Shoring up the bedrock

Now that this historic campaign has come to its close and we know the next president, festering uncertainties about the sanctity of the vote mean that the American people stand to lose.

The people will lose because accusations that one side or the other planned to steal the election have become a staple of our recent politics, and these accusations threaten to rob our next president of the full share of legitimacy he will need to tackle our many serious challenges at home and abroad.

On the left, one hears reports of attempts at voter suppression — voterroll purges that target specific minority groups, threatening and misleading mailers and calls aimed at potential voters in Democratic-leaning areas, and insufficient voting facilities in poor neighborhoods. There is evidence that all these things have occurred in various states during recent elections; this campaign season, there have been charges of misinformation aimed at suppression in key states.

On the right, one hears reports of voter-registration fraud. This election season, the group ACORN is at the center of these charges because it has submitted lists that include some new registrants with highly suspicious names, one of the most egregious examples being "Mickey Mouse." The concern here is that fake registrations could lead to fraudulent votes. It's been pointed out in many places — including the Supreme Court — that studies show scant evidence of people voting under fake names; as some have put it, unless Mickey Mouse actually shows up to vote, it's not a real problem that a worker paid by the number of names he signs up registered Mickey to vote. Nevertheless, those who fear voter fraud might fairly point out that, short of this scenario, cheating would be very hard to detect.

The fears on both sides find traction, and the charges grow, in large part because government has failed to respond satisfactorily and equitably to these concerns. Voting regulations remain a patchwork of state laws. Efforts to address voter suppression often come too late if they come at all. Attempts to prevent registration fraud from becoming voting fraud have often failed to find compromise between protecting the vote and avoiding placing undue burdens on poor voters.

But nowhere is the lack of action — and the risk to the sanctity of everyone's vote, Republican, Democrat or Mugwump — more evident than with the manifold problems that plague electronic voting machines. Last year, my program "Dan Rather Reports" ran an expose on serious quality-control problems with touch-screen voting machines used by Florida voters in the 2006 election. This week, there have been reports from West Virginia about calibration problems with touch-screen machines there. From calibration, to software, to concerns about the need for a "paper trail" for recounts, questions surrounding the new generation of voting machines ushered in since the 2000 Florida debacle have slowly and steadily helped to erode American confidence in the vote.

This erosion eats into the bedrock of our democracy. It deepens our national divisions at a time of genuine crisis for our country. It is something we should not abide in the best of times and cannot abide at a time of genuine national crisis. The new president may discover that restoring confidence in the vote, perhaps through the study and recommendations of a nonpartisan commission, needs to become a top priority.