HAVA
The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was enacted in 2002 and provided funds for
upgrading the electoral processes and equipment of the United States.
Voting jurisdictions conscientiously following the guidelines of HAVA for the
upgrade process, but were not provided voting equipment solutions which provide
fair, accurate and transparent elections. Congress, recognizing the
potential for errors and even malfeascence is providing additional legislative
guidance and funding to upgrade the existing voting equipment so as to provide
voter verified paper ballots. The intention of the proposed legislation is
to insure a paper record is available to all voters for the 2008 General
election with all equipment updated for fully voter verified paper ballots by
2010. Several documents are available for reference as listed below.
H.R.811 ‘‘Voter Confidence and Increased
Accessibility Act of 2007’’, the Holt Bill
H.R. 811 is representative of legislature being proposed to fix the problems
with the voting systems. It has exited committee. The
Holt bill is available here.
Several additional documents to provide further information on H.R. 811 are available H.R. 811 FAQ, H.R. 811 funding requirements, H.R. 811 implementation H.R. 811 principal changes.
2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines
National standards are established for voting machines by the United States
Election Assistance Commission. They are in two volumes. The 2005
Voluntary Voting System Guidelines,
Volume I is available here,
and Volume II is available here.
Voluntary Voting System Guidelines to the EAC - August 2007
The Election Assistance Commission has released for comments updated Voluntary Voting System Guidelines in August 2007. These guidelines are very complete and have included many areas which were not covered in previous guidelines. The TruVote system implements a significant portion of these new guidelines but will be updated as the new guidelines receive final approval from the EAC. The guidelines are available here.