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89–838 2014

EXAMINING THE VOTING PROCESS—HOW STATES 

CAN BUILD ON RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE 

BAUER-GINSBERG COMMISSION 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE 

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE 

ADMINISTRATION 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

Held in Washington, DC, July 23, 2014 

Printed for the use of the Committee on House Administration 

( 

Available on the Internet 

www.fdsys.gov 


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COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION 

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan, Chairman 

GREGG HARPER, Mississippi 

PHIL GINGREY, M.D., Georgia 

AARON SCHOCK, Illinois 

TODD ROKITA, Indiana 

RICHARD B. NUGENT, Florida 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania, Ranking 

Minority Member 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

JUAN VARGAS, California 

PROFESSIONAL STAFF

SEAN MORAN, Staff Director 

KYLE ANDERSON, Minority Staff Director 


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EXAMINING THE VOTING PROCESS—HOW 

STATES CAN BUILD ON RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE BAUER-GINSBERG COMMISSION 

WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2014 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:33 a.m., in Room 

1310, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Candice S. Miller 

(chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Miller, Harper, Rokita, Nugent, and 

Brady. 

Staff Present: Sean Moran, Staff Director; John Clocker, Deputy 

Staff Director; Bob Sensenbrenner, Deputy General Counsel; Yael 

Barash, Legislative Clerk; Erin Sayago, Communications Director; 

Kyle Anderson, Minority Staff Director; Matt Pinkus, Minority 

Senior Policy Advisor; Matt DeFreitas, Minority Professional Staff; 

Khalil Abboud, Minority Deputy Counsel; Thomas Hicks, Minority 

Senior Counsel; Mike Harrison, Minority Chief Counsel; Greg Abbott, Minority Professional Staff; and Eddie Flaherty, Minority 

Chief Clerk. 

The CHAIRMAN. I am going to call to order the Committee on 

House Administration’s hearing on examination of our Nation’s voting process and the recommendations that were released by the 

Bauer-Ginsberg Commission in January of this year. And the hearing record will remain open for 5 legislative days so that members 

can submit any materials that they wish to be included therein. 

The CHAIRMAN. And a quorum is present, so we will proceed. 

I certainly want to thank my fellow committee members for 

being here today to discuss this very important issue. And the purpose of this hearing is to discuss how States and local election officials can build upon the recommendations that were outlined in the 

Presidential Commission on Election Administration report, otherwise commonly known as the Bauer-Ginsberg Commission report. 

And I certainly want to thank the two co-chairs of the Commission for coming today. And we appreciate your time and your attendance to this. And we appreciate your service as well to the 6- 

month study that you conducted to identify ways in which our 

State and local election officials can improve the voting process for 

every American. 

I was a former secretary of state in Michigan, the Chief Elections 

Official of my State, so I certainly understand the challenges. I like 


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to think I understand the challenges of election officials and what 

they face each and every day. It was my duty then, as it is for 

other secretaries of state, to ensure each and every election runs 

smoothly, that the voting process is absolutely accessible and understandable to citizens of voting age, and most importantly, that 

the results were accurate, as accurate as possible, when we go to 

elect our public leaders. 

It was certainly all of our hopes that the Commission’s recommendations would assist the States in useful and effective and 

nonpartisan ways so that every election official is able to meet 

their mission of a successful election. And since the administration 

of elections is inherently a State function, I was very hesitant then, 

as I am now, about Washington mandates, which is why actually, 

in full transparency—I mentioned this to our two witnesses—when 

the President created the Bauer-Ginsberg Commission, I didn’t believe that a new Federal commission was needed. 

However, as I looked at your report, I have to say that I was 

very—I don’t know if I should use the word pleasantly surprised, 

but I was very encouraged that the report focused on utilizing good 

local governance over elections, and it made recommendations on 

different ideas that I think really can help locals improve upon 

their own voting process. 

So we certainly didn’t want to have the Commission’s recommendations be shelfware. We thought it was a great idea. And 

I talked to my Ranking Member about having this hearing in a 

way that we can hopefully amplify some of the recommendations 

that the Commission has made. 

It is certainly my belief that the primary role for Federal Government in election administration is not to dictate to local officials or 

to place mandates on them, but again simply to help in an advisory 

way so that State election officials can do their important work to 

make certain that every American citizen is able to cast their vote 

and make sure that their votes are counted. 

I will just give you one example from my time as Michigan Secretary of State. We actually in our State have a very decentralized 

type of election system, administration, to the extent that we have 

over 1,800 various local units, various election clerks that are responsible for administering elections there. Every one of them, previously to what we called a qualified voter file, actually had maintained their own voter registration lists. It wasn’t uncommon to go 

into some small areas, and you would find the clerks had put their 

voter registration lists in a cigar box in their closet or something. 

But at any rate, Michigan is quite a large State. And what we 

did is we computerized it all. We melded it all together. And we 

now call it the Michigan Qualified Voter File. We actually eliminated over 700,000 duplicate voter registrations from the file when 

we were able to do that. We had quite a bit of pushback initially 

from using that kind of technology. It doesn’t seem so high tech 

today, but at the time it was. 

And it has worked really great. It has been a great product. In 

fact, it was cited by the Ford-Carter Presidential Commission on 

Federal Election Reform as a national model back in the day. And 

many other States have certainly used something like that and 

have improved upon it as well. 


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I mention that just because we did that without any Federal 

mandate. We did it without any Federal money. The State of 

Michigan determined that this was something we wanted to invest 

in to make sure that our State’s election officers were able to accomplish their goal. So we did it ourselves. And many of the recommendations offered by the Bauer-Ginsberg Commission I think 

were great suggestions and ideas that the States can implement. 

And again, they can do so without the need for Federal financial 

assistance. 

This report offered a number of recommendations, best practices, 

practical suggestions, such as online tools to assist election officials 

with determining how many voting machines should be deployed in 

which area, depending on the need. Certainly every State and local 

voting precinct tries to continually improve on their efforts to maintain up-to-date and accurate voter lists, and resources and education materials on how and where to vote, and of course ensuring 

that their ballot resources are properly deployed. They hope to accomplish these things while also hopefully reducing some of the administration costs that are associated with making all of this information available and streamlining the process. 

We are all aware of the challenges election officers face when it 

comes to administering elections, but particularly when their budgets are facing constraints that force them to prioritize. However, 

clearly, the States want to have the best voting processes in place 

and one that fits best with their residents. 

The voting process is really not a one size fits all, so even the 

best-intended Federal mandates I think can backfire when the 

process used historically in various States does not fit with that 

mandate. Every State should always strive to utilize good ideas 

and procedures that work for them, but they are wise to listen to 

good ideas from other States that can help them improve. 

Today we are here to listen to our two witnesses on their experience with this Commission and what they learned from the various 

State and local election officials from around the country. And we 

are especially interested in hearing about what they have heard 

from election officials since the Commission’s report was released, 

especially I think as we are thinking about the upcoming midterm 

election where many of the voting precincts will be in the spotlight 

again. 

And I will also just take one moment of personal privilege and 

say that I was very pleased that the President also put on your 

Commission an individual that in my humble estimation is the best 

election officer in the Nation, Chris Thomas, who is the Michigan 

director of state elections. He is widely recognized as certainly really a leader in this field. And I know you had an excellent Commission to work with. 

The right to vote is the foundation of the American democratic 

system, and the Framers of our Constitution tasked each and every 

one of our States with the immense responsibility of administering 

and protecting that right. And while we, the Federal Government, 

always seek better ways to be partners with the State, again we 

need to keep in mind their challenges and to avoid costly mandates 

that inhibit, actually could inhibit their ability to protect the integVerDate Sep 11 2014 02:18 Oct 03, 2014 Jkt 089838 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A838.XXX A838

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rity of our electoral system. And instead we need to find ways to 

alleviate their burdens. 

Preserving the integrity of our electoral process is certainly of 

the utmost importance, and I know that again every State and 

every election officer takes that role seriously. 

Again, I want to thank you for coming, the two witnesses. We 

certainly are all looking forward to your testimony. We have read 

your opening statements. 

And at this time I would like to recognize my ranking member, 

Mr. Brady from Pennsylvania, for his opening statement. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Madam Chairman. First of all, could we 

put another log on the fire? It is awful hot in here, isn’t it? This 

is not one of the meetings we need to be too hot at. It is a good 

meeting. 

The CHAIRMAN. Particularly on the House Administration Committee. 

Mr. BRADY. Yeah. We thought we should be nice and cool in here. 

But anyway, I would like to thank my friend Chairman Miller 

for holding this hearing today. Having an open dialogue is vital to 

solving the problems that plague our elections, and I thank the 

chair for calling attention to this issue of critical importance. 

I also want to thank our witnesses, Mr. Bauer and Mr. Ginsberg, 

whose determination and expertise are critically important to fixing our elections. 

Following the 2012 presidential election, President Obama set 

out to improve America’s voting experience. In 2012, many voters, 

regardless of their political affiliation, were faced with unreasonably long wait times to cast their ballot. Other eligible Americans 

were disenfranchised altogether as a result of outdated voter registration policies. 

Clean, efficient, and accurate elections are the cornerstone of our 

democratic system of government. It is crucial that we assure that 

all eligible voters have full and unimpeded access to the ballot box. 

This is why I believe the work of the Commission was so important. 

I fully respect the autonomy of the States in administering their 

elections, but also believe that Congress, and more specifically this 

committee, has a duty to ensure no eligible voter is turned away 

for any reason. I will continue to advocate for equal access to the 

ballot box for all eligible voters. 

Once again, thank you, Madam Chairman, and I look forward to 

the testimony of our expert witnesses. 

And thank you for your participation not only in this hearing, 

but your participation again to making our election process work. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

[The statement of Mr. Brady follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. I now recognize the gentleman from Mississippi 

for his opening statement. 

Mr. HARPER. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

And thank you, Mr. Bauer, Mr. Ginsberg, for your work on this 

and for your service and for sharing the experiences and giving us 

much to consider. 

The election process is very dear to me, not just because I am 

an elected official, because it really embodies self-governance and 

how we do things in this country. So I began working on elections 

and political campaigns as a college student, like many individuals. 

Before I came to Congress, I served as a county party chair for 

about 8 years, was one of those souls down in West Palm Beach, 

Florida, during the recount in 2000 as a Republican observer. So 

it is quite a process to watch and participate in. 

But I think it is important to participate in the election process, 

and we wish everyone would. I know from firsthand experience in 

running numerous elections at the county level that it is not an 

easy task. Sometimes we don’t anticipate as heavy a turnout as it 

winds up being or misjudge where the turnout will be and 

misallocate voting machines. Machines break. Finding and training 

poll workers, who in my home State work about 16-hour days for 

not a lot of money, can be quite a challenge also. 

When everything runs smoothly, few people notice. But when a 

problem occurs, everybody screams and looks for the problems, 

whether they may claim fraud or corruption. I believe your Commission primarily grew out of concerns about long lines and some 

difficulties with voting in the 2012 election in what was really limited to a few jurisdictions. The assumption too many are quick to 

make is that some kind of voter suppression must have taken 

place. 

To me, long lines at voting precincts mean that a lot of people 

are voting, and that is always a very good thing. It is interesting 

how the media portrays people standing in long lines in other countries, whether it was in Iraq or Afghanistan or other countries, that 

those folks who wait in long lines are heroes, which they are. But 

long lines of Americans standing in line for a couple of hours is 

portrayed as a broken system. 

Now, this is not to say that we can’t do better, and that we 

should, and that is why I think the focus of your report, we need 

to look at how we can make it easier for folks to vote. I am all in 

favor of improving the process. I am not in favor of weakening accountability. I have some concerns about early voting, and I worry 

about the integrity of electronic voting systems, both for voting and 

for recapping elections. There were allegations of a serious attempt 

of hacking of the electronic vote tabulation system during the recent Ukrainian presidential election by another foreign power in 

order to change the outcome. That is always disturbing. 

New technology is great, but we must have sufficient safeguards. 

And in my view, primitive as it may sound, there is no greater 

safeguard than a paper ballot. 

I appreciate the work you did on the Commission and the report. 

And again, thank you for your appearances today. We look forward 

to your testimony. 

And I yield back. 


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The CHAIRMAN. Thank the gentleman. 

Any other opening statements? 

Let me introduce our witnesses, then. First, we have Robert 

Bauer, who is a partner at Perkins Coie. In 30 years of practice he 

has provided counseling and representation on matters involving 

regulation of political activity before the courts and administrative 

agencies, of national party committees, candidates, political committees, individuals, Federal office holders, corporations and trade 

associations, and tax-exempt groups. He served as the White House 

counsel to President Obama and returned to private practice in 

June 2011. 

In 2013, the President named Bob to be co-chair of the Presidential Commission on Elections Administration. He was general 

counsel to Obama for America and the President’s campaign organization in 2008 and 2012. And he is general counsel to the Democratic National Committee. 

And our second witness, again the co-chair of the Commission, is 

Benjamin Ginsberg, who is a partner at Jones Day in Washington, 

D.C., where he represents a variety of clients on election law 

issues, particularly those involving Federal and State campaign finance laws, ethics and gift rules, pay-to-play laws, election administration, government investigations, communications law, and 

election recounts and contests. 

He recently served, as we say, as a co-chair of the Presidential 

Commission on Election Administration. Prior to joining Jones Day 

in 2014, he served as national counsel to the Bush-Cheney Presidential campaigns in the 2004 and 2000 election cycles and played 

a central role in the 2000 Florida recount. In 2012 and 2008, he 

served as national counsel to the Romney for President campaign, 

and he has also represented campaigns and leadership PACs of numerous members of the Senate and House, as well as to the national party committee. 

So we have two—talk about two experts in a very bipartisan way 

here before us today. I think this will certainly be interesting testimony. 

And I would now recognize Mr. Bauer for his opening statement. 

STATEMENTS OF MR. ROBERT F. BAUER, CO-CHAIR, PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION ON ELECTION ADMINISTRATION; 

AND MR. BENJAMIN L. GINSBERG, CO-CHAIR, PRESIDENTIAL 

COMMISSION ON ELECTION ADMINISTRATION 

STATEMENT OF ROBERT F. BAUER 

Mr. BAUER. Thank you, Madam Chairman, members of the committee, Ranking Member Brady. I am very pleased to be here with 

my co-chair, Ben Ginsberg. We have become a bipartisan traveling 

party on this subject. And I am glad to go first. I told your staff 

before we came, I am always pleased to be Ben Ginsberg’s warmup 

act. 

I also would like to say one thing, Chair Miller, about Chris 

Thomas, because, oddly, I had pencilled in his name to the written 

testimony to say that he is, in fact, one of the finest election administrators in the country, and a member of our Commission who I 

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standingly, and is an important part of the implementation of the 

recommendations of the report that in the division of testimony 

that Ben and I have agreed upon Ben will talk about. 

But let me just say very briefly—and I have submitted a statement for the record, so I won’t duplicate it—but let me say a little 

bit something briefly about the approach that we took and also 

some of our experience with the positive reception of the report and 

how that is shaping how we look at what lies ahead, including the 

effort to implement this report. 

Our outstanding research director, Nate Persily of Stanford Law, 

was fond of saying throughout our experience with the Commission 

that we were working not so much on a report as on a project, on 

a long-term project. And we view the report, in effect, as having 

kicked something off with its publication; not ending the day it was 

published, but, in effect, opening up with its publication opportunities to work on these recommendations that are very, very important to us and how we perceive the success of what we have done. 

Now, of course, the origin of the Commission’s work is fairly 

traced to the problem of long lines that obviously received a lot of 

attention when the Commission was established. But the Commission of course was charged with looking at a range of issues that 

election administrators face. And of great importance to us, and I 

want to stress it here today, is that it is important that we view 

election administration as a subject of public administration. Obviously, politics enters into this discussion all the time. But at bottom and throughout our work we tried to focus on election administration as a topic of public administration, and to look at the service that we provided our voters as very similar to the service that 

our best companies would provide their customers. We have to 

treat the voters with the same respect and hope to achieve on their 

behalf the same level of performance and efficiency. 

When we think about the problems that we encounter in the voting process, we know that any one problem we identify could have 

many sources. So if we think about lines, for example, there may 

be any reason, number of reasons why lines prove to be 

impermissibly or inappropriately long. That could include the design and administration of polling places, errors in voter registration lists, poor training programs for polling workers. There are a 

variety of reasons. So the problem has to be attacked at various different points. 

Throughout our consideration of the issues, we looked very hard 

at data. Of great importance to bipartisan election administration 

is to stay close to the facts, to the data, to the best understanding 

of how elections are administered and what goes wrong with elections. And that is why we were well served by the senior research 

director we had, both a political scientist and a law professor, Professor Persily, who helped guide the Commission to the best 

sources of information that we have about what really takes place 

in the conduct of elections and what really lies behind some of the 

problems that our voters confront. 

So with those few preliminary observations, let me just add a 

couple more. 

We heard at the outset of our work from a variety of sources, 

from election administrators around the country, that they were 


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concerned that one size of reform did not fit all. And we understand that there is a concern with one size does not fit all, that it 

is possible that what works in one jurisdiction may not work in another. But we are confident, and I think this is true of all of the 

commissioners, that our recommendations are suitable for the vast 

majority of jurisdictions. 

All election administrators, as the chair well knows, as a former 

secretary of state, confront a similar set of challenges, from the registration of voters and the verification of eligibility, to polling place 

management and equipment acquisition, to the successful transmission and tally of the results. And we found that our administrators across the country, whom we heard from in hearings, in formal 

hearings, and also in the court of testimony that we elicited, all 

agree that there were fundamental responsibilities that election administrators engaged in that could be addressed with solutions of 

common application. 

Those administrators, we want to stress, I certainly want to 

stress, I think Ben would agree, deserve all the support that they 

can get. They are asked to perform at the highest levels, but routinely provided with inadequate levels of support, and in particular 

inadequate levels of resources. Our elections occur periodically in 

this country, but the issues of election administration receive generally only infrequent attention. And the Commission, while not 

making any specific recommendations about the level of resources 

required, did want to and did stress that at the end of the day 

States and localities do need resources to carry out the functions 

that they are engaged in. 

And this question of resources is deeply implicated in a second 

point that I wanted to raise out of the report before this committee, 

and that is the resources that will be required, the thinking and 

the planning that will be required to meet the challenge that we 

face in the next generation of voting technology. 

The Commission has described this as a looming technology crisis. It didn’t mean to exaggerate, and I don’t think it did exaggerate. Election administrators across the country, everywhere, 

Democratic and Republican, expressed concern that we are facing 

a major problem with transitioning from the technology currently 

in use to the technology that we will need in elections still to come. 

And we have to listen carefully to them. They are the ones who are 

putting on elections. They are the ones who are ordering the machines, testing the machines, using the machines. And that is what 

they are telling us. 

This importance of resources is matched by the very important 

question of how election administrators allocate the resources that 

they have. And here we tried to supplement the report that we 

issued with the provision of online tools that would assist administrators in the management of the polling place to avoid and anticipate long lines. 

The tools that the Commission recommended are still posted online and available on the Cal Tech-MIT Technology Project Web 

site. They are open source. They are available for improvement. 

And as Ben will describe shortly, we are going to continue to work 

with election administrators to make these tools widely available, 


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to work with them, to improve them, and to try in other ways to 

be supportive of their efforts to address the lines problem. 

And finally, one quick point, because I see that my time has expired. The Commission’s focus was on State and local election administration and the means of improving it through administrative 

reform and best practices. We didn’t make Federal legislative recommendations. But we did hear testimony across the board from 

jurisdictions that there are Federal statutes that protect discrete 

populations of voters—military voters, language minority voters, 

disabled voters—that simply are not attracting the level of compliance and the success of compliance that they should. 

One notable exception is the MOVE Act, that affects military voters, which seems to have been quite successful by all accounts. But 

other statutes that we have confronted, the ones that I have cited, 

have not been similarly as successful as they might be in implementation. And in particular—and here I am channeling Chris 

Thomas, because nobody expresses this better, in a more informed 

way or, frankly, more tartly than Chris Thomas—we have a major 

problem with departments of motor vehicles across the country who 

are not attending successfully to their registration responsibilities 

under the National Voter Registration Act. And this is something 

that we hope will receive attention across the country. 

So the Federal Government has established an important presence in these areas and compliance is critically important. 

So with that, I would like to close by saying we are pleased with 

the reception of the recommendations. We hear continued offers to 

continue to work on those recommendations from State and local 

election officials. And where we go from here, this phase of implementation is something I would like to turn over to my co-chair, 

Mr. Ginsberg, to discuss further. 

And I would say before I do so, I am not surprised, but it was 

an absolute pleasure to work with Ben Ginsberg on this. And I 

would never say so privately, so I thought I would say so publicly. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. We appreciate that, Mr. 

Bauer. 

[The statement of Mr. Bauer follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. And the Chair recognizes Mr. Ginsberg. 

STATEMENT OF BENJAMIN L. GINSBERG 

Mr. GINSBERG. Thank you, Madam Chair, Ranking Member 

Brady. Thank you for having us here today. 

We very much appreciate the opportunity to talk about the Commission and its recommendations and how we plan on implementing its best practices and advice we have for State and local 

jurisdictions. 

It was a pleasure to work with Bob. We did enjoy the opportunity 

to step out for a bit, bring our perspectives from being in the partisan trenches for many years. The members of our Commission, 

Chris Thomas and his seven colleagues, provided a great deal of expertise to us. Nate Persily was remarkable in the breadth of research. We held hearings around the country and numerous meetings with interest groups and individuals concerned about the process, and that helped inform the recommendations and best practices that we presented in the report. 

Two general points. First, Bob and I are both very proud of what 

is in the report, the way that we have tried to deal with the situations that State and local officials who put on elections, and attempt to ease the problems which serve as obstacles to duly qualified citizens being able to cast their votes. That was our mission 

and what we have tried to do in the report. We would urge you to 

read the report, and this summary of our testimony will touch on 

some of the highlights. 

There are no Federal mandates in the report. We believe the 

Commission came up with practical solutions for State and local 

administrators to make the voting experience better for all citizens. 

The report passed with bipartisan and unanimous agreement. 

Secondly, we were certainly acutely aware that the actual implementation of this or any report is the really hard part, especially 

in an area like election administration that is so decentralized in 

the our country. Thanks to the Bipartisan Policy Center here in 

Washington, there is an ongoing plan to implement the Commission’s recommendations and best practices, which I look forward to 

describing in a moment. 

The area into which this report delves, elections and voting, is 

certainly one where there can be conflict between Republicans and 

Democrats. But it is also a subject where Republicans and Democrats can agree and do agree on the basic principle, that every legally registered voter has the right to be able to cast his or her ballot easily and without barriers. For that reason, there is a positive 

agenda of reforms that can be made in this area, and we believe 

that the report provides that blueprint. 

For the solutions, the Commission recognized at the outset that 

our elections are administered by approximately 8,000 different jurisdictions, largely using volunteers who often don’t receive proper 

training. As a result, achieving uniformity or Federal solutions that 

actually work in our elections has proven challenging. 

There are individual specifics included in the written testimony 

and of course in the report itself. But in terms of a positive agenda 

moving forward, I particularly urge you to look at long lines, a 

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tions and recommendations. We found after our study that, in fact, 

the solutions, as Bob mentioned, are identifiable and solvable. And 

the report and the Web sites provide tools to be able to do that, 

as well as the practical, on-the-ground best practices that others 

who have faced this situation have recommended. 

Online registration and two programs that help the States check 

the accuracy of their voter registration lists against those of other 

States each received support across the political spectrum. Accurate voter lists is something that the right and the left agree is 

necessary, whether for the purpose of providing greater efficiency, 

more accuracy, cost savings, online registration, and the two programs are helpful ingredients to a positive agenda. 

Reducing the barriers to voting that Bob mentioned faced by 

military overseas voters, disabled voters, language minorities, is all 

an important part of enforcing laws that are on the books and 

doing the right thing for our citizens. And again the practical recommendations and best practices are included. 

The simple proposition is that, as Bob said, we do have two 

major things to deal with. One is the technology crisis. We did not 

meet a single State or local administrator who either was satisfied 

with the machines that their jurisdiction was using at the moment 

or saw a solution in what was currently available on the market 

or was pleased with the certification process that makes it much 

more difficult to be able to move forward with technological advances that have taken place in the rest of society. 

And the adequate physical facilities that communities rely on is 

often schools. Yet there are problems with using schools because of 

safety concerns. That is a conflict, the rights of voters and the safety of children, that should not be allowed to conflict. The report recommends having in-service training days on election day so that 

schools can be used. But that is something that State and local administrators, that we wish to try and enable them to achieve. 

In terms of the implementation, as I mentioned at the outset, it 

is really important to get the recommendations and best practices 

into State and local jurisdictions and being able to use on that 

level. We are particularly thankful, for that reason, to the Bipartisan Policy Center, which has agreed to house a program whose 

goal is to get the recommendations and best practices implemented 

by the States and localities. 

Specifically, the center has augmented its staff by bringing on 

two people very involved with voting issues, one an alum of our 

Commission, the other a former State election official. They will be 

working directly with States and localities looking for opportunities 

to implement legislation, looking for opportunities to go into some 

of the polling places with historically long lines to be able to implement the solutions to help that serve as a test case for others. 

The BPC project will also work on improving the certification 

process for new technology and look for legislative opportunities on 

online registration, legislation to ensure the place of schools as voting places, and other improvements that are mentioned in the report. 

With that, let me reiterate that there is a positive agenda with 

which Republicans and Democrats can move forward so that all leVerDate Sep 11 2014 02:18 Oct 03, 2014 Jkt 089838 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A838.XXX A838

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gally qualified voters can cast their ballots without barriers that all 

agree should not be there. 

Thanks again for having us here today and letting us report to 

you on our recommendations, best practices, and how we will implement them. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, gentlemen. 

[The statement of Mr. Ginsberg follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Let me just start with a question. And I think 

it was really sort of the impetus for the President putting the Commission in place, really, was the long lines that we all watched. 

And I have to tell you, and I don’t mean to always talk about my 

experience as secretary of state, but we all come from our own 

prism of whatever our personal experiences were. And we are looking at sort of the usual suspects of where these long lines were, because it wasn’t all over the country, it wasn’t in some of the precincts that had heavy, heavy, heavy voter participation. 

And in a State like mine that doesn’t have either early vote or 

same-day registration or any of those kinds of things, it doesn’t 

even have no-reason AV voting, I am not going to say we had no 

lines anywhere, but there was no reports of anybody—I mean, 

what we saw on the TV that was happening in one State was really 

happening in one State, from what I would tell. There were a couple of other areas. 

I mean, I talked to some of our other election officials afterward 

and said, you can just see what happened there. They didn’t have 

enough voting equipment. I mean, it is pretty fundamental things, 

I think, is my personal opinion. They didn’t have enough voting 

equipment, they hadn’t had good education, training for the precinct. The election workers that they had, as you say, many of 

them, most of them are volunteers or else they just hire them as 

they need. That is not their full-time job. 

They perhaps didn’t take into account the number of registered 

voters in that particular precinct and had them put in the proper 

numeric order and all of these kinds of things. Again, I think it is 

sort of a fundamental thing. 

So actually, in the case of Florida, not to point on Florida, but 

I thought the governor of Florida did exactly the right thing, actually, by tasking their secretary of state with taking a look at what 

had happened there and making some recommendations, which 

they did. And I looked at that report, and it was very much along 

the lines of what I am talking about here, the kinds of problems 

that they found. 

But is there anything in particular that you think, as you have 

looked at that—I mean, again, talking about Federal mandates, 

you can’t mandate good management, obviously—but what kinds of 

things we could help amplify the Commission’s recommendation so 

that election workers who do experience these kinds of long lines, 

what can we actually do? Obviously, nobody wants to look at these 

very long lines. 

There was one individual in particular that I know the President 

pointed to as an elderly person who had to wait for a long time, 

and she was trying to early vote. And I was just thinking, why 

didn’t they vote absentee or perhaps they could have some line 

workers come out and, for goodness sakes, offer her a chair or 

something? I mean, some of these basics kinds of things. Again, it 

is not really a Federal mandate. 

So I am not quite sure what we can do to assist in that area, 

other than pointing out these very basic things. And what is your, 

to either of our witnesses in regards to the long line, is there anything that was unbelievably unique that caused these long lines, 


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other than what most election officers would recognize immediately? 

Mr. GINSBERG. It seemed to vary very much by the jurisdictions 

where there were problems, with some commonalities. But, again, 

when you have 8,000 different jurisdictions administering elections, 

uniformity is not one of those things that is going to come naturally. 

In the places where there did seem to be long lines, and we held 

a field hearing in Miami and heard from the administrators of 

most of the counties that had the line problem, part of it is administrative decision making, part of it is the facilities in which polling 

places actually take place. And part of it is just kind of what you 

mentioned, which is, recognizing which particular precincts are 

going to have a greater influx of voters because of new registrations. 

Even in the counties around the country where there were the 

worst lines, it was not at every polling place, it was only at some 

of the polling places, and actually a relatively few number of the 

polling places where there were long lines. It is a problem that 

should be dealt with. 

The resource tools that are at supportthevoter.gov and on the Cal 

Tech-MIT Web site that Bob mentioned provide a way that not only 

election administrators, but actually citizens who want to deal with 

the number of machines available, the historic voter flows, both in 

terms of raw numbers and when they occur during the day, can all 

provide that. 

The report also goes into commonsense solutions, like providing 

sample ballots to people beforehand so they can read the ballot before they go into the polling place and help with their decision. 

Line walkers who go around and spot problems while they are 

waiting in line before there are people who are actually going 

through the process and slowing everybody else down. 

Providing big central rooms where people can wait to vote. You 

go in, you take a number, and then you sit in a comfortable place 

so you don’t have to stand on line outside, if the facilities like 

schools can accomplish that, are all part of the practical solutions 

that can occur. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bauer. 

Mr. BAUER. I agree with what Ben has said. 

You asked also as part of the question, who is helping them? And 

what are the relative roles, Federal Government, the States themselves in the initiative that you described to the Florida governor. 

And what I think this Presidential Commission attempted to do 

was to draw together the best learning and in some cases to encourage new learning about administrative problems that lead to 

long lines is one of the problems that we looked at and to give in 

a very uniform, very focused way, to give election administrators 

a way to think about the problem and the possible solutions. 

So, for example, we unanimously found that election administrators should have 30 minutes in mind as the wait time for voters, 

30 minutes should be effectively the maximum, not that that is a 

goal that could always be achieved, because there will be circumstances in which, for reasons beyond the administrator’s control, the line wait will be longer than 30 minute. But in those 


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cases, there ought to be contingency plans that the administrators 

can put into effect if they know that there is going to be a 30-plusminute wait. 

And Ben is correct that the problem is a problem that is found 

in pockets around the country. But we found that the total number 

of voters affected in one way or the other by lines longer than 30 

minutes or lines longer than an hour is 10 million voters, and that 

is a significant number of voters and arguably could expand. 

And so what we attempted to do was, as a Presidential Commission, to take the best learning, encourage some new learning, and 

then through the implementation to push out, in complete cooperation with State and local election officials, as much of the best understanding of administrative practice as we possibly could, drawing on what the Election Assistance Commission has done over the 

years in counseling on issues like, for example, polling management and poll worker training, drawing in organizations like the 

one that Chris Thomas chairs, the National Association of Election 

Directors. 

And that is an important function, this function of providing a 

clearing house and an organizing center for the best possible learning about what to do to solve these problems. And we find in the 

implementation phase, and I think that Ben has described it, a 

very positive reception to an ongoing effort like this that brings together the best that both the Federal and the State and local initiatives can offer. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. And I absolutely agree that the National Association of Secretaries of State that both myself and Mr. 

Rokita were former members of, I think he was the president one 

year, and also the National Association of Election Officers, et 

cetera, all of this ongoing education and things that they are discussing and helping the locals with, there is no second almost for 

that kind of a thing. 

I did want to also ask a question about the resources needed. 

You both mentioned about the resources needed. I know I sound 

like a broken record, back when I was a secretary of state. But 

back when I was a secretary of state, before I came to Congress, 

right at that time HAVA had been passed by the Congress, so I 

wasn’t here when it was passed. But all of a sudden we had this 

huge windfall of dollars that was coming, recognizing that the Federal Government was about to send $4 billion out to the elections 

officials around the Nation principally to upgrade their voting 

equipment. 

This had never been done before. I think it was, if we would have 

known the word TARP at the time, we would have said HAVA was 

like TARP for election officials. It was amazing that all of this 

money was coming. 

And I think the Congress, trying not to mandate, really didn’t 

have much strings attached to it as far as the kind of election 

equipment that should be purchased or what have you. I mean, I 

remember, again in Michigan, my successor actually implemented 

it all. But we put in place—you know, we had over 5,000 precincts 

in our State, and said you could only purchase either Optical Scan 

or Optech at that time. And we were going to have uniformity of 

the kind of equipment that we were going to have out there. 


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You saw a lot of these States that were buying everything under 

the sun. I mean, there was no uniformity. And, of course, some of 

this election equipment is very interesting. And at that time with 

all the technology and everything, had all the bells and the whistles, you thought you wanted to have all these great computers. 

But, as you know, computers do break. And so no surprise that 

there were problems with election equipment that was purchased 

by Federal dollars. 

But now, all of these years later, equipment, you know, it has 

had its normal life expectancy. And I cannot imagine, with the Federal restrictions that we have on our budget now, that there will 

be another type of billions of dollars of spending. I mean, if it is 

for the State and the locals to run elections, how can the Federal 

Government be looked at as the ones that just gives them all the 

money for this. 

So it is I think incumbent on the locals as well to do some planning with investing in elections to make sure that they do have the 

money to purchase what is very expensive equipment and all of 

these kind of things. 

What was your thinking as the Commission talked to—did you 

have the feeling that there is an expectation out there in the country that the Federal Government will forevermore provide funds for 

election equipment or how was this looked upon? 

Mr. BAUER. Ben will be glad to have me answer that one first. 

What we did discover was election administrators certainly 

mourn the passing of HAVA funding, that there was money available for this and now it is very hard to come by. So there is no 

question that they are in a different position right now, which they 

find very, very difficult. 

And we did not attempt to say where the resources would be located. One of our charges was, as I mentioned in my opening statement, we were not to make Federal legislative recommendations. 

We didn’t delve into the question of where the resources might be 

found. 

But without any question whatsoever, they have to be found 

somewhere, because, as you know as a former secretary of state, 

I mean, the equipment is expensive, there has to be money for repair and maintenance. But the acquisition costs alone are going to 

be very, very significant. And the entire process of identifying the 

best next generation of equipment entails costs. 

And so these administrators are in the first instance, and we 

heard a good bit of this, troubled that they are having difficulty 

communicating with their State and local elected officials on this 

topic. They find that they are last in line in every budgetary conversation, that these are priorities that are by and large shuffled 

to the bottom of the deck because, understandably, faced with very 

difficult choices, elected officials have other priorities to attend to, 

education and road repair and the like. And elections being periodic tend to be treated as something that could be dealt with later 

or, frankly, made to do without, made to do with less. 

And this, in the case of technology development here, and acquisition, is unsustainable over the long run. So I can’t say that there 

are expectations that the Federal Government will do it or that the 

State government will do it or a combination of both. But the quesVerDate Sep 11 2014 02:18 Oct 03, 2014 Jkt 089838 PO 00000 Frm 00029 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A838.XXX A838

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tion is, where is it going to come from, because without it we are 

facing a real disaster. 

Mr. GINSBERG. I would say that there is a wish but not an expectation amongst the State and local officials that the money come 

from the Federal Government. But I don’t think they expect that. 

And historically, with the exception of the HAVA influx, it has 

been a State and local responsibility. 

I would say that the bright spot out there is that technology, if 

it ever gets to catch up through the certification process, can help 

reduce the cost of systems. I mean, you now have these big, huge 

stand-alone systems that can only be used for elections. The move 

to electronic poll books to help out is one. There are software voting 

programs out there, not a paper ballot, for purposes of historic integrity, but it seems to be where you are going. That can be a much 

less expensive alternative for States. 

The problem is we have kind of tied ourselves into a knot on this 

whole process, that the lasttime there were a new set of certification standards was 2007, which was before there was such a 

thing as a tablet computer anywhere. And so the technology available has not caught up to voting systems yet. 

That is one way that things can help out. We have got to do 

something about the certification process so that new and improved 

technology can be integrated into the system before all machines 

start running out. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

The chair how recognizes the ranking member, Mr. Brady. 

Mr. BRADY. Thank you, Madam Chairman. 

The only thing I think is worse than long lines is no lines. It is 

like a double-edged sword. We worry about increase in voter participation. Make it easier. And then we have long lines that cause 

people a problem when it is time for them to vote. 

I have been doing elections too many years in the city of Philadelphia, which is a blood sport, by the way, and I have been fighting with secretary of states forever. You know, I understand that 

we can’t have uniformity throughout the United States because 

States have their rights. But trying to get our State uniformity 

with the amount of people that are on the ballot and then they end 

up throwing ballot questions with ‘‘whereas’’ clauses and people 

want to sit and read them, if we can get uniformity within the 

State I think it would be easier. There is no real need to have a 

ballot question or some other maybe offices that are way-down offices, that are important, especially important for the people that 

are running in them, but if we could have some uniformity 

throughout the State so that we don’t have a long ballot on one primary and then in the general we have a short ballot. 

And just this past primary we had a major, major governor’s 

election with a contentious primary. We had 17 percent of the people come out and vote, which is disgraceful, it is embarrassing for 

a major election for a governor. And it seems to me that if we can 

make it easier for people to vote, that would eliminate lines and 

make it easier for them to cast their vote, and that it maybe would 

help them to want to come out and vote because it is easier for 

them to do that. 


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I understand and looked at all the Internet ideas. And I agree 

with Mr. Harper, maybe early voting isn’t always the answer because there is always a fraud factor. Eyeball participation, identification, fingerprint, phone voting are all issues. It is a tough job 

that you have. And I can’t think of two more qualified people that 

can hopefully come back to us. 

And I did read your report. I will also ask unanimous consent to 

insert the entirety of the Commission’s report into the record. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. 

[The information follows:] 


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Mr. BRADY. Thank you. 

And I did read your report, and it is an in-depth and a good report. But I guess, how do you implement it? How do we try to get 

people to buy in? There are people that like long lines and people 

that don’t. But what they don’t understand is that we are still infringing on people’s rights, ensuring they have the ability, making 

it easier for them to vote. And by making it easier for them to vote, 

we can increase the voter participation, for whatever, or whoever 

they are voting for. 

So I guess I just support what you do. I don’t have a crystal ball, 

nor do any of us have a crystal ball to know what we could possibly 

do. There are things out there, there are things that we can implement, hopefully, to make it happen. I don’t ever have a problem 

with long lines. We seem to be okay with long lines. It is inconvenient. But when we have long lines, we have participation, so that 

doesn’t really cause me a problem as much as no lines. That has 

been my problem. So I commend and appreciate what you do. 

I would also like for unanimous consent to insert, in the entirety, 

to insert a letter from the Federation of American Women’s Clubs 

Overseas into the record. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. 

[The information follows:] 


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Mr. BRADY. I appreciate it, Madam Chairman. 

And I guess I don’t have any questions because I am really looking for answers. I think you have done the best that you could do. 

And I would like to also real quickly piggyback on what our 

chairman said. Is there anything that we could do? Is there something we could do as our committee and in our positions here, 

whatever resources you may need, whether it be intelligence, 

whether it be funding, whatever we could do to try to make these 

long lines shorter and make these no lines more participative. 

I appreciate it. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Mississippi. 

Mr. HARPER. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

And thank each of you for your comments. I think we are all in 

agreement that everybody who wants to vote, who is legally entitled to vote should be able to vote. And those long lines create a 

sense of excitement on election day, and it is something that is 

very special. 

And having dealt with elections certainly on a county level, every 

election, no matter how well you plan, how well you train, there 

is going to be some confusion. And it may be as simple as the problem of having a split precinct where sometimes, despite your best 

training, they don’t know which ballot to take. So we see those 

issues that go on from time to time, too. 

And early voting, what we see is, yes, you can say it may ease 

the long lines. But I have had many people in States where they 

have early voting that say things happen during the last week or 

two of an election that may change a mind or new information. 

And so you lose that to go up to the election day, which sometimes 

is a concern for me. 

And certainly I spoke in my opening statement about how important it is to have integrity and accountability of elections. Election 

day is a special day. It is something that I think as Americans we 

like that excitement. And I certainly understand the purpose of 

early voting. Certainly increasing voter participation is an argument in favor. But it does concern me that that early voting can 

take away from election day itself. 

So if one accepts that election campaigns serve a valid role, both 

to influence and educate voters over a relatively short period of 

time, then early voting can shorten or even subsume rather than 

enhance that role. Could each of you comment on that? I will start 

with you, Mr. Ginsberg. 

Mr. GINSBERG. Sure. Early voting is interesting to look at from 

a nationwide perspective, because there are regions of the country 

that engage in early voting a lot more than other regions. New 

England, for example, does not believe in it, much for the reasons 

that you state about the sense of community. 

And there are different types of early voting. And absentee ballot 

is early voting. That actually is where there are more instances of 

fraud. In-person early voting is still eyeball-to-eyeball contact, so 

not as objectionable from the fraud and security angle. 

I think overall there is now no-excuse absentee voting in 27 

States around the country, pretty evenly split between Republicans 

and Democrats in positions of authority as election officials in the 


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States, and early in-person absentee balloting in 32 States, again 

pretty evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. 

To us, that reflected something that the voters wanted and asked 

for in those different States. And the State and local officials, without a Federal mandate of any sort, implemented it in their States. 

I share your personal concerns about election day being a special 

day, but I have also seen from this that both Republican and 

Democratic State and local officials alike have decided that early 

voting is something that their citizens are demanding and they 

have implemented it. 

Mr. HARPER. Mr. Bauer. 

Mr. BAUER. I agree with Ben that what we are dealing with here 

is voter expectation. Voters want voting to begin to mesh with the 

way they live their lives generally. They live their lives a certain 

way, and our voting system in many respects lags behind their expectation in the efficiency with which it is delivered and the ease 

of access that it offers. And so I think that election officials around 

the country, Democratic or Republican, are under tremendous pressure to offer multiple forms of voting before election day. 

So I think that the way we looked at it is essentially that voting 

is special, that is a special act, but it cannot be, in light of voter 

expectation, crammed into a single day, Tuesday, any longer. That 

is not what voters expect, and that is not the message they are 

sending to their elected officials. 

Mr. HARPER. I want to thank each of you for the many, many 

hours you have spent on this. And we have I think some common 

goals that we can work towards. And so thank you for all of your 

hard work. 

And with that, I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentleman. 

And before I recognize the gentleman from Florida for his questions, you were talking about early vote. I know the entire Nation 

is always looking at New Hampshire, whose motto is ‘‘Live Free or 

Die,’’ to Dixville Notch. Every Presidential, they go to Dixville 

Notch, where there are eight registered voters. They don’t have 

early vote. But it is an interesting thing. We all wait to see what 

Dixville Notch is going to do there with their voting. 

At this time the chair now recognize the gentleman in Florida. 

Mr. NUGENT. Thank you, Madam Chair. 

And I certainly hope that Florida is not in the limelight again 

in regards to voting issues. We kind of have been that way over 

the last few election cycles. But I think that the governor recognized the fact that some policies that were put in place weren’t 

working, and that he tasked the secretary of state to come up with 

a report, which he did in February of 2013, much to the same conclusions that you all have come up with. 

And Florida does early voting, absentee voting, early absentee 

voting, I mean, in-face absentee voting, I guess it is. And the number of voters turning out, though, still seems to lag behind where 

it should be, even though we have put in place—like on early voting. Part of the problem was that they had to have it at either— 

it had to be a supervisor of elections office or substation-type office, 

annex office. And they have expanded that now to a number of 

community buildings that early voting can take place. 


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I mean, how do you get people to come out to vote? And I think 

that is the question that Mr. Brady was asking. I would rather 

have people in lines voting than nobody voting or underutilizing 

the precincts that are put up. 

We talk about convenience of voting. I think we have made it 

really convenient. It would be interesting to see what happens in 

this election with the changes that were made in 2013. But I am 

not optimistic that is going to increase the number of voters coming 

out to vote. 

So, I mean, do you have any thoughts on that? As you went 

through this process did anything come forward? I mean, I have 

heard about convenience, but I don’t know how else to make it 

more convenient. 

Mr. BAUER. I suppose it is fair to say that all of the Commissioners have asked, would have heard and would believe that there 

are a variety of factors that bear on turnout, and that the one thing 

we could do is to address one factor we hope wouldn’t bear on turnout, and that is that there would be maladministration of the electoral process, and that frustration with access would be one of 

those factors. We wouldn’t say for a moment that if you remove all 

of those barriers, that we would predict that somehow turnout 

would rise up to the levels that you would like to see and that we 

would like to see. There are other factors that certainly are going 

to bear on turnout, and so removing those administrative obstacles 

would not be sufficient themselves. But here is one thing you 

wouldn’t want to hear from voters, that they had wanted to vote, 

and somehow they couldn’t. They couldn’t because their name was 

not on the rolls, or they couldn’t because they were in line for 31⁄2

hours, and their child care was no longer available, so they had to 

peel off from the line and couldn’t vote any longer. Those things 

you wouldn’t want to hear. 

So just in that one sense, that is what we were focused on, but 

certainly it is true there are a variety of reasons why we have different turnout levels in different types of elections. It varies by 

State, and it is a complex question to which we can only make the 

limited contribution we hope to make with the recommendations in 

this report. 

Mr. NUGENT. One of the things that I worry about as you move 

more into technology in regards to voting is the ability to compromise that. We see this across the board, whether it is Target or 

whatever. There are ways to access information, and what you 

worry about is that is massive fraud that could be perpetrated. So 

I want to make sure that as we move forward on the technology 

end of it, that we actually have the fraud protection in place, because we use these things all the time for a lot of things that we 

think we are safe on, whether it is transactions with banks, whatever else. You know, we tend to trust that, you know, we are safely 

doing it, and what we are hearing is that that is not necessarily 

the case. And so I worry that as we move forward in the technology 

end of it as it relates to elections, that we really have the ability 

to protect those, A, results and those voter rolls from fraud. 

Mr. GINSBERG. The Commission certainly came to agree with you 

on that. I would say that among the more robust debates we heard 

was the technology security debate, and for purposes of the report, 


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we came out in favor of online registration and the use of electronic 

poll books in the polling places just because it is much more efficient and just as accurate as mounds and mounds of paper to check 

people in in a much quicker way. But we certainly did not express 

an opinion on voting online, because the balance of the debate was 

that we are just not ready for that yet. 

Mr. NUGENT. Cybersecurity would obviously be an issue. You 

know, we are being attacked by hackers from all over the world. 

Can you imagine some of the state actors that would love to influence an election, particularly a national election would be very 

tempting to them, I would think. 

And, Madam Chair, I yield back. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank the gentleman. 

The chair now recognizes the former secretary of state from Indiana Mr. Rokita. 

Mr. ROKITA. Thank you, Madam Chair. I appreciate that recognition, and thank you to both you gentlemen for your leadership. It 

is greatly appreciated. 

I have been saying for years that the problems associated with 

Florida’s election really had nothing to do with secretaries of state 

or local election officials, but really it was sheriffs of the State that 

were the problem. 

Mr. NUGENT. If the gentleman would yield on that. 

Mr. ROKITA. Very briefly. 

I associate with the gentleman. I mean, as Secretary of State, I 

often had this question. You are almost to the point, and I am 

being facetious, of course, here and embellishing, but you can roll 

out of bed and vote, and yet voter turnout doesn’t go up, and that 

is because we have a cultural issue. People don’t value perhaps the 

experience, and we have to ask ourselves why, and it seemed like 

that might have been beyond the technical nature of your Commission. 

In fact, and I know you shied away from photo ID, and I don’t 

want to get into that debate here, but I often use that as an example of how it would—in Indiana it actually increased voter turnout 

when we went to that, because people saw that the administrators 

valued the process enough to say, hey, you know, we are going to 

ask the same kind of questions we ask when you go to a video 

store, which we used to do at the time, or when we get on a plane 

and do those same things. And when I think constituents and voters and the public see that we place those kind of—that high level 

of interest and value in the process, you will see more turnout. 

But speaking of value, in the technology section I didn’t see, and 

maybe it was somewhere else—I did not see that you mentioned 

voting centers as a solution to this. Was that talked about, and, 

Ben, you are nodding your head? 

Mr. GINSBERG. We did talk about it. We talked about them favorably. They seemed to be an innovation that is working in a number 

of States. Particularly States that have adopted early voting have 

gone to voting centers. 

Mr. ROKITA. There is no wrong place to vote, so if there is a big 

line on one side of town for one reason or another, you can immediately start through the social media and everything else, and 

through apps, redirect people. You have got to use technology the 


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right way to make sure it is secure, make sure your coworkers can 

fairly critique and properly challenge a voter. But the idea that we 

can use technology now so there is really no wrong place to go, I 

think, is very valuable. 

Secondly, Mr. Bauer, thank you for your work again. You use the 

example where the max shouldn’t be more than 30 minutes to wait 

in line, and then you said unless there are some things outside of 

our control. What are examples of what is outside our control? 

Mr. BAUER. An example, and we heard this from election administrators, is that the polls open, and there are already 700 people 

waiting to vote. They have been there for an hour or so waiting for 

the polls to open. They wanted to vote early. Or in the early afternoon, there is a get-out-the-vote surge on one side or the other, and 

seven buses pull out, and voters start coming out to vote. So that 

would be a challenge for administrators, that over that period of 

time, there is likely to be a build-up of voters. 

Mr. ROKITA. Unless you had vote centers, which is in our control. 

Mr. BAUER. There are a variety of ways of addressing that, including vote centers, but in a case where they realize that they are 

looking at longer lines, there are steps that they can take. They 

need contingency plans so that the problem doesn’t mushroom. And 

our only point by setting up the 30 minutes was to establish a 

framework for them to think about how our voters experience the 

voting. 

Mr. Nugent points out we have problems with turnout. We don’t 

want voters to walk away thinking that either the system isn’t 

functioning properly, or it is not functioning properly because no 

one is paying attention to their own interests and their own requirements for voting. And so as long as the voters perceive, and 

there is evidence to suggest this, that the administrators are responding to the problem—they may not be able to deliver a 7– 

minute wait time, but they are clearly responding to the problem— 

that is reassuring to the voter. It will enhance voter confidence. 

Mr. ROKITA. Like at a grocery store when you open up a new line 

or something like that. 

Mr. BAUER. Pardon me? 

Mr. ROKITA. Like at a grocery store when you open up a new 

line. 

Mr. BAUER. Absolutely correct. 

Mr. ROKITA. That goes to your point about how we live our lives 

today and what we can do to adapt. 

Mr. BAUER. Precisely. 

Mr. ROKITA. I completely agree with that. 

My question turned more on, you know, what is really outside 

our control, and what is really inside our control, I guess, is what 

I was trying to get from you. Do you have any other examples? 

What is an act of God that we should, you know, reasonably expect 

could cause—— 

Mr. BAUER. Power—well, I am not sure I would refer to a power 

outage as an act of God. 

Mr. ROKITA. Act of the EPA. 

Mr. BAUER. A separate hearing no doubt. I would imagine a 

weather event with flooding, a power outage. One of the things 

that we addressed in our report, for example, is that there are, in 


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fact, real weaknesses in contingency planning for natural disasters. 

You know, that has been taken up, by a way, by a task force of 

the National Association of Secretaries of State that has been looking at that. But we need election administrators to have a playbook 

that they can turn to when administrative problems beset the polling place. 

Mr. ROKITA. Understood. Thank you. 

Madam Chair, I know my time is expired, but I notice that the 

red light has been on for others, so just let me finish with one more 

question now. 

In Florida, wasn’t it true that—and I apologize if you testified to 

this already. In Florida in 2012 in the general election, weren’t 

there 11 or so constitutional amendments on the ballot? 

Mr. GINSBERG. There were. 

Mr. ROKITA. Yes, right? 

And everyone reading those, like the ranking member says—— 

Mr. GINSBERG. I am not sure everyone was, but certainly some 

people were. 

It does make sense for States, and we heard this from numerous 

State and local officials, to recognize that the heaviest turnout is 

going to occur in Presidential years, and, therefore, if you are going 

to put constitutional amendments on a ballot, the general election 

in a Presidential year is probably not the right time to do it. 

Mr. ROKITA. Or get ready to spend a lot more on an election so 

that you can properly size the process for the—— 

Mr. GINSBERG. Well, the other recommendation that we have—— 

Mr. ROKITA [continuing]. Or stop being a referendum State. 

These were constitutional amendments, but other States might 

have the same kind of problem if they are a referenda State, right? 

Mr. GINSBERG. Providing sample ballots so that people can read 

all those before they go into the polling place and not take up the 

line is another way to deal with the situation where you do have 

a lot of constitutional amendments on the ballot, so you don’t have 

to read it for the first time while you are waiting. 

Mr. ROKITA. I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Florida, 

and my time is expired. Thank you. 

Mr. NUGENT. I can talk firsthand in regards to the constitutional 

amendments that were on the ballot. They did all the things that 

you talked about. Supervisor of Elections office sent out ballots 

early, sample ballots, all the constitutional amendments that was 

in the press. 

But it is so overwhelming, and I think the State of Florida has 

recognized that, and they changed the law in regards to limiting 

the amount of information on a constitutional amendment to 75 

words, I believe, but also limiting the number of initiatives that 

can be on a ballot, because that was just overwhelming in regards 

to voters, because even if you have all that preinformation, you still 

get there and you pull it out, and you go, hold on a second, I want 

to read this one more time before I cast my vote. And a lot of folks 

were doing that, because, you know, I saw it when I went to vote. 

It was holding—it was gumming up the works, let’s say. And I 

think States need to be cognizant of that. And I think Florida has 

finally figured that one out. Like I said, I hope Florida is not the 


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poster child of election issues in the future, but as it is still a rapidly growing State, we do have our growing pains. 

So I want to yield back and thank the gentleman from Indiana. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

I am going to recognize myself for a second round of questions 

here. And, you know, just one thing that Mr. Rokita was mentioning or saying about an act of God or various things that happen 

that is outside-the-box challenges of election officials. I was just 

thinking about when Sandy happened and what happened in New 

Jersey. They actually had a very successful election. That was unbelievable, the challenges. 

And one personal experience. We all remember where we were 

on 9/11. Many cities were having their election that day, including 

the city of Detroit, and, of course, New York actually was having 

their election. They cancelled their election that day. 

But in Detroit I was down at the voting precincts with Chris 

Thomas. We are talking about Chris Thomas, and we went in the 

first voting precinct. They had the TVs on. You watched that plane 

go into the first tower, and like everybody else we thought, well, 

what is that? Was that an accident, what happened, et cetera. And 

then by the time we got to the second voting precinct, the next 

plane came into the second tower. 

And Chris Thomas and I went out and sat in his car, because 

he was driving around that morning, and we sat there and looked 

at each other and said, good Lord. Should we cancel the election? 

Who knew, right? We called the mayor of Detroit. They were closing the Ambassador Bridge. They were closing the Windsor Tunnel. 

You are wondering about people being out that day or whatever, 

but I just remember him and I looking at each other thinking if 

there is anything that sets us apart from these—I won’t use the 

word that we thought about it that day—it is our democracy and 

our ability to vote. And we are going to carry on with the elections. 

But we weren’t really sure if that was the right call or not at that 

time, but it turned out all right. 

But some of the things, the challenges that election officials do 

deal with each and every day, it is an amazing thing. 

I just have a question. I am going to pick up on what everybody 

has talked about, the long lines and everything. I remember when 

I first saw this Commission being a construct of the Commission, 

if the President is smart, he will put somebody from Disney on 

there, because nobody does lines better than Disney anywhere in 

the world. And you did have somebody on there, and I think the 

Commission went down and visited Disney, and you even have a 

term, the ‘‘queueing theory,’’ I believe it is called, getting in the 

queue, in the lines, and customer service, et cetera, et cetera. 

Is there anything that you really found from Disney that you 

thought could have application to the line situation, the long-line 

situation? 

Mr. GINSBERG. I think our visit informed us that the whole field 

of industrial engineering which deals with queueology and lines 

really has a lot to offer election officials. And, in fact, Chris was 

among those who told us about this, that there are industrial engineers in city and State government who don’t do things around 


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helping the polling places in their jurisdictions with problems, but 

certainly could. So I think that we were greatly informed by that. 

There are also just kind of tricks of the trade that we saw, things 

like informing people of how big the lines are so that you can sort 

of gauge what the best time to vote is. We did have a revelatory 

moment in Dumbo’s Flying Circus actually where it got a lot of 5- 

and 6-year-olds, who you don’t want to put standing in line for 30 

minutes. So rather than that, you can go up when you first get 

there, get a time that you will be able to use the ride, and then 

there is a big playground where you can just sort of set 5- and 6- 

year-olds loose. Now, that is a—to take that to a voting center, that 

would be the central place where there are chairs. So you would 

go in, see how long the line is, be told an approximate time to vote, 

and then be able to vote in comfort, something like a jury room 

while you are waiting to get called for jury duty. That is the kind 

of practical solution that—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Like the FastPass or whatever they called it in 

Disney. 

Mr. GINSBERG. Or FastPass. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bauer. 

Mr. BAUER. Yes. We were really struck by what we saw of 

Disney’s constant reevaluation of how well they are doing. That 

was very inspiring to the election administrators that they were 

continually thinking through what they had done before to make 

the experience a good one for their customers and how they might 

still improve upon it. It is just a continuous effort on their part to 

think through by close contact with their customers. They survey 

them regularly and intensively how they can make this experience 

work best for them, reduce the lines, and make sure the problems 

when they are detected are addressed. And so, yes, it was an example again of how powerful sound administrative practice can be. 

We also, we did spend a day there. We were a little late leaving 

because it was difficult to peel Ben Ginsberg away from the souvenir stand. 

Mr. GINSBERG. Let me say that I thought Bob did amongst his 

best thinking wearing mouse ears. 

The CHAIRMAN. All right, gentleman. We are going to get back 

to a serious question here. 

You know, this committee has had some hearings about military 

vote. And you mentioned about the military vote, and I think we 

all agree that certainly the brave men and women that are our ambassadors for liberty and freedom and democracy need to make 

sure that they have the ability to vote conveniently, and that their 

votes arrive in time to be counted accurately, et cetera. 

We have talked to the Department of Defense through FBAP and 

other types of things, you know, really trying to understand what 

they have done to try to expedite and improve all of that kind of 

a process. What is your Commission recommendation on something, again, that we could really help amplify the message to the 

State and local election officials in regard to military vote? 

Mr. BAUER. One of the more positive messages we heard, and I 

touched on this in my opening statement, is that the Congress’ persistent attention to military voting issues over the years, and we 

had testimony about it over a very long period of time, the different 


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statutory enactments that Congress has worked with in trying to 

improve the military voting experience has paid off. And there was 

widespread agreement that the MOVE Act, which significantly improved the delivery of ballots to military voters in time for them 

to be able to participate in the election, has worked very well. 

Having said all of that, the challenges there are really significant, and we can see opportunities for the Federal Government to 

continue to look at the effective circulation, for example, of registration information to military voters to make sure that voters actually have what they need in the way of information about how 

to participate. There are offices, for example, on bases that are 

meant when the onboard military personnel—meant to describe for 

them the registration opportunities and give them the means to 

register, and there was some suggestion in the testimony, significant suggestion in the testimony, that these are not being staffed 

as effectively and not performing as effectively as they might. 

So there is certainly room for Congress to continue to attend to 

what it has done here, kind of a legal framework it is set up for 

here, because as always, the success of these lies in the details, and 

I think the details are going to require Congress’ continued attention. 

Mr. GINSBERG. On the State and local level, if you are serving 

in the military overseas or just living overseas, your point of contact with voting is going to be your State or county Web site, really, 

from the secretary of state or the county election official. There was 

great variation in terms of the quality and usefulness and userfriendly nature of those sites. So there are some best practices that 

we have suggested and examples that we have pointed out of sites 

that seem really good because members of the military and people 

living overseas will be able to use them more efficiently if they are 

up to speed. 

The CHAIRMAN. Just one final question or perhaps comment, because Mr. Rokita and I actually introduced a bill called the Voter 

Registration Efficiency Act. Back in Michigan we really were sort 

of the genesis of motor voter, because we were one of three States 

in the Nation where the secretary of state who did the elections 

also did the motor vehicle administration, so we had all the databases. And you are much more likely to change your registration, 

or become registered to vote initially, or change your voter registration address if you are coming in to do a driver’s license change 

than you are perhaps to go to your local voter registration place 

and change it. 

So in Michigan we always had, I think, always in the 90 percentile of everybody who was registered to vote—or eligible to register to vote were registered to vote, but we never did any better 

than the national average in participation either. So, again, for all 

kinds of reasons, the same kind of reasons every State has, I suppose. 

But one of the things is we, of course, want to make sure that 

nobody votes more than once, even in different States. And the 

thing that really brought this to our attention, there was a lady 

that was running for Congress actually from Maryland a couple of 

years ago who voted twice in two different elections in two different 


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States, and subsequently her nomination did not go so well when 

that came to light. 

But at any rate, there are a number of people, probably not 

through negligence—just because we call them snowbirds in Michigan, right? Maybe they are in Florida, or maybe they are in Arizona or wherever they are—that don’t change their voter registration, but register to vote in a new State. We were looking at some 

examples where there, you know, could be hundreds of thousands 

just in one State of individuals who are registered in more than 

one place. 

So, anyway, our legislation just said if you go to a State to register, the DMV, or the secretary of state or whatever it is in that 

particular State would ask you, are you registered to vote in any 

other State? Just ask that simple question, which we thought could 

really weed out. But we had a little bit of pushback from AMVA, 

from the Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, because they 

said, listen, this registering to vote is not—that is not our job here. 

And they were concerned about all of that. 

But I do think that—I am not sure if your Commission—I guess 

that is my question: Did the Commission look at anything like that, 

talking about utilizing databases to be able to weed out duplicate 

voter registrations, or do you think that we are on the right track 

with thinking about that kind of legislation, or would that be helpful, or did you look at it? 

Mr. GINSBERG. We did talk about it. Certainly urging States to 

tie into voter registration databases with the motor vehicle databases will make changes of address problems that occur on voter 

rolls—would reduce it tremendously. And that is something we do 

talk about and recommend, really led by Chris Thomas, who did 

talk about the Michigan experience. 

We also urge States to join two programs that exist which do 

compare their databases. There is the Interstate Voter Crosscheck 

Program that was started in Kansas, and the ERIC Project that 

was originally funded by Pew. And I think it is now 29 States belong to the Interstate Crosscheck Program, and I believe it is 11 

belong to the ERIC program. Those are both complementary interchanges of databases designed to stop precisely that. So it both 

serves to stop duplication of voter registrations in multiple States, 

and provides a much more accurate list of eligible people who are 

not registered to vote so that they can be contacted to register. 

Mr. BAUER. I completely agree with Ben on that. I think the list 

exchanges that we endorsed we endorsed as fulfilling a variety of 

purposes from preventing the problem that you identified to also 

identifying voters eligible to vote who could be encouraged to vote 

and hadn’t been. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

Ranking member have any other questions? 

Mr. BRADY. One real quick statement. We are talking about elections. I want to thank my friend from Florida for educating me. I 

didn’t know what a chad was. I thought it was Chad Everett, was 

the only chad I know. There are dimpled chads, pregnant chads, 

hanging chads. Thank you, and thank your State for that. 

The CHAIRMAN. Any other questions from the gentleman from 

Florida? 


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151 

Mr. NUGENT. I will pass. 

The CHAIRMAN. Gentleman from Indiana. 

Mr. NUGENT. One last thing. 

Thank you very much for visiting Disney. Hopefully you spent a 

lot of money, because the State of Florida really does appreciate 

that. Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. It all emanates in Florida, you know? 

I certainly think I speak on behalf of the entire committee. This 

has been a really interesting hearing, and, again, we appreciate 

both of you taking the time to come into the hearing today and testify and answer the questions, and certainly for your service, as we 

all have said, on the Commission. It is very good work, and we are 

looking forward to trying to help amplify the message and the recommendations, et cetera. 

I know you mentioned, I think you called it the Bipartisan Policy 

Center that is working with the local election officials, so if there 

is something that we can do to assist with them, we certainly want 

to be able to do that and look forward to your suggestions and 

input on that. 

At this time, without objections, I would mention that all Members have 5 legislative days to submit to the chair additional written questions for the witnesses. We would ask the witnesses to respond if they can do so so that the answers may be made part of 

the record. 

And with that, the hearing is adjourned. Thank you. 

[Whereupon, at 12 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 


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