BPC Task Force on Elections
BPC launched a new task force on improving the voting experience in February 2019. Three working groups are meeting and deliberating to give a voice to election administrators at the state and local level in the development of workable policy solutions to the elections process.
A full list of task force members is available here.
Goal: The task force will explore aspects of the voting process from voter registration through certification and auditing of results to generate bipartisan policy recommendations that improve the voting experience.
BPC will promote these policy recommendations built with bipartisan support from state and local elections administrators to members of Congress, state and local policymakers, and election administrators nationally.
The final report of the task force with recommendations for policy change will be available in January 2020.
Voter Registration
A properly-functioning election system requires an accurate and secure list of eligible voters who choose to participate.
Yet there are barriers to registration, and government is not meeting voter expectations for a modern, integrated way of accessing the voter rolls.
This task force will look at the entire registration process from start to finish.
The primary focus will be to improve the ways voters get on the list, including the availability of registration options, the verification of voter eligibility, and the maintenance of voter rolls to keep lists accurate.
For far too long, candidates and parties have fought about the maintenance of voter rolls. Lost is the balance between allowing administrators to remove ineligible voters and ensuring that eligible voters are not unfairly removed.
Real policy change in this area can help to dial down confrontation and lead to a more efficient election process with better safeguards against bloated rolls while ensuring that all eligible Americans who want to participate are able to access the voter registration process.
Casting a Vote
The ways many Americans cast their votes looks different today than it did 15 years ago and 15 years before that. The process evolves to meet the needs of the modern electorate.
·Some jurisdictions have chosen to greatly expand the voting options prior to Election Day over what was available historically. While more options mean more convenience for voters, these policies are not without costs. Policies are sometimes developed without much research and discussion about how each new mode of voting interacts with another—including potential unintended consequences—and the relative benefits.
This task force will analyze the ways by which voters cast—or want to cast—their votes in a modern, American voting system. It will recommend policy prescriptions that will better serve the voters. These topics could include voting by mail, early voting, vote centers, and more. But the goal is clear: we need better policy to better administer elections.
Counting the Vote
Voters will always expect an immediate accounting of the election results. Yet there are legitimate reasons that slow down the official count. Still, states have greatly diverged on how to conduct the post-election canvass, audit, recount, and certification.
The type of voting modes available in a given state impact the time it takes to count the ballots. There are also real concerns about very short and very long statutory timelines for canvassing, certification, recounts, and audits.
The policies guiding the post-election process are rarely discussed with policymakers outside of controversies arising from a given election. There have been few, if any, comprehensive reviews of all the components of the elections process that occur after Election Day in order to weigh states’ available options for governing this part of the election.
This task force will weigh all the factors that contribute to the post-election part of the voting process to produce recommendations that serve to ensure a full, transparent, and accurate count within a timeframe the public can embrace with confidence.