[Page 4: Dysfunctional Performance: The U.S. Voting Machine Debacle and the Machinery of Democracy]

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A Government Performance: The Help America Vote Act

Following his inauguration, in an initial moment of bipartisan rapprochement, newly named (though arguably not elected) President George W. Bush pledged to reform the election system to ensure that nothing like "Florida" ever happened again. And so he put together a task force to draft election reform legislation. What resulted was the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), signed into law by the President in October of 2002.

In the wake of hanging chads and butterfly ballots, HAVA envisioned the panacea of new high-tech electronic voting machines. These machines, purchased by individual voting districts with matching funds from the government, would replace the rusty old mechanical machines blamed for "Florida," and would promise fair and secure elections. HAVA mandated legislation for how those districts that accepted federal monies would operate. (This kind of contingency funding is a common way for the U.S. government to get around the Tenth Amendment and impose federal standards.)

HAVA outlines a number of clearly needed election reforms for voter identification, for access to polling stations and machines (including access for people with disabilities), and it states how tally and audit systems must function for paper and optical scan ballots to be secure and accountable in the case of a voter recount. HAVA also says that electronic voting machines must have verifiable paper audit trails, a measure that election reform advocates have universally called for. However, significantly, HAVA does not mandate paper back-up systems for electronic voting machines until 2006. According to HAVA, electronic voting machines purchased prior to 2006 can rely on electronic back-up systems for the 2004 election. Another thing HAVA requires, in the name of standardization, is that all states have computer-generated voter lists like the ones used in Florida to identify (read: purge) ex-felons from the rolls; it does not, however, specify guidelines as to how these rolls are to be generated, and unlike the audit provision, this provision must be in place by the 2004 election (12). HAVA is a big reason why we are in the mess we are in today.