OPINION: Whitewashing the Facts: EAC Report Ignores Key Data

by Ralph G. Neas, President, People For the American Way Foundation - December 9, 2006

Report Misses Opportunities for Election Reform

On December 7, 2006, the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) released its much-anticipated report on voter fraud and voter intimidation, entitled “Election Crimes: An Initial Review and Recommendations for Future Study.” While it was thought that the EAC’s study of voter fraud and vote suppression might be a useful tool in advancing positive election policies in the future, the results of this “initial review” were disappointing, if not downright confusing and troubling. Rather than providing a tool that might drive productive election reform, the EAC has instead chosen to punt, creating a document that cannot be used to justify any legislation whatsoever, and most certainly cannot form the basis for the enactment of any further legislation, such as restrictive voter ID laws, which unreasonably restrict the rights of eligible voters to participate in the democratic process.

The EAC's failure to lead on this issue is particularly troubling, given the fact that the consultants hired to perform this study apparently reached radically different conclusions than those the EAC now espouses. While the EAC now claims that there is "no consensus" on the existence or pervasiveness of voter fraud, in a leaked earlier draft of this report, the bipartisan consultants concluded that "there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud, or at least much less than claimed." The EAC has thus far refused to explain this contradiction, refuses to release reports produced by the consultants, and appears to be preventing the consultants the opportunity to explain their findings publicly.

As evidence of the EAC's dysfunction on this issue, the final report released by the EAC creates an awkward, vague and unworkable definition for “election crimes,” unnecessarily excluding many fraudulent or disenfranchising acts from the definition. Furthermore, the report gratuitously excludes key data from its analysis, while recommending wasting needless time on areas of analysis that have already been completed, or have been demonstrated to be of questionable empirical value. Finally, the timing and circumstances surrounding the release of this report raise serious questions about the EAC’s motives in this study, and whether the EAC has left its tradition of bipartisan review of election procedures behind to become just another cog in Washington’s environment of virulent partisanship.