Making of the Matrix: States Work on their Voter Registration Databases

During the 2000 and 2004 elections, everyone heard stories about dogs and dead people casting ballots while thousands of registered voters went mysteriously missing from registration lists.

A provision in the Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA) works to solve these problems by requiring states to build accurate voter registration databases that can be easily updated.

The deadline is fast upon us; all states must have centrally-controlled voter lists by January 1, 2006. And a survey conducted by Electionline.org reveals that states’ databases will be vastly different from one another, varying in structure, cost, and accuracy.

How will these variations affect the vote? Will they help to ensure that your vote is counted on Election Day?

What is HAVA?

Congress passed and President Bush signed the Help Americans Vote Act in 2002. The legislation is meant to fix the glitches in our voting system -- to prevent the Florida fiasco from ever happening again, in any state.

The bill authorized $3.9 billion dollars for election reforms like replacing those passé punch card and lever machines, training poll workers, and, you guessed it, creating voter databases. And although Congress set some voting standards through HAVA, after much debate the majority left most of the responsibility for election reform to fall on the states.

Statewide Voter Registration Databases

HAVA’s requirements seem specific; the law says that a state’s voter registration database must be a "single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive computerized statewide voter registration list defined, maintained, and administered at the state level that contains the name and registration information of every legally registered voter in the state and assigns a unique identifier to each legally registered voter in the state."

But as it turns out, these directions are vague enough to produce very different databases from one state to another.

Top down v. bottom up

Most states are choosing either the "top down" or "bottom up" method of organizing their databases.

The "top down" type is a single state-controlled database made up of information provided by cities and counties. The "bottom up" approach allows localities to control their own databases and then send information to a state system, where lists can be compared and checked against one another.

Critics say the top down model works better since it delivers information in real time, whereas a bottom up system will have some sort of lag time, as local databases send their information at regular intervals, such as once a day.

Thirty-eight states will use top down systems, six (Washington, California, Arizona, South Dakota, Tennessee, Ohio) will use bottom up systems, two (Texas and Oklahoma) have combined systems that use part of each approach, and three states (New York, Illinois, and Alabama) are still deciding. North Dakota does not require voter registration, and D.C. is a single district.

Up for debate: Which level of government should control the information in registration databases, local, state, or both?

Public v. private

A state may choose to have its own information technology people design the database, or it may hire a private company to do the work. Twenty-eight states have contracts with companies like Covansys Corporation or PCC Technology Group.

Some voting-rights groups are concerned about private companies managing state lists. Before the 2000 elections, Florida hired ChoicePoint to purge the registration rolls of any ineligible voters. The company produced a flawed list that prevented thousands of eligible voters from voting.

Less populous states like South Dakota and Utah are building the databases themselves and spending as little as $1 million. Heavily populated states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are hiring private companies to do the work, with costs exceeding $10 million. Over half of states will entrust the private sector with computerizing public voting lists.

Up for debate: Should private companies be building and managing voter registration databases? What can the public do about either public or private mistakes?

To purge or not to purge?

Since previous elections have shown that registration purges often throw the baby out with the bathwater, or eliminate eligible voters along with the ineligible, states are grappling with methods for purging registration lists.

Most states allow local officials to handle registration purges, but at least four states - Alaska, Kentucky, Louisiana, and South Carolina - do it themselves. Two states, Michigan and Minnesota, work together with localities to purge registration records.

The New York Citizens’ coalition on HAVA recommended to the NY state legislature that no single person have the ability to delete a name from the voter registration list. They further suggested that the new database track any and all authorizations for purging a name.

Up for debate: Who should have the power to delete a name from the voter registration list and how should they do it?

As you can see, states are still creating and deliberating their voter registration databases. With the deadline just months away, these issues are pressing.

What do you think?

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Update Posted on: 8/11/2005