Today, Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) reintroduced the Voting Opportunity and Technology Enhancement Rights (VOTER) Act of 2007 as part of his ongoing effort to ensure that all Americans are fully able to participate in elections, and to help restore public confidence in our nation’s voting systems.  A senior Democrat on the Rules Committee, Senator Dodd is a longtime leader on election reform issues and an original author of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), comprehensive election reform legislation enacted in 2002 in the wake of the debacle of the 2000 presidential election. HAVA included a number of critical reforms to ensure safer, more secure and transparent balloting procedures for federal elections, and provided substantial funding to enable states and localities to upgrade antiquated voting systems and procedures.  

Among other things, the VOTER Act would provide for a nationwide federal write-in/absentee ballot; require states to provide for a voter-verified ballot; ensure that provisional ballots cast anywhere in a state are counted; eliminate regional and local disparities in the allocation of voting machines and poll workers; mandate early voting and election day registration procedures; and protect against improper purging of registration lists in federal elections.

“We must have procedures in place in our elections which enable us both to broaden voter participation and then reliably to count every vote of every eligible voter,” declared Dodd. “A provisional ballot cast anywhere in Ohio should count just as it does in Minnesota. There is no reason that voters in inner city areas should be forced to wait in lengthy lines, while their counterparts in the suburbs are able to vote immediately. If voters want to verify their ballots are cast as they intended, they should have the means to do so. If voters in Oregon can vote early, why can’t voters in Michigan, and if citizens in Idaho enjoy same day registration, why shouldn’t voters in Florida?”

“Our elections are the very foundation of our democracy. With HAVA, we made great strides toward repairing cracks in that foundation, but clearly we still need to do more to strengthen and reinforce each American’s right to vote and have that vote counted,” said Dodd. “When you step into a voting booth, you are exercising the most fundamental right Americans have and reaffirming this nation’s belief in democracy.  We should be doing all that we can to make this right easily accessible to all of our citizens, and to bolster their confidence in our voting system, which has been severely damaged in recent elections.”   

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