.

Nearly all of these fraudulent registrations were the mail-in forms. Our plan begins by addressing this type of fraud with a few simple reforms. These are changing Federal law, which in some instances, has actually facilitated voter fraud.

1. First-time voters who register by mail would be required to vote in person and present a photo ID the first time after registration. We trust that the local officials would recognize the dog if she came in--even with a photo registration.

2. If the follow-up registration card is returned to the election office as undeliverable by the post office, States would be allowed immediately to remove those names from the rolls, provided they made a good-faith effort to ensure that eligible voters would not be removed from the rolls.

3. Finally, the bill would give the States the authority to include on the mail registration form a place for notarization or other form of authentication. Under current Federal law, States are actually prohibited from including this safeguard.

I believe the incentives for the bogus addresses and fake names would be virtually eliminated by these simple safeguards, while all the legitimate efforts to encourage new voters to register could, should, and must continue.

The second major problem we have seen in St. Louis is that the voter rolls are so clogged up with incorrect or fraudulent data that legal voters are shortchanged. St. Louis city actually, as I said earlier, has more voters listed on its active plus inactive rolls than the voting age population of the city. That is not surprising if they are registering dead people, dogs, and people from vacant lots.

Even more amazing is the fact that the Secretary of State said in a recent report that 5,000 of the names on the inactive list are actually duplicates of other names on the inactive list. There are numerous other examples of names on both the active and inactive lists at the same time. These inactive lists are what is being used for election day registration and voting. They just go in and say my name is on the inactive list. Hundreds were allowed to vote in that instance.

Thus, it is painfully clear that something must be done to keep the voter rolls clean and accurate.

The bill I introduce includes two basic reforms to assist in the cleanup of voter rolls. First, it would require States to conduct a program of cleaning up lists wherever the voter roll list of eligible voters is larger than the number of people of voting age in that county or city. That seems to make only common sense. I can't imagine anyone opposing that if you have more people registered than you have people, something is wrong.

Second, my proposal adopts the commonsense approach just used by the St. Louis election board in their March primary. For those voters whose names have been moved to the inactive list, it would require that a photo ID be presented by the voter as part of their oral or written affirmation of their address when they seek to vote again. The board of elections just required this in last week's election, and that election seemed to go off without a hitch.

I believe these straightforward reforms will go a long way toward restoring the confidence in the voter registration and balloting process. But for those who insist on continuing their fraudulent activities, this bill strengthens criminal penalties for those who commit fraud or conspire to commit voter fraud.

Finally, given the dimensions of the vote fraud scandal in St. Louis, this legislation creates a national pilot project to clean up voter lists in St. Louis in order to assist in ending election day corruption across the Nation.

I have proposed that the Federal Election Commission run the project in St. Louis city and St. Louis County to develop a method we can use nationally to maintain accurate voter rolls and ensure that all properly registered voters are permitted to vote without wrongfully being disenfranchised by failure of their registration to be effective, or by allowing others who are not qualified and registered to vote , diluting their votes. The FEC would also coordinate records of voters registered to vote at places authorized under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, along with State death and felony conviction records and the official voter registered for each polling place.

As the Missouri Court of Appeals wrote when they shut down the improper efforts to keep only certain polling places open: ..... (C)ommendable zeal to protect voting rights must be tempered by the corresponding duty to protect the integrity of the voting process. ..... (E)qual vigilance is required to ensure that only those entitled to vote are allowed to cast a ballot. Otherwise, the rights of those lawfully entitled to vote are inevitably diluted.

With these new tools, and some real leadership, the election boards of St. Louis City, and St. Louis County could get the big broom--and start cleaning up the mess. Criminal investigations are ongoing, I hope that anyone responsible for cheating will be caught and punished. But we must get a handle on the voter rolls. People who register and follow the rules shouldn't be frustrated by inadequate polling places and phone lines or confused by out-of-date lists. At the same time, we must require voter lists to be scrubbed and reviewed in a much more timely manner--so the cheaters cannot use confusion as their friend.

I certainly don't want St. Louis to have the lasting reputation described by my old friend Quincy Troupe: The only way you can win a close election in this town, you have to beat the cheat.