
Updated 10/18/2016: The deadlocked November 2000 presidential election focused national attention on previously obscure details of election administration. Congress responded with the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA; P.L. 107-252). HAVA created the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), established a set of election administration requirements, and provided federal funding, but it did not supplant state and local control over election administration. Several issues have arisen or persisted in the years since HAVA was enacted. Some observers have criticized the EAC for being obtrusive, slow, ineffectual, or even unnecessary. Others believe that the agency is an important resource for improving the election administration. The EAC lacked a quorum of commissioners between 2011 and 2015. HAVA requires computerized state voter registration systems, and its voting-system requirements promote the use of electronic voting systems. However, those systems, especially the kinds that record votes directly into a computerâs memory (DREs), raise concerns about security and reliability. In response, many states have enacted requirements for paper ballot records that can be verified by the voter and used in recounts. All states now use paper-based optical scan systems for at least some voters, and most use them in at least some polling places. DRE systems are also used in most states, in many cases to meet HAVA accessibility requirements, but in several states to serve as the primary voting system in at least some jurisdictions. Several states also have jurisdictions that still use hand-counted paper ballots. Both DRE and optical scan voting systems are computerized, with votes counted electronically. All computerized systems, whether used in the polling place or the election office, are potentially vulnerable to unauthorized access aimed at stealing, deleting, or modifying the information that the systems store or process. Such vulnerabilities apply not only to systems
Page Count:
32
Publication Date:
2022-01-29
Publisher:
Independently published
ISBN-13:
9798409666026
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