Public Backs Uniform U.S. Voting Rules
By Richard Morin and Claudia Deane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 18, 2000 ; Page A01
Overwhelming majorities of Americans support a major overhaul of election rules and procedures including a uniform poll-closing time across the nation, a standard ballot design and consistent rules for conducting recounts, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.
The survey also found that most Americans want to strip authority for setting election rules from local and state officials and give the federal government the task of imposing order on election laws and practices that currently vary widely from state to state and county to county.
On question after question, the survey suggests that the public, sharply divided at virtually every bizarre twist and turn of the recent post-election drama, has finally found common ground: Nearly everyone agrees that America must change the way it elects its president.
Some reform-minded voters were startled by the variety and the vagaries of voting procedures revealed since Election Day. "I just always assumed it was standardized. Wasn't that stupid of me?" laughed Karin Cabell, 36, a customer service representative who lives in Hazleton, Pa., and voted to elect Texas Gov. George W. Bush. "I thought everyone voted in the same manner everywhere. It just blew my mind."
Despite the broad call to change the way Americans vote, the Post-ABC News poll found the post-election struggle has done little immediate damage to public confidence in the political system or major political institutions, including the U.S. Supreme Court, the Congress and the presidency. Nine in 10 Americans still remain confident that, despite all its problems, this country still has "the best system of government in the world."
But the five-week standoff has inflicted at least temporary political damage on the president-elect. Only a modest majority of those interviewed--55 percent--say Bush was "legitimately elected" president while 42 precent disagree, including seven in 10 Democrats and about nine in 10 African Americans.
Still, seven in 10 approve of Vice President Gore's decision to concede. And nearly as many Americans express confidence in the incoming Bush administration as said they had confidence in the outgoing Clinton administration.
The survey also found that the public remains sharply split along partisan lines over the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to halt the recounts--a ruling that effectively gave the presidency to Bush. Fifty percent said they approved of the high court's decision, and 48 percent opposed it. But most disagree that the decision was politically motivated, a view shared by an overwhelming proportion of Republicans but only one-third of all Democrats.
A majority of Americans now doubt the accuracy of the Florida vote count, the survey found. But they see little hope of learning who really won the most votes in Florida and little practical value in trying to find the answer.
Half of those interviewed expressed doubts about the plans of news organizations and others to conduct unofficial recounts of thousands of disputed ballots in Florida. If those unofficial recounts find that Gore won more votes, the proportion of Americans who view Bush as the legitimately elected president drops from 55 percent to about 50 percent.
Despite those doubts, most Americans seem anxious to move on. "It's done, it's finished. We have a Republican president. It's time to get on with it," said Larry Cato, 54, a history teacher in Roanoke, Ala., who voted for Gore.
A total of 807 randomly selected adults were interviewed Thursday and Friday for this survey. Margin of sampling error for the overall results is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
In subsequent interviews with Post reporters, those questioned in the poll were blunt and unequivocal in their disgust over the 2000 presidential election and its surreal aftermath.
"It made the whole country look stupid and asinine," said Carol Campbell, 43, a truck driver who lives in Pittsburgh and supported Bush.
Stephen Holman, 28, a printer living in New Port Richey, Fla., and a Bush supporter, was particularly dismayed by the post-election debacle in his home state. "I'm embarrassed, quite frankly. The whole nation looking at Florida and thinking we're a bunch of hicks."
The election may be over, but doubts continue to grow about the bitterly contested vote count in Florida. A majority of Americans--57 percent--questioned the accuracy of the vote total, a 19 percentage-point increase since that question was first asked Nov. 12.
But most voters agreed that the election revealed problems that extend well beyond Florida. Fifty-three percent of those interviewed said the post-election controversies have revealed "serious problems in this country's system of electing the president"--up 21 percentage points from a Post-ABC News poll conducted five days after the Nov. 7 election.
Most voters agree it's a mess, and 61 percent said they want the federal government to clean it up. Barely a third said they wanted to allow local and state governments to continue to set election law.
"I think they need to get a system that everybody votes the same in the United States," said Nancy Jackson, 74, a retiree living in Detroit who voted for Gore. "It partially made me sick, it was so unfair. I'm African American. There are so many young black people we got out to vote, and then their vote wasn't counted."
Nine in 10 said they want a federal law that requires the same design and layout for all presidential election ballots, retiring forever Palm Beach County's confusing "butterfly ballot."
About two in three say they want the federal government to outlaw punch-card ballots, ending the possibility of future debates over whether to count or ignore dimpled, pregnant or hanging chads.
Nearly nine in 10 want a federal rule that requires all jurisdictions in the country to use one kind of voting machine, effectively eliminating current claims that some voters, including many African Americans and other minorities, were discriminated against because they live in areas that use older, more error-prone voting machines.
And a similar percentage--86 percent--said they want standard rules for how and when recounts are done, issues that were at the heart of the vote-counting controversy in South Florida that ultimately was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Two in three support a single poll-closing time across the country, which would eliminate the possibility that news reports of election results from states in the East would affect voter turnout in the West.
"I don't have a chance to get to the voting booth until 6 or 6:30 at night, and I'm intending to vote for Bush, and they're telling me Gore already won," said Rachel Glidden, 44, an operating room technician from La Luz, N.M. "That's not fair. I haven't even had a chance to voice my say, and I already know what the result is."
Overall, the survey suggests Americans want uniformity and simplicity in their election laws as well as in the way people vote. "I never thought we still used punch machines," said Yvonne Martin, 55, a retiree who voted for Gore and lives in Rome, N.Y. "That's primitive."
Martin said it's critical that the federal government and not the states or counties establish the rules and decide which type of voting machine is used--with no exceptions granted. "One state can really mess it up if they don't do it right," she said. "I mean, Mickey Mouse could have done a better job than the election officials in Florida."
About six in 10 Americans say they want to amend the U.S. Constitution to select the president by direct popular vote and do away with the electoral college. If this system had been in place this year, Gore would have won because he received approximately 300,000 more votes nationwide than Bush.
"The electoral college is completely outdated," said Ed Evans, 29, a computer analyst in Beaverton, Ore., who voted for Gore. "It may have made sense 120 years ago. But we have the technology now that we can get an accurate popular vote. This is the country that invented democracy. Al Gore won the popular vote. It was the will of the people to elect him as president, but because of the electoral college, George Bush will be the president."
But most political observers say lawmakers and residents of less-populated states fear that presidential candidates would ignore them in favor of the larger states, and would effectively block any constitutional amendment.
That argument clearly resonates with the public, the Post-ABC News poll found. When those who supported direct election of a president were asked, "what if it meant presidential candidates paid less attention to the smaller states," the proportion favoring direct election dropped from 62 percent to 42 percent.
"I have mixed feelings," Martin said. "I realize that some of the states are smaller and they're helped [by the electoral college]. But in many ways, the public really feels the vote has been taken out of our hands in this election. It needs to be looked at but maybe not changed."
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