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Contribution to Book
Voting and Registration Technology Issues: Lessons from 2008
America Votes! A Guide to Modern Election Law and Voting Rights [Supplement] (2009)
  • S. Candice Hoke, Cleveland State University
  • David Jefferson
Abstract
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.
Keywords
  • Help America Vote Act,
  • digital voting,
  • voting technology,
  • Election Assistance Commission,
  • election law
Disciplines
Publication Date
January 1, 2009
Citation Information
Candice Hoke and David Jefferson, Voting and Registration Technology Issues: Lessons from 2008, in America Votes! A Guide to Modern Election Law and Voting Rights [Supplement] 37-64 (B. E. Griffith, ed., American Bar Association, 2008)