Friday, March 07, 2008

Lawmakers take hard look at EAC on Capitol Hill

Last week, members of the House Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee held hearings to discuss the state of U.S. election administration, particularly the role of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC). The EAC was created as a bipartisan commission in 2002 with three primary goals: to develop guidance to meet the requirements of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), to adopt voluntary voting system guidelines, and to serve as a national clearinghouse of information about election administration. It was not intended to be a regulatory agency.

In a statement released before the hearing, Committee Chairman José E. Serrano argued that the EAC has a critical role to play in ensuring that the 2008 elections are fair, stating,

"More than $3 billion has been appropriated over the past six years to improve election administration and voting systems. Even with this commitment of Federal resources, States continue to have critical, unmet needs relating to ensuring that their elections run smoothly. The need is not more apparent than in the case of providing states with secure, reliable, and accessible voting systems."

After other committee members expressed similar concerns at the hearing, EAC Chairwoman Rosemary Rodriguez defended the EAC, saying, "The expectations that we can insert ourselves into areas where the legislation doesn't allow it is something that I've encountered quite a bit…Everybody thinks that we can just solve all of the problems."

In her testimony before the committee, Wendy R. Weiser — Deputy Director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice— argued that more congressional oversight is needed to make sure the EAC operates in a more just and transparent manner. Weiser stated, "Although the EAC has taken steps to increase the transparency of its operations this year-especially by publicizing more information about the agency's operations on a regular basis-more can and should be done to foster public accountability and to regularize and standardize the agency's operations."

Also last week, the Office of the Inspector General released a "report assessing the EAC's program and financial management. Based on their analysis, the OIG made 3 recommendations:

• The EAC Executive Director should develop, document, and communicate short- and long-term strategic plans, performance, goals, and measures, to enable program offices to prioritize their tasks.
• Two standards of internal control — Risk Assessment and Control Environment — should be strengthened as soon as possible.
• Within each program office, the EAC needs to do a better job documenting governance and accountability standards.