The Commission on Federal Election Reform is co-chaired by former US President Jimmy Carter and James A. Baker, III. It is a private, blue-ribbon commission created by President Carter in the aftermath of the 2004 Election. The twenty-one distinguished members of the Commission are leaders from the major political parties, academics and civic leaders from non-partisan groups. The commission was established to spend the next six months examining the state of the electoral process in the United States and to offer recommendations on improving it.
Some of the most prominent commissioners include Lee H. Hamilton, former Congressman and 9/11 Commission vice-chair; Tom Daschle, former Senate minority leader; Bob Michel, former House Minority leader; and Betty Castor, former Florida Superintendent of Public Instruction, and 2004 Democratic Senate nominee.
Famous quotes containing the words commission, federal, election and/or reform:
“Yesterday the Electoral Commission decided not to go behind the papers filed with the Vice-President in the case of Florida.... I read the arguments in the Congressional Record and can’t see how lawyers can differ on the question. But the decision is by a strictly party vote—eight Republicans against seven Democrats! It shows the strength of party ties.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“It is odd that the NCAA would place a school on probation for driving an athlete to class, or providing a loan, but would have no penalty for a school that violates Title IX, a federal law.”
—Cardiss L. Collins (b. 1931)
“He hung out of the window a long while looking up and down the street. The world’s second metropolis. In the brick houses and the dingy lamplight and the voices of a group of boys kidding and quarreling on the steps of a house opposite, in the regular firm tread of a policeman, he felt a marching like soldiers, like a sidewheeler going up the Hudson under the Palisades, like an election parade, through long streets towards something tall white full of colonnades and stately. Metropolis.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under, if you are really going to get your reform realized.”
—Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928)