Broken promises, HAVA requirements costing counties millions
Amid the swirl of controversy over electronic voting equipment that many counties are using for the first time this year to comply with the Help America Vote Act, one thing is clear - the technology doesn’t come cheap.
Not only is the sticker price significant, but electronic voting equipment costs counties thousands of dollars to program and test for every election and store in a climate-controlled and secure facility between elections.
The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) - which effectively required counties to buy this equipment for its accessibility features - acknowledged that at least the up-front costs would be expensive and promised $3 billion dollars in grants to states for the purchase as well as implementation of new statewide voter registration databases and other requirements of the law.
But the U.S. Congress has been stingy with its purse strings. In FY03 and FY04, a concerted lobbying effort by county and state officials and advocacy groups overcame hurdles to full funding, even prompting a senior member of the Senate leadership, Sen. Mitch McConnell, (R-Ky.), to sponsor an amendment breaking budget rules to ensure that HAVA would be fully funded. In FY05, however, Congress appropriated no funding for this HAVA grant, and there remains a $680 million shortfall.
Despite the broad array of groups that continue to push for full funding - including not only NACo, the National Association of Secretaries of State and other organizations representing government officials, but also the League of Women Voters, Common Cause, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and other high-profile advocacy groups - none was appropriated in FY05, FY06 or FY07.
Members of Congress have offered a number of excuses for this broken promise, citing the need for funding in other areas such as transportation and homeland security, blaming the slow pace of state expenditures of HAVA money (since the money appears on state balance sheets until it is actually sent to a vendor or county) and pointing the finger back at states and counties to account for election costs and to detail those expenditures directly attributable to HAVA mandates.
Successfully lobbying for long-term funding will, at least in part, require the states to account for their use of HAVA funding and counties to detail expenditures directly or indirectly attributable to HAVA. However, a new chart prepared by the National Association of Secretaries of State provides another piece of information for state and county officials to use in lobbying for full funding - a state-by-state breakdown of the difference between what each state has received and what it would have received if Congress had fully funded the law.
This chart, reprinted below, has previously been circulated to members of the NACo Finance and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee and is available on the NACo Web site. Several county officials have indicated that they will discuss it with their members of Congress.
As Grant Veeder, auditor and commissioner of elections for Black Hawk County, Iowa, puts it, "There are many ongoing expenses related to HAVA that will have to be paid from somewhere. Do we want it to come from county governments or from the feds?"
Veeder also points out that county officials in his state may find this chart to be a useful tool not only in seeking full funding for HAVA but also to highlight the need to identify funding sources prior to enacting new state requirements, such as a proposal to add a so-called voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) to existing equipment.
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