http://www.lwv.org/elibrary/nv/2004/voter_0104_1.pdfBy Bob GuldinPhoto by Trevor Pearson
<snip> As mentioned, the Election Assis-tance Commission had not even begunto function at the time this article waswritten. And HAVA expert and consul-tant Tracy Warren notes that “the FEChas always been exceedingly deferen-tial to the states. They see themselvesas a clearinghouse and resource.” Peggy Sims told the Voter, “There’sno requirement
to reportcompliance with HAVA. If we wantthe information, we’ll have to whee-dle it out of them.” Not much en-forcement clout there, it seems.It also appears that the Civil RightsDivision of the Justice Department,which in other eras was a championof voting rights, is not likely to playthat role now. In fact, an official atthe Civil Rights Division wrote a let-ter in September 2003 with a non-binding opinion urging states to takea very strict approach to voter iden-tification—though he admitted thatthe “ultimate decision” is “up to thestate or local election official.” Thebottom line here: Don’t count on theJustice Department to take on itshistorical role of fighting against pos-sibly discriminatory practices.Different Strokes for DifferentStatesWhile HAVA mandates certain mini-mum standards nationwide, don’t besurprised to find that state practiceswill still vary a lot, on provisionalvoting and many other aspects ofvoting. The FEC study of provisionalvoting describes the great variety ofpre-HAVA practices, most of whichare expected to continue.“HAVA places responsibilitysquarely on the states” to ensure uni-formity and compliance with the law,says Tracy Warren. T H E N A T I O N A L V O T E R • J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4
American Institutes for Research (www.air.org) prepared this guide for the Federal Election Commission under the terms of Contract No. FE-2-AC-0024.
American Institutes for Research wishes to acknowledge the following individuals for their contributions to the guide and the project as a whole.
Project staff:
Michael Wiklund, American Institutes for Research (project director and guide author)
John O'Hara (consultant)
Stephen Berger, TEM Consulting (consultant)
Federal Election Commission staff:
Penelope Bonsall (contract technical monitor)
Peggy Sims
Brian Hancock
Bryan Whitener
Advisory Board members:
David Baquis, U.S. Access Board
Barry Beith, HumanCentric Technologies
Pauline Brunelli, Federal Voting Assistance Program
David Capozzi, U.S. Access Board
Paul Craft, Department of State, Florida
Lance Gough, Chicago Board of Elections
Linda Lamone, State Board of Elections, Maryland
Sharon J. Laskowski, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Susan Palmer, Cingular Wireless
Whitney Quesenbery, Whitney Interactive Design
Hans A. von Spakovsky, U.S. Department of Justice
Scott Wiedmann, Federal Voting Assistance Program