The Next Voting Debacle?

Author

Cherry, S.

Volume

43

Issue

10

fYear

2006

Firstpage

12

Lastpage

14

Abstract

New provisions in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 have quietly created the potential to disrupt the US elections in November 2006. A major concern are the new HAVA rules that deal with the databases that contain the voter rolls. With these rules, voter eligibility will depend in large part on the contents of a number of databases, most of which have been existence for less than a year and some of which have not been constructed in accord with the best practices of the database industry. While they appear sound, these rules give the states wide latitude in reacting to database mismatches. Many are concerned that this could lead to voter disenfranchisement with tens of thousands of people being disqualified

Keywords

database management systems; government data processing; HAVA; Help America Vote Act; Social Security Administration; US elections; database mismatches; voter disenfranchisement; voter disqualification; voter eligibility; voter rolls databases; Best practices; Cities and towns; Data security; Databases; Electronic equipment; Electronic voting; Erbium; Law; Licenses; Nominations and elections;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Spectrum, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9235

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/MSPEC.2006.1705767

Filename

1705767