Election Reform in the States
Daniel J. Palazzolo and Laura Liefer
University of Richmond
2004 Southern Political Science Association Conference
New Orleans, Louisiana
Election Reform in the States
Daniel J. Palazzolo and Laura Leifer
University of Richmond
The 2000 presidential election will go down in history as an administrative
nightmare, especially for the state of Florida. The crisis was dramatically portrayed in
Palm Beach County, where the butterfly ballot confused voters and resulted in an unusual
number of votes for Pat Buchanan (Wand, et. al., 2001). But the problems surfaced in
virtually every aspect of Florida’s electoral system: questionable practices for handling
absentee ballots, inconsistent rules for determining a valid ballot and conducting recounts
throughout the state, problems with registration and verification of registration, and
mistreatment of voters whose names did not appear on the rolls. These problems existed
for years, though they came to light during an extraordinarily close election. Given the
crisis situation, it is not surprising that Florida legislators responded by passing a
comprehensive election reform bill within months of a Supreme Court case that ended the
electoral struggle and made George Bush president (MacManus, Forthcoming).
The problems with election administration were not unique to Florida, however.
In St. Louis Missouri, for instance, the Democratic Party went to court, alleging that
33,000 voters were “improperly thrown off the rolls” (Kropf, Forthcoming). Among the
numerous studies conducted after the 2000 election, one by the Democratic Investigative
staff of the House Committee on the Judiciary concluded: “the problems exposed in
Florida were replicated in the vast majority of states nationwide” (2002, 4). The report
found that over 1.2 million votes in 31 states and the District of Columbia were
discarded; voters were illegally purged from election rolls in at least 25 states; dis