Confidence, Not Faith, in the Ballot Box

I have spent more than two decades working in and around American elections, as a lawyer for candidates and campaigns, as general counsel to the Texas Secretary of State, as counsel to presidential campaigns, and eventually as a commissioner and two-time chairman of the Federal Election Commission. That has given me the opportunity to see elections from a lot of different angles. I have worked with candidates and campaigns trying to win, lawyers challenging election procedures, election officials trying to administer them, and regulators responsible for enforcing federal election law.

One thing I have learned is that election law works best when the rules are clear and the process can be independently checked. In short: Election integrity is ultimately an accounting problem.

While that may not sound exciting, it is an insight with deep roots, and it gets to the heart of the matter. Plato, in The Republic, argued that justice requires each part of a system to fulfill its proper function within an ordered whole. The same principle applies to elections: every component of the process must do its part, and the results must reconcile.

Elections are the process by which citizens bind themselves to the authority of their chosen leaders, a process that can succeed only if all can agree their will is reflected in the result. Believing this requires confidence that only those eligible to vote did so, and that votes cast were accurately tallied and reported. Thus, every election requires officials to account for who is eligible to vote, who actually votes, how many ballots are cast, where those ballots go, how they are tabulated, and whether the final result is supported by the underlying records.