Voting and Registration Technology Issues: Lessons from 2008

This chapter reviews the 2008 election performance and scientific assessment records of the two major Help America Vote Act (HAVA) promoted election technologies considered here, the voting systems themselves and, to a lesser extent, the statewide voter-registration databases, to delineate both their performance records and the statutory and regulatory apparatus that produced the technological shift. Perhaps surprisingly, HAVA's role in generating each of these election technologies is quite different. While HAVA mandated and constituted the originating impetus for most of the statewide voter registration database systems that were in use for the 2008 election cycle, and provided major financial incentives for the shift to computer-based voting, HAVA did not generate and was not the source for the regulatory and certification testing apparatus that approved voting systems for 2008 usage. Development and implementation of the HAVA-mandated voting system guidelines and its testing apparatus consumed significant time, effectively leaving in place the prior standards and certifications under the Federal Election Commission.