Mr. Chairman . . . Senator Lieberman and Distinguished members of the Committee . . . Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to detail the election problems that occurred in the City of St. Louis during the November 2000 Presidential Elections and to add my voice to those calling for meaningful and comprehensive election reform.

Last November’s general election in the city of St. Louis exposed a voting system that is riddled with serious election procedural mistakes; major deficiencies in poll worker training; obsolete and inadequate equipment; and gross errors in maintaining accurate voter rolls that resulted in the disenfranchisement of thousands of qualified voters in my district.

These factors led to an election conducted amid widespread voter chaos at polling places throughout the city -- the result of a record voter turnout and the arbitrary and capricious removal -- by the St. Louis Board of Elections --of over 50,000 qualified voters from the city’s active voter rolls.

When these voters – most of whom were African American -- arrived at the polls to cast their votes, they were told by election officials they were not on the active voter list and that they would not be allowed to vote at their normal voting precinct.

Due to inadequate communication between polling precincts and the Central Election office, election workers were unable to verify the eligibility of these voters.

Additionally, poll workers had not received training for dealing with these situations, so they ultimately directed all of the affected voters to go to the Central Election Board office downtown to verify their status.

The resulting confusion at the Central Election office led to a near riot as thousands of eligible voters attempted to cast their vote, some to no avail.

To make matters worse, while the Election Board was clearly unprepared for the massive voter turnout, they were also slow to react to the growing voter confusion they created as the day progressed.

And equally troubling was the Election Board officials’ resistance to reasonable remedies designed to ensure that every qualified voter be afforded the opportunity to cast his or her vote without obstruction.

Clearly, such a situation cannot and must not be tolerated. Such conditions not only create confusion among voters; they also threaten the integrity of the Electoral process itself.

It is imperative that federal, state and local officials join in a common effort to reform how we conduct our elections.

The nation should never again be subjected to the voting travesty of the last presidential election. The system is broken and it is time that we admit it and work towards common sense solutions.

First, we must take legislative action to provide the necessary funds for modern, state-of-the-art uniform voting equipment, paying particular attention to lower income communities that have long been burdened with outdated and obsolete voting equipment.

And to the maximum extent possible, we must mandate uniform ballot designs and eliminate the current 40-year old punchcard system.

We must also require that local election officials develop comprehensive training standards for their workers and hold them accountable for implementing such training.

Lastly, and most importantly, we must mandate election procedure reform to ensure that qualified voters are not arbitrarily or inadvertently removed from active voter rolls.

This was a major failure in the City of St. Louis and I suspect this situation is widespread across the country.

Voters should not continue to suffer disenfranchisement because election officials are unwilling or unable to safeguard their fundamental right to vote.

If we fail to act now, we will not only inflict further damage to the democratic process . . . we will also fail in our sworn duty to protect and defend the fundamental rights of every citizen.

Thank you.