What Hath HAVA Wrought? Consequences, Intended and Not, of the Post-Bush v. Gore Reforms

Abstract:     
The purpose of this paper is to provide a data-focused assessments of the consequences of election administration reforms put in place following the 2000 presidential elections, particularly those supported by the Governor's Task Force on Election Procedures and the Help America Vote Act. The paper focuses on reforms in two areas that were clearly implicated in the Florida controversy and for which there is sufficient data to make longitudinal assessments: the performance of voting machines and the prevalence of voter registration problems. It also examines two significant topics that were imported into reform proceedings, but which were not central to the Florida controversy: accessibility of voting machines to the disabled and voter fraud. The paper concludes that post-Bush v. Gore reforms have clearly led to improvements in voting machines and a reduction in voter registration problems. It is not clear whether HAVA led to greater accessibility to voting by the disabled. The lack of data to assess claims about voter fraud make assessing this feature of post-Florida reforms impossible.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 63

working papers series