Volume 1 (2003):
Help America Vote Act Still Needs Full Funding
Since the 2000 presidential election, when the nation witnessed what appeared to be significant cases of voter disenfranchisement and polling station mistakes, there has been a major outcry for election reform legislation that will take decisive steps in preventing such blunders in future elections.
The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA, P.L. 107-252) affects every aspect of the voting process, from voting machines to provisional ballots, from accessibility to voter registration, from quality control to poll worker training. Under the law, election officials, legislators and advocates in each state are responsible for making HAVA work properly to insure the most inclusive, timely implementation possible.
Under HAVA, states must meet new federal requirements, including access for people with disabilities, provisional ballots, statewide, computerized voter lists and "second chance" voting. HAVA also provides for state grants to achieve these things. To be eligible for grants, each state must design a plan, pass enabling legislation, and develop its implementation plan through a process that includes citizen participation and a public review.
Guidelines for HAVA include, among others:
- Making the process as inclusive as possible by providing seats for advocates and citizens on the state planning committee;
- Reforming the voting process at the polling place so that every eligible voter who goes to a polling place can cast a ballot; provide for counting any provisional ballot cast for an office for which the voter is eligible to vote;
- Requiring a statewide training guide for election officials and poll workers;
- Developing a statewide, centralized, electronic list of all eligible voters;
- Ensuring uniform, statewide standards and practices for accepting, processing, and correcting voter registrations and notifying voters;
- Ensuring that ID requirements are fair and nondiscriminatory; and
- Ensuring accessible voting by providing at least one voting machine per polling place for private and independent voting by persons with disabilities.
Since its inception, funds appropriated to implement HAVA have been far under authorized amounts. When it was signed into law in 2002, it authorized $3.9 billion to help make major improvements in voting systems across the country. Only $1.5 billion was originally appropriated, however, and much of that money has yet to reach the states. In mid-September, the two major House sponsors of the HAVA bill, Representatives Ney (R-OH) and Hoyer (D-MD), sent a letter to House Speaker Hastert (R-IL) urging him to include HAVA full funding as part of “one of the supplemental spending measures currently being considered.” Early in October, Ney and Hoyer made the decision not to attempt to add a HAVA full-funding amendment to the Iraq supplemental bill in the House. Instead, they are now looking at other vehicles, such as a potential end-of-the-year omnibus appropriations bill. The situation is much better in the Senate, however, as Senators Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Mitch McConnell (D-KY) succeeding in adding an extra $1 billion for HAVA in the FY 2004 Department of Transportation appropriations bill.
Advocates maintain that immediate full funding is essential to enable states and local governments to complete the implementation of HAVA reforms and that given the extremely difficult fiscal circumstances facing state and local governments, strong support at the federal level is critical.