Speaker biographies

Al Ater is the former secretary of state of Louisiana. He is a private businessman, a farmer, and a former representative in the Louisiana State Legislature. Prior to becoming secretary of state in July 2005, he served as chief deputy commissioner of the Louisiana Department of Insurance and then as first assistant secretary of state. In 2001, Mr. Ater served as first assistant to Secretary of State Fox McKeithen and he spearheaded the merger of the state’s elections divisions into one department. In 1984, Mr. Ater was elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives and served on the House & Governmental Affairs, Legislative Services, Ways & Means, and Agricultural committees. He also served as vice chairman of the Transportation, Highways and Public Works Committee in 1987. In 1992, he chose not to run for reelection. 

John C. Fortier is a research fellow at AEI. He studies American politics, the presidency, continuity of government, elections, the Electoral College, election reform, and presidential succession and disability. He is the senior counselor to the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project, executive director of the Continuity of Government Commission, and a fortnightly columnist for Politico. Mr. Fortier’s books include Absentee and Early Voting: Trends, Promises, and Perils (AEI Press, 2006), After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College (third edition, AEI Press, 2004), and Second-Term Blues: How George W. Bush Has Governed (Brookings Institution Press, 2007). He is also a frequent radio and television commentator on the presidency, Congress, and elections.

Steven F. Huefner is an associate professor of law at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, where he studies election law including contested elections, term limits in state legislative elections, legislative redistricting, and poll worker responsibility and training. Before joining the Moritz faculty, Mr. Huefner spent five years in the U.S. Senate’s Office of Legal Counsel, where his responsibilities included advising the U.S. Senate in matters of contested Senate elections, as well as assisting in the 1999 presidential impeachment trial. He is the director of the Moritz Legislation Clinic focusing on Ohio’s electoral processes, campaign finance law, lobbying regulation, campaign practices, legislative term limits, and the initiative and referendum processes of direct democracy. His papers and books include, “Term Limits in State Legislative Elections: Less Value For More Money?” in the Indiana Law Journal, “Remedying Election Wrongs” in the Harvard Journal on Legislation, and From Registration to Recounts: The Election Ecosystems of Five Midwestern States (The Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law, 2007).

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI. He also serves as an election analyst for CBS News and writes a weekly column called “Congress Inside Out” for Roll Call. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, and other major publications, and he regularly appears on television programs such as Nightline, Charlie Rose, and The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, where he was recently recognized as the most frequent guest over the program’s thirty years. Mr. Ornstein’s campaign finance working group of scholars and practitioners helped shape the major law, known as McCain-Feingold, that reformed the campaign financing system. He serves as senior counselor to the Continuity of Government Commission and as codirector of the AEI-Brookings Election Reform Project. Mr. Ornstein is a member of the boards of the Public Broadcasting Service, the Campaign Legal Center, and the U.S. Capitol Historical Society. He was elected as a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2004. His many books include The Permanent Campaign and Its Future (AEI Press, 2000), and The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and What Can Be Done About It (Oxford University Press, 2006), both with Thomas E. Mann; Debt and Taxes: How America Got Into Its Budget Mess and What to Do About It (AEI Press, 1994), with John H. Makin; and, most recently, Vital Statistics on Congress 2008 (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), with Michael Malbin and Thomas Mann.

Leonard Shambon serves as legal counsel to the clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives. Most recently, he was special counsel to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the 2006 Florida 13th Congressional District recount and court challenge. In 2005, he served as one of the three lead researchers on the staff of the National Commission on Federal Election Reform (the Ford/Carter Commission). He was the primary election consultant to Congressman Steny H. Hoyer (D.-M.D.) for the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Mr. Shambon subsequently served as a member of the 2004 Kerry-Edwards campaign National Lawyer Steering Committee and chair of its voting machine working group. He also served as a Florida recount observer in the 2000 election for Al Gore. He is a cofounder and member of the board of directors of the Pollworker Institute and is a member of the editorial board of the Election Law Journal. His most recent publication is “Trapped by Precincts? The Help America Vote Act’s Provisional Ballots and the Problem of Precincts” in the New York University Journal of Legislation and Public Policy.

Tom Wilkey is the first permanent executive director of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the federal entity created by the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Previously, he served as the executive director of the New York State Board of Elections from June 1992 to August 2003. Mr. Wilkey has more than 30 years of experience in the field of election administration, having served on the New York State Board of Elections and then the Federal Election Commission (FEC). In 1983, he served on the Voting Systems Standards Committee of the FEC and in 1992 he was appointed to the FEC’s Advisory Panel, which advised the FEC on clearinghouse projects and allocation of funds for election administration projects. Mr. Wilkey was president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer of the National Association of State Election Directors. Following the 2000 general election, Mr. Wilkey was named to several national commissions to study election reform, including those representing the National Association of Secretaries of State, National Association of Counties, Council of State Governments, and the Election Center. In May 2001, he was asked by the FEC to assist with the drafting revised federal voting system standards, which led to the development of the Help America Vote Act.

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