VIGIL-GIRON: Well, actually, these are directed to two people, if you don't mind, because this is very crucial, Senator Edwards and Senator Kerry. On the Help America Vote Act, Congress last year passed the Help America Vote Act, a bill designed to address the electoral problems that arose from the 2000 presidential election. While the states have the responsibility of implementing many of the provisions of the bill, the federal government has a key oversight and financial role to play in 2005 and beyond.
Secretaries of states, state legislators and elections officials across the country have already complained that many of the provisions of HAVA are unfunded mandates.
What will you do as president to assure elections officials that the federal government is committed to making the Help America Vote Act work as Congress intended?
Senator Edwards and then Senator Kerry.
EDWARDS: What I'll do as president is, first of all, fund the legislation, and second, make sure that every single person in America gets a chance to be on a voter registration roll and that they get a chance to vote no matter what the level of the community that they live in because we know what's happening here: President Bush has figured out -- you know, he had to go along with election reform, he didn't have any choice about that because he got dragged kicking and screaming to that. But he knows if this bill is funded, we're going to have people, particularly in poor areas, poor voting districts all over America who actually get a chance to exercise their right in this democracy. And I think he's got a pretty good idea of who they are going to vote for, don't you?
So it is critically important that we make the changes that need to be made to make sure everybody gets an opportunity to both register and vote and we don't have happen what happened in Florida in 2000.
HOLT: Senator Kerry, your response to that question?
KERRY: Thank you.
Madam Secretary, I should thank you for letting me get back in the debate, I appreciate it.
(LAUGHTER)
I will not only do what John has said, but I am not going to wait until I'm president.
KERRY: When I'm the nominee of the party, I intend to put together a legal team across this country. And we are going to prechallenge some of these automatic machines -- the Diebold machines -- where there have already been problems. And we're going to prechallenge and have a team across this country who are focused on those particular areas of the country where they are notorious about switching addresses, telling people they're not registered, intimidating people, and we will have the strongest democracy poll- watching effort in the history of this country so that every vote is counted so I can become president of the United States.
http://www.bbpresforum.org/2004forumtranscript.html