Click here for the full report.
What is an executive order?
Elections are run by the states, so nothing the panel came up with could be imposed by national legislation.
The Huffington Post breaks down the recommendations:
- An expansion of online voter registration by the states to enhance both accuracy of the voter rolls and efficiency;
- Having all states update and exchange their voter registration lists
to create the most accurate lists possible to increase registration
rates, reduce costs, and protect against fraud.
- The expansion of voting before Election Day, recognizing that the
majority of states now provide either mail balloting or in-person early
voting and that voters are increasingly seeking these options;
- The increased use of schools as polling places, since they are the
best-equipped facilities in most jurisdictions, with security concerns
met by scheduling an in-service training day for students and teachers
on Election Day;
- Recognizing and addressing the impending crisis in voting technology
as machines bought 10 years ago with post-2000 federal funds wear out
and require replacement with no federal appropriations on the horizon;
- To usher in this needed next generation of equipment, reforming the
standards and certification process to allow innovation and the adoption
of widely available and significantly less expensive off-the-shelf
technologies and “software-only” solutions;
- Improving the ability of military and overseas voters to access ballots and other voting materials through the states’ websites;
- The increased use of electronic pollbooks for greater accuracy and efficiency;
- Assuring that polling places are accessible to all voters, are
located close to where voters live and are designed to function
smoothly;
- Increasing and enhancing training and recruitment of poll workers,
in the recognition that volunteer poll workers are voters’ primary
source of contact during the actual voting process;
- Having jurisdictions form advisory groups to address the needs of
voters with disabilities and those with limited English proficiency; and
- Collecting election data on a uniform basis to enable enhanced analysis to improve the voter experience.
Nothing was said about voter ID legislation - and no word yet on whether Texas is likely to implement any of these. The political backdrop is the suspicion on the part of some - Democrats - that laws that make the voting process difficult make it less likely that the poor will vote. Since they tend to vote Democrat, that can suppress their share of the vote, with the obvious effect.
