Position Statement
Help America Vote Act

statement date
November 11, 2004

overview
Since the 2000 presidential election, there has been a major outcry for election reform legislation that will take decisive steps in preventing voter disenfranchisement and polling station mistakes in future elections.

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA, P.L. 107-252) affects every aspect of the voting process, including:

• voting machines,
• provisional ballots,
• accessibility to voter registration,
• quality control and
• poll worker training.

Under the law, election officials, legislators and advocates in each state are responsible for making HAVA work properly to ensure the most inclusive and timely implementation possible.

position
The Council of California Goodwill Industries supports Goodwill Industries International and the 30 other organizations – representing election officials, civil and disability rights groups – who joined together in 2004 to urge members of the Senate Appropriations Committee to fully fund HAVA.  The Council applauds the organized effort of these organizations – which included the Council of State Governments and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – to call upon Congress to fund the more than $600 million due to states in fiscal year 2005.  At the time of their address to Congress, the fiscal year 2005 appropriations bill contained no funding for the reforms.

The Council maintains 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.

discussion
Under HAVA, states must meet new federal requirements, including access for people with disabilities, provisional ballots, statewide, computerized voter lists and "second chance" voting. To achieve these requirements, HAVA provides for state grants. To be eligible for grants, each state must design a plan, pass enabling legislation and develop an implementation plan through a process that includes citizen participation and public review.

Among the guidelines for HAVA, states are called upon to:

• make the process as inclusive as possible by providing seats for advocates and citizens on the state planning committee,
• reform the voting process at the polling place so that every eligible voter who goes to a polling place can cast a ballot,
• provide a means for counting any provisional ballot cast for an office for which the voter is eligible to vote,
• require a statewide training guide for election officials and poll workers,
• develop a statewide, centralized, electronic list of all eligible voters,
• ensure uniform, statewide standards and practices for accepting, processing, and correcting voter registrations and notifying voters,
• ensure that ID requirements are fair and nondiscriminatory and
• ensure 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 significantly below the 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. Much of that money has yet to reach the states.

In mid-September 2004, 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 2004, 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 sought alternate vehicles, such as a potential end-of-the-year omnibus appropriations bill.

The prospects are much better in the Senate, as Senators Christopher Dodd (D-CT) and Mitch McConnell (D-KY) succeeded in adding an extra $1 billion for HAVA in the FY 2004 Department of Transportation appropriations bill.