Voting devalued

VOTERS FRUSTRATED by Florida's recount debacle in 2000 got better results last year -- but not much. Congress will lower voter confidence again if it fails to confront the problem.

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After the Florida recount, Congress responded far too slowly. In 2002 it finally created the US Election Assistance Commission, but gave it too weak a mandate, and then underfunded it. The commission was unable to start operations for 10 months, and then, as its own annual report says, ''had no offices, equipment, or staff." President Bush has not helped; he has proposed $600 million less than the agreed-upon target budget for the agency, even as he pushes more tax cuts.

In 2004, thousands of voters in many states still had problems with faulty registration records. Extremely long lines in Ohio and other states deterred thousands more, and there were serious technical glitches and errors, including 4,438 computer votes that simply disappeared in North Carolina.

One explanation for the lassitude in Washington comes from an easily understood congressional mind-set: Any system that elected us can't be too bad. But it is bad. The members of Congress should be embarrassed by the continued problems last year, and also by the recent resignation of the commission's first chairman, DeForest Soaries, who complained to the Associated Press: ''You have to beg Congress for money as if the commission were your idea." Soaries said citizens should expect high voting standards, but ''there doesn't seem to be a corresponding sense of urgency among policymakers in Washington."

The current chair, Gracia Hillman, emphasizes the progress that has been made. In a visit with Globe editors last week, she noted that provisional voting is now required nationwide, so thousands of people who might have been excluded in the past were able to vote provisionally in 2004, and two-thirds were counted. Also, nearly $2 billion in federal grants helped most states upgrade their voting machinery. And the commission, she said, is pushing states to maintain statewide voter registration lists, as required by the 2002 Help America Vote Act.

Still, there are major gaps. In most cases, the commission was empowered by Congress only to offer guidelines rather than set standards. Also, many states are jealous of their historical role as masters or their own voting systems, and they resist the uniformity that would make sense -- at least for national elections. Likewise, the commission has no power to require that new voting machines make a paper record, even though the technology is simple and inexpensive -- millions of ATMs do it every day.

Congress owes much greater commitment to the mechanics of democracy, and voters should demand it.