America learned nothing from the 2000 Florida recount

It’s déjà vu all over again.

In the 2000 presidential election, I was a senior adviser to the Bush-Cheney campaign, detailed to Florida for 37 days to lead the public relations strategy for the recount. The strategy involved three main parts: Oversight of the recount, litigation, and communications. Although the voting ended, the campaign did not end until a winner was declared. Democrat Al Gore decided to stand down on communications and PR and focused instead on recount operations and litigation; he also erred by cherry-picking the handful of counties he wanted to be hand-counted.

Fast forward to this presidential election: We are witnessing in 2020 the same type of uncertainty, rule-changing and irregularities in vote-counting, timing, transparency and other voting protocols in numerous states and localities. The lack of uniform rules and regulations for voting invites mischief, uncertainty and the possibility of fraud.

At the moment, the Trump campaign must assert control of the messaging and the process, if it hopes to prevail in the end — something which Joe Biden appeared to start to do on Wednesday, with his press conference calmly asserting that he expects to prevail when the vote-counting is done. The Trump team and its lawyers should hold a press conference to detail, chapter-and-verse, what is happening in states that have yet to finish their vote tabulations. They need to speak in terms we all can understand: What and where are the problems? What’s being done? Where will legal challenges be made and why? What’s the timing of efforts to tabulate and report in states where the results are still outstanding, and what’s the legal timing of the efforts that may be taken? Press conferences in the affected states should be held every day by the campaign, using local officials as the main communicators.

After the voting has ended is when oversight and challenges begin. A campaign must know what is possible and what’s necessary in order to ensure that every legitimate vote is counted and recorded.

More broadly, however, two long-term lessons from 2020 are that America is in desperate need of uniform national voting standards, and of campaign finance reforms as well.

In federal elections, there should not be 50 different state standards. There should be one. If that standard is good enough for New York, it should be good enough for Florida, and vice versa.

Uniform federal election law should include:

• Identification: Voters should produce valid photo IDs from an approved federal or state agency to register and to vote. Photo IDs have become a necessity in our lives, post 9/11. You need one to enter a federal building, to get on an aircraft, to obtain government benefits, etc.

• Registration: An eligible citizen should be able to register to vote up to two weeks prior to a federal election at an authorized federal or state office.

• Voting: Voting should occur between 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. on the day of a federal election. Early voting should occur no earlier than two weeks in advance, between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Absentee ballots should be requested no more than one month and no less than two weeks in advance.

• Voting machines: Voting machines should be uniform in federal elections, with a prescribed number of machines per voters.

• Voting protocols: There should be uniform federal rules and protocols for voter IDs, registration, voting, poll watching, voting machines, eligibility, timing, locations, tallying, reporting, challenges, recounts, certifications, candidate eligibility, forms etc.

Establishing fair, just and equitable federal voting standards would force states to follow suit. Although states should not be required to follow federal rules in state or local elections, it would be costly and inefficient not to do so. Federal standards would be required only for any ballot containing a federal election.

The federal government has a paramount interest under the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution to ensure that all Americans are treated the same when exercising their most important and valued right as a citizen, the right to vote. It has the affirmative duty to ensure that all aspects of voting in federal elections are uniform. It makes no sense that states have the power to make their own rules and requirements with regard to federal elections that could change the outcome, disenfranchise, confuse, prevent or discourage voting.

The goal should be that voting is fair, understandable, convenient and trustworthy, and eliminating lawsuits, confusion and inequities to registration and voting nationwide as much as possible.

But that is not the case today. And it won’t be during the next presidential election, either, unless we require a standardized process, rules and requirements now, before it becomes a forgotten issue.

As for campaign financing, whenever outside groups can raise more money than candidates themselves to influence the outcome of an election, then there is a cancer on our democracy. The amount of money raised and spent this election cycle for president, the Senate and the House has been obscene. Now is the time for serious and meaningful campaign finance reforms — but the finance issue is a discussion for another day.

Bradley A. Blakeman was a deputy assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2004. He is a principal of the 1600 Group, a strategic communications firm.