Americans will go to the polls in less than six months. The midterm elections are approaching too fast to properly consider and implement the slew of proposed changes promoted by President Donald Trump for the U.S. electoral system.
In recent months, Trump’s calls have ranged from proof of citizenship and photo identification requirements to purges of voter rolls. While his own attempts to push through such measures have floundered or been blocked, he shows no sign of giving up. And some similar measures he inspired have found other pathways at the state level.
Trump often cites large numbers of non-citizens voting in the elections as justification for these measures, despite no credible evidence of even small amounts of such fraud, even from investigators he tasked to find it.
Most reporting has framed such proposals along familiar U.S. faceoffs: Democrat vs. Republican or federal vs. state authority. As an American who has worked for decades on democracy globally, I see a critical comparative perspective lacking from this conversation: elements of these changes violate some of the most basic international election standards. They set off a whole dashboard of flashing red alarms. If such changes were made in a developing democracy, they would be noted as setbacks by election observers. Not good enough for them, should not be OK for the United States, a beacon of democracy for generations.
The challenge of timing
With elections so close now, the most urgent issue is that there should not be late changes to electoral rules and procedures. International best practice, such as from the Venice Commission, suggests that anything other than minor changes within a year of an election is too late. Why? Last-minute changes can unfairly favor some candidates and parties, make the implementation of new laws difficult, and create serious confusion and disenfranchisement for voters.
If all of them were forced through before November, they could create enough chaos to jeopardize the elections themselves, at a time when our democracy is already slipping. Whatever merit such proposals might promise is undermined by the rapidly disappearing midterm elections timeline.
Take the voter ID and citizenship requirements. On the surface, the call for such requirements sounds commonsensical. Why not require that voters prove their identity when they go to the ballot box? Most healthy democracies have ID requirements, so why not us? The problem is that the countries often given as examples, such as Brazil, Germany and India, all issue national identification to everyone for free − automatically. And they have been doing so for quite some time. It is routine. If every citizen has a national identity card, then requiring ID to vote presents no serious obstacle to voting.
But the U.S. does not provide free national identification to every citizen. And state-issued driver’s licenses do not fill this gap. To start, being able to drive should not be a requirement to vote. Passports are not a solution either. Most Americans don’t have one. They take months to acquire and cost at least $130.
Here is where the substance of such a proposal collides with the timeline. Currently, the government is far from having the capacity to assure that every eligible voter has official government photo ID and citizenship verified in time for the midterms. To get there requires a plan involving good legislation, approved budgets, procurement, infrastructure, public information campaigns and distribution. And you cannot complete that plan in under a year, much less in the six months remaining before the midterms.
Protecting confidence in elections
If the Trump administration is serious about the changes it proposes, it is obliged to do it right. The overwhelming responsibility is on the government, not the voter. Why? Because voting is not a privilege, it is one of the most fundamental rights in a democracy. And our democracy is sacred.
We would not want changes made in the name of democracy, ultimately harming it, would we?
Joe Brinker is a Cincinnati native. He just concluded two years as the policy fellow for democratic resilience at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Brussels. For decades, he has managed, supervised, or observed voting operations and programs throughout the world.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Election rules shouldn’t change at the last minute | Opinion
Reporting by Joe Brinker, Opinion contributor / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Joe Brinker, Opinion contributor | USA TODAY Network
