Political Quotes

“I am delighted we finally have the opportunity to consider election reform. I am especially glad we are doing so in a way that is probably as close to bipartisan as anything we will work on this year. I commend Senator Dodd. I commend Senator McConnell and a number of other colleagues from both sides of the aisle who have worked diligently for a year now to hammer out this compromise we are considering today. As we all know, the 2002 elections brought to light a number of problems in the way we run elections. While Florida got a lot of attention, we found out the problems do not reside solely in Florida but persist in a number of other States as well. The bill that we will, hopefully, adopt this week goes a long way toward fixing not all those problems but a number of them. Let me mention a few. This legislation sets strong standards that State voting systems must meet so that all voting technology that American voters use allows them to correct mistakes and meet set error rates, acceptable lower error rates. This ensures voting machines are accessible to handicapped voters and voters with limited English proficiency. Third, this legislation provides for provisional balloting so voters mistakenly left off official registration lists are still allowed to vote. Fourth, this legislation provides for balanced antifraud measures to ensure voters are not disenfranchised.”