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26–991 2006

HEARING ON OVERSIGHT OF HAVA 

IMPLEMENTATION 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE 

ADMINISTRATION 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

HEARING HELD IN WASHINGTON, DC, FEBRUARY 9, 2005 

( 

Printed for the Use of the Committee on House Administration 


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COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION 

BOB NEY, Ohio, Chairman 

VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

CANDICE MILLER, Michigan 

JOHN T. DOOLITTLE, California 

THOMAS M. REYNOLDS, New York 

JUANITA MILLENDER-MCDONALD, 

California 

Ranking Minority Member 

ROBERT A. BRADY, Pennsylvania 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

PROFESSIONAL STAFF

PAUL VINOVICH, Staff Director 

GEORGE SHEVLIN, Minority Staff Director 


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OVERSIGHT OF HAVA IMPLEMENTATION 

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2005 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON HOUSE ADMINISTRATION, 

Washington, DC. 

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:10 a.m., in room 

1310, Longworth House Office Building, Hon. Robert W. Ney 

(chairman of the committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Ney, Ehlers, Mica, Doolittle, Miller of 

Michigan, Millender-McDonald and Brady. 

Also Present: Representatives Hoyer, Holt, Jones of Ohio and 

Lofgren. 

Staff Present: Paul Vinovich, Staff Director; Matt Peterson, 

Counsel; Chris Otillio, Legislative Director; Jeff Janas, Professional 

Staff Member; George Shevlin, Minority Staff Director; Charles 

Howell, Minority Chief Counsel; Matt Pinkus, Minority Professional Staff Member; and Tom Hicks, Minority Professional Staff 

Member. 

The CHAIRMAN. The Committee will come to order. 

The Committee is meeting today to look back at the 2004 elections and learn more about what went well with our election system and what needs to be improved. By gaining a greater understanding about what happened in the recent past, we hopefully will 

be able to ensure the effective administration and successful operation of our elections in the future. 

On November 2 of 2004, our nation conducted the first Federal 

general election governed by the requirements and instructions set 

forth in the Help America Vote Act of 2002, HAVA, the landmark 

election reform law that established new election administration 

standards that each state must meet and, number two, provided 

crucial federal dollars to assist states and localities in updating and 

improving their voting system so as to avoid an unfunded mandate. 

Mr. Hoyer is here and was the driving force behind HAVA and 

was correct in what he pursued. We had a wonderful working partnership with others, too many to name, but Mr. Blunt, Mr. Conyers 

and many other Members in the House and in the Senate, with 

Senators Dodd and McConnell and Bond, and had honest, real conference committees where we actually read these things 30 or 40 

some times. Wonderful staff both sides of the aisle. 

But HAVA went way beyond punch cards and went into a serious 

look at ways to tackle issues of disenfranchisement, tackle the 

issues of persons who have a form of a disability and what we can 

do to help them vote in secret for sometimes the first time in their 

lives; also, the college program, the high school program and creVerDate Aug 31 2005 22:46 Apr 19, 2006 Jkt 026991 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A991.XXX A991

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ated the Elections Commission. I have done this many times, but 

I thank Mr. Hoyer for remarkable work. There were people who 

told both of us, why are you doing this or you shouldn’t be doing 

this, but we all continued on and I think really passed a remarkable bill. 

As Election Day 2004 approached, election officials faced numerous logistical challenges. First, aggressive voter registration drives 

resulted in election officials having to process and handle a greater 

than usual number of voter registration forms, many of which were 

submitted at or just before the prescribed deadlines and several of 

which were fraudulent. 

In addition, during the just-concluded election cycle, thousands of 

jurisdictions rolled out new voting equipment for the first time and 

thus had to provide extensive operational training to poll workers 

as well as instructions to millions of voters on how to properly use 

it. 

Finally, election officials confronted the highest rates of voter 

turnout since 1968. The Committee for the Study of the America 

Electorate estimates that roughly 120 million citizens cast ballots 

in the most recent Federal election, nearly 15 million more voters 

than in 2000. 

In the weeks and months leading up to the Election Day, we 

heard stories of gloomy predictions about impending electoral meltdowns that would make the difficulties experienced in Florida in 

the 2000 Presidential election look minor in comparison. We were 

told voting equipment malfunctions would be widespread, delaying 

the report of election returns and potentially losing or stealing 

thousands upon thousands of votes. There were also allegations 

that a massive intimidation and suppression effort would disenfranchise many voters. Some forecasted that all these factors 

would combine to create a perfect storm in an electoral process that 

would paralyze the country’s election systems. 

Yet, despite the formidable challenge faced by election administrators and notwithstanding the predictions of the skeptics, I am 

pleased to say that the 2004 election was carried out without any 

major problems or glitches. As the Associated Press reported, the 

big surprise of the 2004 election was that, for the most part, the 

voting went smoothly. By the close of the polls across the country, 

despite heavy turnout, there were only scattered reports of equipment trouble and human error at the voting stations. And none 

were major. 

This was confirmed on election night by Joe Lockhart, Kerry 

campaign spokesman and strategist, who said, quote, ‘‘We think 

the system has worked today’’. There were thousands of lawyers 

deployed to make sure that no one tried to take advantage or unfair advantage, and by and large it has worked. I have seen very 

few reports on irregularities and even the ones we have seen you 

will find that there is not much going on, end of quote. 

Thus, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the rumors of the demise of 

the American election system were greatly exaggerated. For this, 

we must give enormous credit to the state and local election officials throughout the country for their hard work and extensive 

planning and preparation for this year’s elections. We must also express tremendous gratitude to the millions of volunteer poll workVerDate Aug 31 2005 22:46 Apr 19, 2006 Jkt 026991 PO 00000 Frm 00004 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A991.XXX A991

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ers and election judges without whom the election process would be 

incapable of going forward. The accomplishments of those involved 

in the administration of this year’s elections are especially impressive in light of the intense scrutiny under which they were operating in the United States. 

All of this is not to suggest that the 2004 election was completely 

problem free and went off without any hitches. There were problems. In any undertaking involving more than 100 million people 

taking place on a single day in a country as vast as ours, there are 

bound to be mistakes. However, contrary to the overheated assertions of some, the voting problems that occurred did not disproportionately impact the voters of only one party, but rather affected 

voters from all political parties, Democrats, Republicans and Independents alike. 

There are those who have taken the scattered instances of irregularities and constructed out of them elaborate conspiracy theories 

about massive vote manipulation and election fraud. To the individuals that have put these theories out there, the mere fact that 

their candidate lost is sufficient proof that the election must have 

been stolen in some people’s minds. These conspiracy theorists are 

impervious to evidence, logic and reason. Therefore, I don’t think 

some people—and I am not referring to particular Members; I am 

just referring to people across the country—I don’t think you can 

ever convince them that the candidate got beat. 

It is nothing new to the American system, I would note. It has 

happened on both sides of the aisle. We can’t worry about trying 

to convince those who simply can’t accept this reality. 

I am, however, much more concerned about some of the criticism 

that has been lodged by some Members, which criticism has gone 

beyond pulling out particular instances or thought process or administrative errors and has called into question the competence of 

state and local officials to effectively administer Federal elections. 

The individuals that have made these assertions obviously believe 

that a federal takeover of the voting process is the necessary solution to whatever election-related problems our country still faces. 

But I believe the administration of elections by a massive federal 

bureaucracy here in Washington, D.C., would represent the worst 

possible solution to the voting problems that exist. 

I happen to agree with Thomas Jefferson who once said that the 

government that governs best is the one closest to the people. In 

this instance, it is the state and local election officials who are closest to the actual voting process and who are in the best position, 

the locals, to understand what needs to be done to improve the 

functioning of elections in their respective communities. The Federal takeover of the process from A to Z would not improve our democracy. It would threaten it. It would make our system worse, I 

believe, not better. 

The purpose of today’s hearing is to separate the facts from the 

fantasies, to begin sweeping away the innuendo and any attacks 

that are out there and begin to understand what actually did happen in the past election day. Moreover, it is my hope that today’s 

hearings will provide us an opportunity to learn how well HAVA 

is working or not working at the grassroots level. We look back not 

to dwell on the past but to help us move forward so we can learn 


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from any mistakes that have been made and try to avoid, obviously, repeating them. We can also learn from what was done right 

and thereby make those best practices more widespread. 

While the election is behind us, 2005 will be a very important 

year in terms of HAVA and its implementation. While the press 

and public tend to focus on these issues only around election time, 

the fact is work is constantly under way to make sure our elections 

run properly. It is an ongoing, endless process. 

I look forward to hearing from our witnesses about that important work. We are fortunate to have with us today a distinguished 

panel—two panels of witnesses, all of whom play vital roles in our 

election systems. 

Our first panel will consist of the current commission of the Election Assistance Commission, which was established by HAVA. And 

they are here to help. They are the good men and women of the 

country. The Commission was established by HAVA to help States 

and localities implement the new laws and requirements. 

On our second panel, there will be four Secretaries of State who 

oversaw elections during the 2004 process; and, of course, they 

have to deal with HAVA and how it is implemented. 

With that, I yield to my ranking member. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. 

I am thankful to you for holding this hearing. I thank you for 

your sensitivity to the request of this ranking member and others 

to ask for a hearing to bring about the Secretaries of State, especially those where their States had quite a bit of difficulty. So I am 

very grateful to you and your sensitivity for that. 

I hope that this hearing will be the first of several hearings that 

will review how the Help America Vote Act, HAVA, was implemented and how the first post-HAVA election was conducted. 

HAVA, in my opinion, was one of the greatest bipartisan pieces of 

legislation this body has produced and passed. 

I am happy to have with us today the Minority Whip, the Congressman out of Maryland, Mr. Steny Hoyer, who was the architect 

of this piece of legislation, along with you, Mr. Chairman, because 

you two came together to try to see whether you could fix that 

which was broken in the year 2000 after that election. So I thank 

you very much. 

The 2000 Presidential election brought to light many problems 

with the election process. We heard reports of a wide range of voting and voter frustration. According to the 2001 MIT CAL–TECH 

study, 3 million voters were turned away from the polls without 

casting a vote on Election Day 2000. 

This committee worked tirelessly to enact HAVA as a solution to 

these and other election concerns. As a result of HAVA, $3.5 billion 

were appropriated to the States to improve the voting process. 

HAVA set standards so voters are not turned away from the polls 

without casting a vote. Voters not listed as registered must be 

given a provisional ballot to be verified later and counted. But 

some very early election surveys have found that who is given provisional ballots and how they are counted vary from State to State. 

Unfortunately, there were reports of eligible voters being turned 

away from the polls without casting a provisional vote. 


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Also, overseas and military voters reported problems with receiving absentee ballots. Now my staff has had the opportunity to 

speak with a number of Americans living abroad and listening to 

their voting experiences. 

Mr. Chairman, I am going to take a personal privilege, I guess, 

at this time, because I am deeply concerned about the lack of—and 

especially two Secretaries of State who have refused to come to this 

hearing today. And those two Secretaries of State have had some 

of the most egregious or at least alleged egregious irregularities of 

voting in their States. 

You know, as we celebrate Black History Month this month, I 

can’t help but reflect on those whose lives were taken because they 

were not given a right to vote. They had to pay poll taxes back in 

those days and even had to learn the Constitution of the United 

States in order to vote. I am very concerned that today we find that 

some of their offspring are having some of the same problems. They 

were denied voting in some of the States, especially, as I have been 

told by data, Ohio and Florida. 

We witnessed about a week or so the elections in Iraq and how 

those persons were very courageous and came forth in spite of the 

threats of insurgents to vote. And when they voted they put up an 

index finger with a mark on it showing their solidarity and their 

appreciation for voting. It is really telling that in this country of 

ours, the greatest democracy on earth, there are some folks who 

cannot lift their index fingers to say that they had a right to vote 

because they were denied that. 

I just want to tell you, Mr. Chairman, the problems in Ohio were 

many. But the miscalculation of voting machines led to lines of 10 

hours or more that disenfranchised scores if not hundreds of thousands of predominantly minority and Democratic voters. Ohio’s 

Secretary of State’s decision to restrict provisional ballots resulted 

in the disenfranchisement of tens if not hundreds of thousands of 

voters, again predominantly minorities and Democratic voters. 

This Secretary widely had a decision to reject voter registration 

applications based on paper weight. Amazingly, forms obtained 

from this Secretary of State’s office did not comply with his own 

paper weight directives. The Secretary of State’s decision to prevent voters who requested absentee ballots did not receive them in 

a timely manner and from being able to receive a provisional ballot. And yet the arrogance of this Secretary of State to not be here 

today is an affront to those persons who elected him to office. 

This is the people’s House. We are here with a fiduciary responsibility to protect the people here in this House. Yet the arrogance 

of this Secretary of State and the one from Florida who refused to 

come is really an affront, Mr. Chairman. 

The voting problems encountered in Florida has been documented by the Election Protection Coalition: Improper requests for 

identification, confusion about how to implement provisional ballot 

requirements, concerns about the accuracy and functioning of voting machines, some poll workers who were, at best, untrained or 

at worst actively dissuading voters from casting votes, lack of required assistance of disabled voters. 

You know, Mr. Chairman, I am very angry, disturbed, that folks 

had to wait in line for 10 hours in this democracy and still had to 


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be turned away. The disenfranchisement of the hundreds of thousands of folks, even with HAVA there in these States to be implemented, was ignored. 

So in order to restore the trust, the voters’ trust, Mr. Chairman, 

and to mitigate the cynicism that is rising across this country with 

voters saying, do we really have a democracy, can we really vote 

in this great country of ours, I would suggest to you, Mr. Chairman, that you then take Congress to Ohio and Florida, if they do 

not have the sensitivity to come here. If they do not believe that 

they were elected by those voters in those two States who represent 

this people’s House, that I will say to you Mr. Chairman, whether 

it be by subpoena or what have you, that we have before us in a 

timely manner these Secretaries of State who did not have the decency to come before us today. 

I am hearing that one is in town today and wanted to send a director of elections to come in his stead. That director was not voted 

by the people. He was voted by the people. 

So you can hear in my voice my deep regret that these Secretaries of State sought to not come today to the people’s House to 

answer questions about some of the irregularities that took place 

in both the 2000 election and the 2004 election where in this democracy of ours we still have disenfranchisement of voters. 

I yield back. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank the gentlelady. 

Mr. Holt, you are welcome to come to the dais. I would note, in 

the regular order of the Committee, I wanted to get to the Members of the Committee to speak and ask questions. 

Let me just say, though, and I said this on the floor of the House, 

there were certain things—my Secretary of State, for example, 

there were some allegations of some precinct situations in Franklin 

County, and I defended Mr. Blackwell on that because, frankly, he 

doesn’t allocate the number of machines, so I did defend him on 

some of those points that were raised. And we are going to have 

hearings, but I don’t want to get into case by case, county by county in Ohio. 

But, having said that, I think the Secretaries of State should be 

here. I am disappointed that they are not here. We will have other 

opportunities soon for them, but if they don’t come here we will go 

there, and I don’t have any problems going to Ohio and Florida. I 

don’t know the rationale of why they aren’t here, but I think this 

is important enough that they should be here. 

So that old expression, that mountain to someone or someone to 

the mountain, we can go to both states, and I have no problems in 

doing that. We can have disagreements, but, you know, you can’t 

run and you can’t hide. So, therefore, I have no problems at all to 

take us to the states. I commute anyway every week. I will go to 

Columbus. 

The CHAIRMAN. But I will share a terrible frustration that they 

are not here. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Mr. Chairman, irrespective of their 

rationality for not being here, the mere purpose that these States 

have been in the news daily shortly after the elections again should 

beckon for them to come here to answer questions that have not 

been answered by those who have that fiduciary responsibility, and 


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those are the secretaries of state who conduct these elections. So 

for them not to be here, I hate to start off as the Ranking Member 

for the first time on this committee, I guess, being so vocal, but I 

don’t curtail my thoughts on things that I feel are unjustified, and 

I do not want to even listen to any rationality that they have. 

The CHAIRMAN. I thank the gentlelady. We will work with our 

Ranking Member to have either additional hearings where they 

will come here, or we will go to the states, and maybe both. 

Any other additional opening statements by Members? 

Mrs. JONES. Mr. Chairman, I am Stephanie Tubbs Jones. I don’t 

serve on the committee. I come from Ohio. I would like to thank 

you for being a man of your word. During the debate on the objection to the vote in Ohio, you stated that you would be holding hearings both in Washington and in Ohio about the voting activity. I 

just want to thank you for being a man of your word. I really appreciate it. When you decide to go to Ohio, I will be there with you. 

Thank you very much. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. I look forward to it. 

Mr. Hoyer. 

Mr. HOYER. Mr. Chairman, I have an opening statement, but if 

I can, I would include it in the record. I would simply say I thank 

you for holding these hearings. I thank you, as Stephanie Tubbs 

Jones has done, for being willing to confront in a bipartisan, nonpartisan way the issues that are raised with reference to ensuring 

that Americans not only have the right to vote, but they are facilitated in that vote. That is clearly the intent of HAVA. 

I have four or five things that I want to focus on with you. You 

and I have had the opportunity to discuss them. I look forward to 

working with you. If there is no objection, I would like to include 

my opening statement in the record. 

The CHAIRMAN. Without objection. 

Mr. HOYER. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Brady. 

Mr. BRADY. Mr. Chairman, I would love to go to Ohio. My dad 

was born there. I would never mind going to Florida, being from 

Pennsylvania. But if we have subpoena power, I would like to see 

them come here for a simple reason. I don’t want to go to Ohio and 

I don’t want to go to Florida and then have them not appear there 

either. There is no assurance, I don’t think, if we go to Ohio—we 

have somebody that is right in town right now. Even though we are 

being in this town, in this State, can we be assured they will be 

there if we go there? This lady would be irate. 

The CHAIRMAN. I tried subpoena issues with kind of a wealthy 

gentleman who ran a 527 last year, and I wasn’t too successful in 

getting him here. Maybe we could get him there with our secretary 

of state. That would be kind of nice. Having said that, we will work 

to get them here. 

Any other additional statements? Mr. Ehlers. 

Mr. EHLERS. Just one comment, Mr. Chairman. I have been in 

this business for probably longer than I should have been. The 

Presidential election 4 years ago and the problems that arose there 

were absolutely no surprise to me. Elections are run by individuals 

who are by and large very well-intentioned, trying to do a good job. 

Many of the poll workers do this only a few times a year, and they 


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are wonderful people, they are willing to dedicate time and put in 

long days, but mistakes get made. 

In my very first election, there was a grievous error in one precinct in which the names were switched. In other words, people 

who thought they were voting for me were voting for my opponent. 

People who thought they were voting for my opponent voted for me. 

That is just an example of what goes on. I personally am still convinced that Richard Nixon won the election in 1960 until Mr. Daley 

stole it from him in Illinois, and that LBJ never rightfully won his 

first election to the U.S. Senate. 

A lot of things go wrong in elections, and we have to be aware 

of that. Our goal here should not be vituperative or accusatory, but 

simply saying we are doing our best to make sure that the system 

works fairly, properly, and, as Mr. Hoyer said, that voting not just 

takes place, but it is facilitated for the average citizen, because 

most citizens—and I have heard a lot about educating the voters. 

That is nonsense. People who do something once or twice a year, 

you are not going to educate them. You have to develop a system 

that really facilitates the proper operation. That is why when we 

did HAVA, I wrote the technical standards part and insisted that 

human factors be part of the evaluation, because I think the 

human factors are very important. When you design the system, 

you want to design it so that individuals who do this only a couple 

of times a year are not confused, and they get it right, and that 

everything is done properly and fairly. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentlelady? 

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a brief comment 

as well. I don’t really have an opening statement. It is true. As you 

mentioned, I had been a secretary of state in Michigan for 8 years 

before I got this job. Elections are not perfect. In fact, what happened in the Presidential election 4 years ago may have shocked 

much of the Nation, but a lot of people that were involved in the 

elections community were aware of various problems that had existed, and sometimes they just didn’t come to light to the extent 

that they did then. 

And so I certainly want to commend both our chairman and Mr. 

Hoyer as well for their work on HAVA and all the great work that 

came out of this committee on that, because I think every one of 

us understands that elections are the foundation, quite frankly, to 

our democracy here. If at any time there is any citizen that feels 

that their vote will not be counted properly, that is a problem for 

all of us that we have to address. 

I will tell you, though, as we get into the testimony, I think it 

is important that we do not have selective outrage in some States 

and perhaps not others. For instance, in some of the provisional 

balloting that was done, I was aware that I think in every battleground State this year, there were lawsuits filed to allow people to 

vote provisional ballots in any precinct even if they were not registered there. This was done, I believe, erroneously, because, of 

course, if you have more than one congressional district—in a lot 

of large areas they do. In a city—for instance, in a city like Detroit, 

in Michigan, we have several congressional districts drawn 

throughout the city, and so why would you want to be 

disenfranchising people not to be able to vote for their Member of 


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Congress if they were in the wrong precinct? Yet those lawsuits 

were, as I say, in all the battleground States. I know in Ohio as 

well. I will speak for Mr. Blackwell. He was upheld by the court 

in the provisional balloting that he did there. 

But again I think it is very important for all of us that we do 

recognize how important it is that every single vote counts. 

I will also just mention since we are talking about this and not 

having people disenfranchised, I was very proud that when I was 

the secretary of state of Michigan to be recognized nationally by 

the NAACP with the highest grade in the entire Nation for making 

sure that in our urban areas, et cetera, that every minority, every 

woman, everyone had an opportunity to have their vote counted 

properly with election reforms and that. 

I would say that my approach to elections is the same as my approach to life, I think. In the largest room is always the room for 

improvement. And with all the improvements that we are going to 

be hearing about that happened under HAVA in this last Presidential election, it is still not a perfect system. There is plenty of 

room for improvement. I am certainly looking forward to working 

with all of you to continue to improve that system. 

As we talked a little bit earlier about technology, the technology 

is out there. It is unbelievable the remarkable technology that can 

be utilized for individuals to make sure that their vote is counted 

properly, quickly, in a timely fashion, et cetera. I am very interested to hear the testimony of our panelists. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Any other comments? If not, we will move on to 

our four Commissioners. We have Commissioner Gracia Hillman, 

the current EAC Chair who was recently at the swearing-in ceremony—I was there, it was a wonderful event, with Mr. Larson, also 

with Congresswoman Pelosi; and also Commissioner Paul 

DeGregorio, the current Vice Chair of the EAC; Commissioner DeForest, known as Buster, Soaries; and Commissioner Ray Martinez. 

I just wanted to note, and we will get on with the process here, 

but I think all four of you have served with integrity. I think you 

were wonderful appointments. You have taken your job seriously. 

I think the Commission has functioned as the law has set it up, 

in a wonderful manner. I think you have added in a short period 

of time and with some difficulties beyond your control of the appointment process and moneys and things of that nature—you just 

proceeded on, all four of you. I think you are four remarkable people that have added a lot already to the Commission. 

With that, we will start with the Chair. 

STATEMENTS OF GRACIA HILLMAN, CHAIR, ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION; PAUL DeGREGORIO, VICE CHAIR, ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION; RAY MARTINEZ, COMMISSIONER, ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION; AND DeFOREST BLAKE SOARIES, Jr., COMMISSIONER, ELECTION ASSISTANCE COMMISSION 

STATEMENT OF GRACIA HILLMAN 

Ms. HILLMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, 

Mr. Hoyer, Mrs. Tubbs Jones, and I don’t know if Mr. Holt is still 


bajohnson on PROD1PC69 with HEARING
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there. Thank you very much for your kind words. I would say that 

I am absolutely delighted to be serving with the members of this 

Commission. I couldn’t ask for better colleagues. It has been a wonderful experience. 

Vice Chairman DeGregorio and I will take just a few minutes 

this morning to review the highlights from our testimony. We appreciate the vested interest that this committee has in our work. 

We recognize the importance of what you have done for America 

as the authorizers of HAVA, and we look forward to today’s discussions. 

Mr. Chairman, as you and the members of this committee know, 

HAVA represents an unprecedented effort by Congress to enhance 

the administration of Federal elections. Congress has matched 

HAVA mandates with funding and guidance through EAC while 

recognizing the important role of the States in conducting Federal 

elections. 

HAVA works, and it is off to a good beginning. EAC is committed 

to follow the prescripts of HAVA to make certain that the law is 

fully implemented in a uniform and consistent manner. HAVA has 

also provided an excellent vehicle for the Federal Government 

through EAC to work in close partnership with the States. 

The issues and problems that came to the forefront during the 

2000 presidential election were significant. It is clear to us, Mr. 

Chairman, that HAVA was not contemplated as a short-term or 

partial solution to these problems. Rather, HAVA sets out a comprehensive program that spans the course of many years, and that 

is how it should be. 

EAC is in a very different position today than when we first appeared before this committee 1 year ago. We have established EAC 

as a fully functioning Federal agency. Unlike last year, we now 

have a budget that permits us to have a staff and enables us to 

conduct a modest amount of research and study. Let me take a moment to highlight some of the significant accomplishments that 

were achieved in 2004. 

Working with GSA, we distributed over $1.5 billion in Title II 

payments to the States. As of today, States have received over $2.2 

billion in HAVA funding. I call your attention to the chart on pages 

4 through 6 of our testimony. 

On the matter of provisional voting, let me note that it was not 

a new concept for all States; nonetheless, it turned out to be a 

painful exercise for many. Provisional voting in 2004 became what 

was the hanging chad in 2000. Diverging definitions of jurisdiction 

drew national attention to provisional voting. There was litigation 

in at least five States, and while this may seem like negative and 

unwanted attention, these lawsuits produced a reasonable and 

workable rule of law regarding provisional voting. 

Having said that, let me state that provisional voting works. I 

call your attention to the chart on pages 9 and 10 of our testimony. 

In the November 2004 election, over 1 million votes were counted 

through provisional ballots. Based on a preliminary examination of 

data reported to us from 41 States, we find that of 1.5 million provisional ballots cast, 68 percent were counted. Some will ask, what 

about the 500,000 that weren’t counted? We don’t know the answer 

to that yet, but we will once we have completed our election day 


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study and conducted hearings. All we know for now is that provisional voting identified 500,000 voters who were deemed not eligible to cast a ballot even though we suspect that unfortunately in 

many instances the reason was that the person appeared in the 

wrong jurisdiction. 

I have mentioned our election day 2004 study. Through EAC, the 

Federal Government will collect and study a wide range of data related to the November election. The data that is being collected on 

both a county and State level include information about ballots cast 

and counted, the types and numbers of voting systems used, military voting, and the numbers of people registered and purged, and 

methods of voter registration and purging. Once the final data is 

received by the end of March of this year, we will compile a comprehensive report. The information will help measure future 

progress under HAVA. 

For many years now, America has experienced a shortage of people to work at the polls on election day. Election officials depend 

on people to volunteer for this 1- or 2-day job, but few respond to 

the call for long hours and short pay. To assist with this critical 

problem, EAC has two components to its national poll worker initiative. One is the highly successful HAVA college poll worker program. The other component is targeted to engage the involvement 

of corporations, private organizations and private citizens to help 

election administrators recruit people to serve as poll workers. 

Through EAC’s efforts in 2004, 1,700 college students worked at 

the polls that we know of, and 12 States reported a full complement of poll workers at every location. EAC’s observations from 

the November election suggest that many things were done right, 

but there is still a lot to be done. Vice Chairman DeGregorio will 

discuss this a little further in his remarks. 

I will wrap up my presentation by quickly reviewing the key 

components of our research and guidance agenda for 2005. We are 

committed to providing the guidance, assistance and information 

necessary to aid the States in their implementation of HAVA. This 

will include guidance on voluntary voting system standards, provisional voting, voter identification requirements, voting information 

through signage at the polls, and we will review and update the 

national voter registration form and the instructions that accompany that form. 

Our priorities also include our efforts to assure that HAVA funds 

are spent properly and in compliance with the law. As reported 

earlier in my remarks, States have already received nearly $2.2 billion in Federal funds. EAC will monitor the use of these funds 

through regular reporting from the States and through annual audits. 

Mr. Chairman, I conclude my remarks by noting that HAVA is 

improving the Federal election process. Election reform is not a 

process of immediate gratification. Rather, elections are complex 

and dynamic events that require years of advance planning and 

careful thought. Changing and improving that process likewise 

takes planning, careful thought and, most importantly, time. 

I continue to feel privileged and honored by having the opportunity to serve America with my distinguished colleagues as a 


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member of the Election Assistance Commission. Thank you for the 

opportunity to address this committee today. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. We will move on to Commissioner DeGregorio. 

STATEMENT OF PAUL DeGREGORIO 

Mr. DEGREGORIO. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, members of the committee, Mr. Hoyer and visiting Members. 

As our Chair indicated, HAVA has been successful in improving 

the process of conducting elections in the United States. As one 

who served for 8 years as a local election official, I believe this Federal assistance has been long overdue. 

I would like to complement our Chair’s remarks and also build 

on HAVA’s successes in 2004 and how the EAC will expand that 

success to help foster an environment of excellence in election administration in America. On election day 2004, EAC Commissioners traveled to several States to observe firsthand the events, 

successes and problems that occurred in the polling places of America. While the Commissioners saw many HAVA successes, such as 

persons casting provisional ballots, we also witnessed poll workers 

who were not always so clear on when a provisional ballot should 

be offered to a voter. We saw polling places where informational 

signs were posted and polling places where the required signage 

was missing. My colleagues and I saw voters enjoying the benefits 

of upgraded and advanced voting machines, as well as voters who 

cast their ballots on devices that were well over 50 years old. We 

witnessed polling places that operated with the utmost of efficiency 

and precincts where voters stood in lines for hours to exercise their 

right to vote. The data that we are now collecting from the States 

on the 2004 voting process, including voting by our military men 

and women, will further inform us and others on what worked and 

what can be improved. 

In 17 States funding by HAVA further influenced the 2004 election through the development and use of statewide voter registration databases. These databases are mandated under section 303 of 

HAVA and require States to develop a single, uniform, interactive 

voter registration list by 2006. Once implemented, such lists will 

go a long way toward reducing duplicate voter registrations, updating addresses, reducing the need for provisional voting and certainly help prevent fraud. 

HAVA directs the EAC to develop voluntary guidance to the 

States on these databases. We have impaneled a working group to 

work with the States to identify their questions and needs so that 

we have such guidance in place by this summer. 

One of the most important and tangible elements of HAVA is the 

Federal Government’s significant financial assistance to the States 

to update and procure voting equipment. Since the 2000 elections, 

about 25 percent of U.S. voters have experienced new voting devices. If States are to be in compliance with HAVA deadlines, we 

fully expect that another 30 percent of U.S. voters will experience 

new voting equipment in 2006. A significant number of States are 

now in the process of procuring new voting equipment, including 

equipment that serves the needs of the disabled community. 


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One of the EAC’s most important mandates under HAVA is the 

testing and certification of voting systems. Fundamental to implementing this requirement is the development of revised voluntary 

voting system standards which will prescribe the technical requirements for voting system performance, security, auditability and 

human factors; in addition, to identify testing protocols to determine how well systems meet these requirements. Another important element is the certification of testing laboratories to ensure 

that competent resources are available to perform testing. The final 

element is the process of reviewing the system test reports to validate that systems have met their standards and therefore can be 

declared qualified for use in Federal elections. 

Since the very first days of our existence, the EAC has fostered 

a close partnership with NIST to implement all of these important 

goals that it clearly outlined in HAVA. Our work on each of these 

elements is discussed in much more detail in our written 

submittance to this committee. 

I would like to report that our EAC technical development committee is well on its way to producing draft voluntary system 

guidelines that will be vetted by the EAC Standards and Advisory 

Boards and the public and ultimately adopted by this Commission. 

Our charge to the Development Committee and to NIST has been 

to build upon and strengthen the existing standards particularly in 

the area of security of voting systems and to do so in the 9-month 

period that HAVA mandates. 

We fully expect to see these draft guidelines in April of this year. 

We believe that the EAC’s work will be of great benefit to the 

States as they take advantage of the significant Federal research 

and make their own determination of which of these guidelines and 

what particular voting systems might work for their election officials and for the voters in their States. 

Mr. Chairman, as we conclude today’s testimony, I certainly concur with our Chair and my colleagues that HAVA is improving the 

election process in America. HAVA has effectuated substantial 

change in a climate of intense scrutiny. Voting technology has improved. More eligible voters have been able to cast their ballots. 

Voters are better informed of their rights and how to exercise 

them. However, a vast amount of work is left to complete. More 

than a half of the country is in the process of upgrading its voting 

technology, implementing statewide voter registration databases 

and perfecting their processes for provisional voting and voter identification. These States need guidance. The EAC will provide it. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to address this 

committee today. It is an honor to serve on this Commission with 

these three distinguished Americans. We will be happy to answer 

any questions that you and other Members may have. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 


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The CHAIRMAN. Commissioner Soaries. 

Mr. SOARIES. Mr. Chairman, we are going to defer to the committee members and allow the rest of our time to be spent answering questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. Mr. Martinez? 

Mr. MARTINEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will defer as well to 

the statements by our Chair and Vice Chair and look forward to 

questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. With that, let me just begin again by 

thanking all of you for being here. In the written comments, it includes data about provisional voting in 2004 that includes the numbers of provisional ballots cast and counted in each State as well 

as the corresponding acceptance rate. I noticed that Ohio’s acceptance rate, my State, was nearly 80 percent, which appeared to put 

Ohio’s rate in the top five, I think, of all the States. Is that correct 

on that, top five? 

Ms. HILLMAN. Yes. 

The CHAIRMAN. As one might expect, the provisional ballot data 

shows variances amongst the States. A number of factors could potentially affect how many provisional ballots were cast in a State 

and what the acceptance rates were. Factors such as whether a 

provisional ballot had to be cast in the assigned precinct in order 

to be counted or not, whether a statewide voter registration database was in place, the extensiveness of a State voters’ education 

and poll worker training program, the rigorousness of a State’s 

verification standards. Have you been able to discern any patterns 

so far regarding how those factors that I mentioned impacted the 

provisional ballot numbers and the acceptance rates in other 

States? 

Ms. HILLMAN. Mr. Chairman, I am afraid that we have not been 

able to discern that yet. We are in the process of analyzing the 

data that has been submitted. We have received data from 41 

States. We don’t know if the other States will submit the information, but we expect that we should have that analysis completed by 

late March or early April. 

The CHAIRMAN. I am going to be brief here because I want everybody to be able to get questions. Let me just go over a couple of 

things very quickly. I think also looking at the military issue and 

disenfranchisement there, I know we didn’t hear a lot this election 

as we did in 2000, but I was in Afghanistan and in the Gulf. I 

talked with hundreds of our men and women in uniform. It was a 

great concern before the election. I know the Defense Department 

had a project, and they canceled that. So I think there are a lot 

of issues that even though we are not hearing about them, I would 

still like to know about our men and women who as we speak are 

sacrificing and giving of their lives for democracy; I would still like 

to know what was the success or not of those votes. 

Also, the staff, some of whom are here, Republican and Democrat, recently went over, and I went with them, to Lebanon, Egypt 

and Turkey and we talked to expats there. One lady, I think it was 

in Turkey, had mentioned that the Virginia Board of Elections emails her the ballot. She can then print it out and fill it out and 

mail it back in. I have never heard of that, but we had heard different cases. And other people couldn’t get their ballots. 


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Also, I think we need to look at American citizens overseas and 

how that works. I know the embassies have really been trying to 

intensify that program. 

I hope just because we are not hearing about the military that 

we will be able to explore how well that went. Have you heard anything? I should ask you that. 

Mr. DEGREGORIO. Mr. Chairman, you brought this issue up in 

our first hearing last summer. We did issue a best practices report 

for military and overseas voting in September to encourage the 

States in this area. The Commission will be collecting data and is 

collecting data right now on voting by military and overseas voters. 

This is an important issue to us because we know that—we want 

to make sure that every voter, including those overseas, have the 

opportunity to participate in elections. 

We have heard some anecdotal data from different States that 

there were problems. Certainly States that have late primaries and 

get their ballots out late to our citizens overseas is problematic in 

those States. The best practices encourages States to do something 

about that. 

Once we collect our data, we will have some reports to give you 

and more information that I think will be helpful to improve this 

process in future elections. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

One other question I have would be about the new guidelines 

that will be issued this year, perhaps maybe in the spring or early 

summer. A lot of States are delaying purchasing their new voting 

equipment until these guidelines are released. Do you believe that 

such States are allowing themselves sufficient time to come into 

compliance with the voting systems by next year? 

Mr. MARTINEZ. Mr. Chairman, HAVA requires a framework, if 

you will, for the EAC to work under with regard to the evaluation 

and the review and even the updating, if you will, of the current 

voting system standards, or guidelines as they are called actually, 

in the Help America Vote Act. We inherited the voting system 

standards that were promulgated by the FEC prior to the creation 

of the EAC, the Election Assistance Commission. So what we are 

trying to do is to work in a very timely fashion as is required by 

HAVA to do our due diligence in working with our partners, with 

NIST over at the Department of Commerce, with the Technical 

Guidelines Development Committee which was created by HAVA to 

ensure that we can review the current standards, identify gaps 

that exist in the current standards, and put forward a work product in as timely a fashion as possible to the States so that they can 

have these guidelines when they make procurement decisions 

about voting systems. 

Those deadlines are happening for States. It is upon the States 

now so that the work product that we need to produce is needed 

by States. There is no question about that. We are working again 

with our partners, TGDC, NIST, as well as State and local governments, to try to produce a work product as quickly as possible, but 

in keeping with the framework that was developed under the Help 

America Vote Act. 

The CHAIRMAN. And I think it is incumbent upon us—as officeholders I am going to put out a letter in Ohio to also clarify how 


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this process works, and if they have questions, they should call the 

EAC. There are a lot of myths in my own State. We are sitting on 

top of $132 million that is sitting there. 

Now, local boards of elections, Democrat and Republican members, in my own county, Bill Shubert is a great election official 

down there, a Democrat; Frankie Lee Karnes—I can name good 

Democrats and Republicans—she is a Republican. They pursue the 

fact from the fiction, but there is a lot of information in my own 

State that is put out there that we didn’t provide enough money. 

We do have $900 million to go. But Steny Hoyer and the Speaker 

and the Minority Leader Ms. Pelosi and a lot of people, Chairman 

Young, the previous Chair of Appropriations, have worked very 

hard to get to that $3 billion. But when officials, including in my 

own State, say, well, the Feds didn’t pay for everything, well, we 

had an agreement, $3.9 billion fully funds, and we are going to get 

that other $900 million. But my own State is sitting there with 

$132 million sitting. 

I would hope that a lot of these myths are worked through by 

our officials with the local boards, and that way we can get beyond 

that and try to come into compliance so that States like mine are 

not going to head into a train wreck. 

With that, I am going to ask one brief question, if you want to 

comment, and move on to our Ranking Member. On February 6 of 

2005, the National Association of Secretaries of State passed a resolution urging Congress not to fund or authorize the EAC beyond 

the 2006 Federal elections. Any reaction to that? 

Ms. HILLMAN. Yes. But before responding, I would just like to 

call to the committee’s attention that on pages 7 and 8 of the testimony, there is a chart that shows where each State is with respect 

to voting system procurements. Some have gone ahead. Some are 

in the process. And some, as you have indicated, have not yet 

begun. 

With respect to the resolution that was passed by the National 

Association of Secretaries of State, I suppose the best way to describe our feeling about it is that it is a curious thing that was 

done. We all have worked, the four Commissioners, in government, 

whether at the local, State or Federal level. We are aware of the 

inherent and sometimes healthy tension between the States and 

the Federal Government and where the line begins and where it 

ends. I have observed through the work that I did on renewal of 

the Voting Rights Act in 1982 and on passage of motor voter in 

1992 pushback from some of the States not wanting to continue 

under the oversight of the Federal Voting Rights Act and wanting 

to resist Federal imposition of the components of the Motor Voter 

Act. This is, I must say, the first time that I have experienced the 

shove personally. 

So it doesn’t surprise us that the States would feel that way, the 

sentiments that were expressed in the resolution. We absolutely respect the right of the secretaries of state to express their opinion 

as they see fit. What was surprising to us was the way that it was 

done. We have had many occasions throughout the past year to 

meet with secretaries of state, to meet with the secretaries of state 

individually, to interact with NASS as an organization. They serve 

on our Standards Board, members do. Secretaries of state serve on 


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our Board of Advisers. They have all along the way had opportunities to comment on and respond to the various documents that we 

have issued, the best practices. 

Up until Sunday of this week, we did not hear from NASS that 

it was so concerned about the sentiment expressed in its resolution 

that it was preparing to take that kind of action. Even as late as 

last week, we were with several secretaries of state at a 2-day 

meeting of our Standards Board. We were on the agenda of the 

NASS midwinter conference for several weeks, if not months, so 

they knew we were coming. And I guess we thought that there 

would have been a dialogue, an exchange, between the Election Assistance Commission and NASS. If following the dialogue they felt 

that they wanted to proceed with such a resolution, well, then so 

be it, we would have respected that. But we did not have that opportunity to have the discussion. 

There are two specific allegations, if you will, that have been 

made. One was about the EAC performing—overstepping its 

boundaries and beginning to act as a regulatory agency. We know 

that our record is complete, and any examination of any of our documents, our meetings, our hearings would indicate that we have, 

in fact, gone out of our way to respect HAVA. We are guided by 

the Help America Vote Act. We know the language guidance and 

guidelines were very carefully crafted and put into HAVA for specific reasons. 

The one area where we do have regulatory authority, the National Voter Registration Act, is, in fact, one area that we haven’t 

been able to get to yet in part because of the overload of work and 

the lack of resources, but it certainly is something we will get to 

this year. 

And then the other was a suggestion that we apparently publicly 

stated we didn’t know when the draft guidelines concerning the 

voting system standards would be available. Again, the record will 

show at various of our meetings, the Technical Guidelines Development Committee meetings and other correspondence, we have always said we fully expected to receive the draft standards from the 

Technical Guidelines Development Committee and the National Institute of Standards and Technology by the end of March, early 

April, which is the 9-month process prescribed in HAVA, that there 

is another 90-day process that we have to go through, again prescribed in HAVA, but that draft standards would be available in 

the spring, and that we would work very hard to complete that 

process and issue the first set of guidelines in the summer of this 

year. 

The CHAIRMAN. I just wanted to note, and we will move on to the 

Ranking Member—I just wanted to note when we crafted HAVA, 

Congressman Hoyer and I were very, very careful to not create an 

EPA of elections where people were grabbing rules every 3 hours 

and throwing them out, turn the light switches on at the Board of 

Election in Belmont County at 9 o’clock, or the Secretary of State 

has to have a yellow tie or a blue blazer, square footage. We were 

really careful not to do that. On the other hand, we made it very 

clear, too, that we weren’t going to create something that was 

toothless; that we were going to create something that had some 

teeth in it. 


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So I think the balance and the blend that we wrote into that law 

after a long process of consideration, I think it worked, and there 

are some standards and some things that EAC can do. So I think 

it was a good blend, and I haven’t seen anything that you have 

done that has exceeded that or altered from the course. 

Ms. HILLMAN. Mr. Chairman, if I might say, we also recognize 

that we have a tremendous amount of work to be done under 

HAVA. We fully intend to do that. We look forward to working with 

NASS as an organization and the secretaries of state throughout 

the country as we have done for the past year. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. 

We have been joined by the gentlelady from California Congresswoman Lofgren. Welcome. 

I will yield to our Ranking Member. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. 

Indeed we are joined by this outstanding, extraordinary woman out 

of the great State of California, Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren. I am 

told that she has come to us unofficial yet, but to be official soon, 

and so with unanimous consent, can she participate in the committee? And we welcome her. 

The CHAIRMAN. Welcome. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Mr. Chairman, when I was here on 

the committee in the 108th Congress, I was the only woman, female, sitting on this dais, and now there are two who are joining 

us. I must say, help is on the way. 

Ms. LOFGREN. If I may, Ranking Member, Mr. Chairman, I am 

unofficial as of yet, but I did tell our Leader that I would be happy 

to serve. I very much look forward to working with the committee 

on the important issues that face us. 

The CHAIRMAN. Welcome. We are glad to have you. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I was indeed very touched by your annual report that I received 

and your title Preparing America to Vote. That is just an extraordinary, impressive title of your report, as you prepare America to 

vote. We are so absolutely privileged to have the Election Assistance Commission to provide the type of leadership for that to take 

place. 

I agree with the chairman that when they developed HAVA, they 

carefully ensured that it would not become a regulatory agency. 

This is indeed what you have not done, and you have tiptoed 

around all of that to circumvent you from doing that. We appreciate that. 

As I looked at your report, in light of your having 10 months 

later coming on, required by HAVA to get started, the major accomplishments that you have had are really very telling of the 

hard work you have already done, and that is including the release 

of HAVA funding to the States, local election administrators, enhance their processes, various guidance and outreach projects to assist State and local governments in implementing HAVA mandates. 

And you have developed a comprehensive best practice that has 

been shared by the secretaries of states. I think that is to be commended. You have disbursed approximately $1.3 billion in HAVA’s 

fund to 44 States, so that that will give the election officials across 


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the country the opportunity to implement the various administrative mandates contained in HAVA. 

And so we applaud your work and applaud the many times that 

I called on you, especially when the previous Chair—the Reverend 

Dr. Soaries was the Chair, every time I called, he says, I am coming, yes, what is it? But he provided the type of leadership to train 

those persons who were asking to be poll workers. 

I am thankful to you for providing the funding through grant to 

the California University of Long Beach. They have done a tremendous job. 

My question to you, to any of you who wish to answer, the chairman touched on ensuring voter system standards and guidelines. 

Given that 44 States asked for waivers on implementing these 

guidelines for the 2004 elections, what progress have States made 

toward achieving this mandate in 2006? 

Mr. DEGREGORIO. Thank you, Ms. Ranking Member. 

As you see, and you will see in our report, many States have 

worked towards achieving the HAVA requirements that will come 

into play in 2006, but the fact of the matter is that many—most 

States are in the process of complying with the element of developing a statewide voter registration database and procuring election systems, voting systems. Many States implemented systems in 

2004 on a partial basis. The State of Pennsylvania was 60 percent 

compliant with the statewide voter registration database. They 

made an attempt to see how it would work. But there is a lot of 

work to be done. 

This Commission is committed to provide guidance on the statewide voter registration database and, as our Chair has stated, to 

provide voting system guidelines by this spring, the initial draft 

set, and then by this summer the final set. We think that that will 

help the States as they move in the process of complying with 

HAVA, as they purchase new equipment and comply with the 

statewide voter registration database requirements. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. So that gives them adequate time, 

then, to set up for the 2006 election, do you think? 

Mr. DEGREGORIO. As a former election official, I know that you 

like to have more time than that because you want to certainly— 

whenever you introduce a new system, there is voter education 

that has to come into play to make sure voters are educated about 

a new system, and you want to make sure that your poll workers 

are trained. We have found in many States that have gone to electronic voting, that some of the older poll workers just don’t want 

to deal with it, and they quit. That is why we made a major effort 

in 2004 to help recruit new poll workers. The program you spoke 

about in your district was one that helped get younger people involved. I think that effort needs to be continued and certainly enhanced in 2006 as the States move towards new equipment and 

dealing with the new equipment on a sustainable basis. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. In turning to your chart in your 

presentation here today, it states here that in Alaska there were 

96.6 percent provisional ballots counted. Conversely, in Hawaii, it 

was only 6.9 provisional ballots counted. The variances in the percentage of ballots counted from State to State is reflective of a 

number of factors including the definition of the jurisdiction. Is 


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that one of the core factors in this type of variances? And what can 

we do to ensure that we close that gap, if any? 

Mr. MARTINEZ. I will be happy to address that, Congresswoman. 

I think the Chair actually spoke about this as well a while ago, and 

that is the various factors that we see in implementing provisional 

voting. 

Many States, at least 17 States, had no experience prior to the 

passage of this Federal law with implementing any type of provisional voting, whether it was called challenge ballots or affidavit 

ballots which many States had prior to HAVA making this a requirement for all Federal elections across the country. So I think 

you had many factors, just inexperience in implementing a new 

procedure. 

What we are seeing is that the business of election administration becomes more complex every election cycle for various factors. 

New technology, as the vice chairman just said a little while ago, 

makes it a little bit more complicated. So you have to have poll 

workers that are better trained or at least retrained pretty much 

for every election cycle when changes are made. Provisional voting 

was one major change. But you also had States that had a lot of 

experience in provisional voting as well, like California, that had 

been doing provisional voting for a number of years so it wasn’t 

new. 

So what I think we are seeing, we have to go and take a look 

at what happened and take a look at those States that implemented this law for the first time and find out what their experience was; go back to States that have been doing this for a while, 

talk to them and see how it went in their experience. In other 

words, I think what we will find is that States that had clear and 

uniform procedures, written procedures, and did an adequate job of 

informing their voters, here is how we are going to conduct this 

business of provisional voting, probably had a better success rate, 

if you will. 

If your voters were informed, if you decided in your State that 

you were going to count only those provisionals that were cast in 

the correct precinct, then it is incumbent upon you to make sure 

that your voters know this is how we do it in this jurisdiction, and 

also to take the necessary step, Congresswoman, to make sure your 

poll workers are trained and have the resources they need, that 

they are trained on your written policies and procedures, and that 

they have the resources they need to redirect voters appropriately 

if and when that time comes. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. That is key. As the gentlewoman 

said out of Michigan, the former secretary of state, that there are 

still some concerns about using a provisional ballot outside of your 

jurisdictional precinct. Again, education is so critically needed, and 

uniformity is needed in terms of all of these secretaries of states 

being on the same page. 

Mr. DEGREGORIO. Congresswoman, if I may just add to my colleague’s comments, though. Another element that I think is at play 

here is when we see high percentages of people where their ballots 

were legitimately counted, that indicates that they were legitimately registered to vote. I think what happened this year in some 

States, particularly battleground States, is that we saw groups 


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bringing in thousands and tens of thousands of voter registrations 

at the last minute into the election office, some of these registrations going back 6, 7, 8, 9 months past where people had actually 

registered in February but not turned in until October. I think election officials had trouble managing that, that last-minute surge of 

voter registrations. They didn’t get them on the rolls, but they 

voted provisionally, and they found that ballot, they found that registration, and so that was counted. 

So you saw those high numbers in some States, particularly battleground States, and I think part of the issue here that we have 

to deal with is how do we deal with groups that registered voters 

not getting registrations in on a timely basis. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. That is very true, because I heard 

from some of my election officials that there was a barrage of registration affidavits coming in, and they really didn’t have the staff 

to process this in a timely fashion. So those are some of the other 

issues. 

A couple of more questions I have. What is EAC’s position on developing voluntary voting system standards that cover voterverified paper trails? 

Mr. SOARIES. Just before answering that question, let me also 

note that Hawaii had only about 300 or more provisional votes 

cast, and so in addition to those factors, it should be analyzed as 

to why they had so few. I plan to volunteer to my colleagues to go 

to Hawaii and look into that personally. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. I will join you there as well. 

Mr. SOARIES. My colleagues can go to Alaska. 

The voter-verified paper trail and voter-verified audit trail issue 

is one that has been hotly discussed and has become one of the 

leading issues in voting for the future. On the front end it is a security concern. Those who are concerned about securing the ballot 

so that the voter knows that the person for whom they voted is the 

person for whom the vote was actually cast is critical. And then the 

issue of auditability. How do we audit an election where there is 

not a piece of paper available after the election is over for recount 

purposes and other? 

What EAC recognizes is that it is not the intent of HAVA, nor 

is it the responsibility of the Federal Government, to dictate to 

States what kind of equipment to purchase. Those States that are 

using direct recording electronic devices, the touch screen voting 

machines, have the right to use those machines. It is our responsibility through our standards-setting process to ensure that whatever equipment is used coheres with standards of usability, of performance and design. 

Having said that, I went to Nevada to observe the first election 

where the DRE with voter-verified paper trail technology was being 

used. I brought back to the Commission my observation that it is 

still our responsibility to ensure that standards are in place so that 

those States that are increasingly mandating the use of that kind 

of technology do so with the guidance of guidelines that are established at the Federal level. 

And so in summary, it is not our responsibility to prefer any particular type of technology. However, it is our mandate to put in 

place standards that govern their use so that when people use 


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them, they will know that the font size is correct, that the paper 

is the right kind of paper, that the sequencing of the names is such 

that you can protect voter confidentiality. 

There are a number of issues that are appropriately addressed 

by standards. My understanding of my colleagues is that we are 

not prepared to mandate any particular type of equipment, but we 

are working hard on our standards process. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. So your standards will pretty much 

be rather generic to fit all types of equipment? Is that it? 

Mr. SOARIES. We have charged the Technical Guidelines Development Committee to bring us a recommendation inclusive of standards for that particular type of equipment to ensure that any State 

or jurisdiction that wants to use it can use it with the assistance 

of the guidelines that we offer. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. I have got you. 

The last question I want to raise is one that the chairman 

brought up, this resolution that was passed by the National Association of Secretaries of State. In a memo that I read, they were 

asking that the duties that were assigned to you be perhaps transmitted to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Yet 

in a very cursory view of that group, it doesn’t seem like it is a 

compatible one, but can you tell me, what are the duties with this 

technology agency as opposed to what you are doing and if there 

is any compatibility or lack of compatibility? 

Ms. HILLMAN. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is a part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, is 

working with us specifically on the research and study and development of standards for voting systems, for the equipment, the 

hardware and the software systems. That is specified in HAVA. 

One would surmise from the resolution that what the secretaries 

of state are saying, they recognize that process should continue, 

but that would be the only part of the Help America Vote Act that 

NIST would be able to follow through on, and that would be the 

system standards. The issue of auditing, receiving State reports, 

sending out requirements payments, providing guidance on the 

very long list of issues that Congress has put under Title III of the 

act and those other kinds of issues are not something that are 

within the expertise of NIST. 

Mr. DEGREGORIO. If I may add, Madam Ranking Member, I 

think one of the beauties of HAVA in setting up the EAC was that 

we are a bipartisan commission, and that the TGDC and NIST 

does its work for the EAC. And that to make sure that whatever 

guidelines we come up with are done on a bipartisan manner to 

serve the whole country works well, I think, for this country to 

make sure that it is not just one agency of the Federal Government 

doing this, but that it is vetted through an agency such as ours to 

make sure that people have trust and confidence in the guidelines 

that they are producing. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. I think that is absolutely key. 

Ms. HILLMAN. If I could also note that I believe the resolution referred to the work could also be completed by the State and local 

election officials who make up the Standards Board. The Election 

Assistance Commission has a 110-member Standards Board, two 

people from each State. There is balance so that you have got 55 


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State representatives, 55 local representatives, and they each must 

be from a different party so that there is some balance there. 

But this is a board. It is a Federal advisory board. It is governed 

under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. It has a nine-person 

Executive Committee that it just elected last week, but the staffing 

of that Standards Board is provided by the Election Assistance 

Commission. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. So saying all of that, it certainly 

seems to me that it was a little premature in that resolution being 

put out, given that you have yet a lot of work to be done that has 

been mandated by HAVA for you to do, and you have done an extraordinary job. So I thank you so much, and I thank the chairman 

for bringing that resolution to our attention because it certainly at 

this point, in my view, is a little premature. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

The CHAIRMAN. Gentleman from Michigan. 

Mr. EHLERS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am very disappointed in the resolution of the secretaries of 

state. But during the writing of the bill, we had similar problems 

in dealing with the directors of elections, the secretaries of state 

and a lot of other people and local officials; basically wanted the 

Federal Government to keep their hands off. And we worked diligently to try and work with them and establish a system that was 

fair to everyone concerned. I would hope that you would get together with the secretaries of state soon in trying to resolve the 

problem because we need everyone working together. 

Since I was involved in writing the technical standards, I am 

very interested in how your relationship with NIST has worked 

and whether they have been helpful to you in the process, and has 

this been a fruitful partnership? 

Ms. HILLMAN. It has been a fruitful partnership, although admittedly, the Election Assistance Commission has had to do due diligence, if you will, to help NIST see the way that the work could 

be done within the 9 months prescribed by HAVA. I think NIST 

felt a bit overwhelmed by the size of the task. And particularly that 

portion of the time that NIST has been working on this, we had 

funding uncertainties. 

We started the technical guidelines development committee in 

July of 2004 on a gamble that the 2005 budget would provide the 

funding we needed. And, in fact, Congress did recognize the critical 

need for this funding; however, because we were under a continuing resolution, we didn’t know for certain what the funding 

would be until December. 

NIST worked with us. And the committee did have meetings. By 

January, they were ready to adopt resolutions. We, the Election Assistance Commission, have been very clear and, in fact, very firm 

with NIST and the Technical Guidelines Development Committee 

that the work must be done within the 9 months. 

Mr. EHLERS. I appreciate that. And frankly, NIST got caught in 

a bind not of their own making. It was a travesty that the Congress did not provide the funding for them and, in fact, cut their 

funding in other areas and made it very, very difficult. I appreciate 

that they were able to do what they were able to do. 


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Ms. HILLMAN. We are also appreciative that they did undergo a 

staff change. Dr. Bement did leave in the middle of this as did one 

of their other senior staff. So they did have some staff changes. 

Mr. EHLERS. I would like to comment on the paper trail issue. 

Representative Holt could not stay, but he is submitting a bill that 

he would like me to cosponsor requiring development of a paper 

trail. And there are many questions involved in this, and I don’t 

know what aspects you are looking at. A paper trail is not a magic 

answer. I could very easily program a computer to record false information and yet print out precisely what the voter put in and 

print that out for the voter’s satisfaction, but yet record a different 

result in the memory of the computer, and as long as there is no 

audit later on, that would stand. 

The real issue—there is plenty of opportunity for fraud in voting 

and also opportunity for electronic fraud, and I think everybody 

should be aware of that and the efforts should be concentrated on 

preventing the fraud in the first place and not just a paper trail. 

I think a paper trail is nice for audit purposes, but I am a little 

concerned that we might mislead people into thinking that, well, 

if there is a paper trail, then automatically everything is okay. 

That alone doesn’t guarantee it. So that is one reason I insisted on 

very strong technical standards to ensure the verifiability of the 

electronic record, the accuracy of the electronic record and the reproducibility of the electronic record in addition to whatever paper 

trail we might develop. 

It is unfortunate that there are high school students who are 

more capable of hacking the computer than the poll workers generally, and I am not saying this is likely to happen, but this is an 

opportunity for fraud to occur. And I just wanted to point that out. 

I don’t know if any of you wish to react to that comment. 

Mr. SOARIES. I will, Congressman. I think you are exactly right. 

When I was in Nevada, it was clear that many of the people who 

voted with the paper trail never even looked at the paper, which 

further opens the door of opportunity for electronic fraud. We do 

the math and calculate the likelihood of people to look at the paper. 

However, in Nevada, we found that the confidence level of voters, 

because of their perception of security, increased because there was 

paper. We think it is our job to do the proper research to really vet 

all of the issues, to inform the States and the policymakers, and, 

again, to set those standards, including technical standards, that 

will ensure that there are both standards for paper trail technology, but more importantly, standards for security in the electronic devices. 

Mr. EHLERS. Absolutely. Thank you very much. I am sorry. I am 

late for another committee meeting, but I thank you very much for 

being here, and I appreciate your work. You have had a tough couple of years, and I think this last election went off remarkably well. 

And there are always going to be some glitches, but I appreciate 

your efforts and hope that you will continue to do the same work. 

Mr. SOARIES. You urged to—we started—as the Chair mentioned, 

on Monday we met with NASS and spent most of our time listening 

to their concerns. But as Yogi Berra said, he gets along with his 

wife—we get along together even when we are not together. While 

NASS and EAC are not together on this particular issue, we will 


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work together as the Chair has committed and work through this 

and continue the process of election reform. 

Mr. EHLERS. I think it is safe to say on the part of the Congress 

that the Election Assistance Commission is not going away, so everyone has to work together. 

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman from Pennsylvania. 

Mr. BRADY. Just for my own knowledge, how many voting machines are there, do you know, in the United States of America? I 

mean, I am in the First District in Pennsylvania that encompasses 

Philadelphia and a couple of suburbs. I have four different voting 

machines. So you have to have a nightmare ahead of you with provisional ballots, designing them, allowing the State to do it. It is 

really tough. And I recognize that you do a heck of a job under 

some tough circumstances. 

Mr. DEGREGORIO. There are probably a couple of dozen individual type of voting devices out there throughout the country that 

vendors sell to jurisdictions throughout the country. And there is 

nearly half a million of individual devices that are used by voters 

throughout the country on election day in a Presidential election. 

So it is quite complicated. 

The CHAIRMAN. Gentleman from California Mr. Doolittle. 

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciated the 

opportunity to meet yesterday with a couple of our Commissioners, 

and appreciate the insight that you gave me. At that time I expressed a preference for a paper trail, but I would like to revise 

that. What I really want is the ability to audit what went on, and 

maybe there are some ways other than a paper trail to do that. 

Would any of you care to comment on alternatives to a paper trail 

in terms of how you can track what actually happened? 

Mr. MARTINEZ. I will make a quick comment. And the Vice 

Chairs also have been tracking this issue very closely. Certainly, 

there are. There are jurisdictions in this country that have had experience not just in one or two election cycles, but for a very long 

time in using electronic voting systems; the newer versions, touch 

screens. But there have been jurisdictions using them. In some of 

those jurisdictions, a chief election official, secretary of state, will 

step forward and say there is no real outcry from the voters of this 

State to move toward a paper verification, if you will. In other 

words, the management processes, the protocols that we have in 

place to ensure the integrity and the accuracy of our voting systems satisfies the voters in this State, generally speaking, that our 

systems are accurate. 

There are ways to achieve the accuracy and the integrity we all 

demand of our voting systems. You have jurisdictions that have experience, and then you have others that perhaps are newer to some 

of the technology that, for various reasons, including what our 

former Chair just articulated, and that is simply for the purpose 

that they believe in their State the voters demand an added layer 

of security, an added layer of verification. 

And some of those States like California, I think the legislature 

has taken a step to mandate a paper verification by 1/1/06. And 

you have some secretaries of state who have done it on their own 

through regulatory authority and have taken that step as well, so 

they see paper as that added security. 


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There are different ways, I think, to achieve the same result. I 

would join my former Chair and colleague in saying we don’t want 

to get bogged down at the EAC right now with the question of 

whether we should mandate this or that. What we want to do is 

deal with the reality of the situation. The reality of the situation 

is we have NIST that is taking a look at current voting system 

standards, identifying gaps, one of which I think we all agree is security, and let us deal with the reality which is, in some States, 

mandated already. The question of whether you are going to have 

paper or not has already been settled by a legislature, by a chief 

election official. Let us give the assistance that those States need 

to ensure that those components have integrity and accuracy. And 

those are the types of standards you are trying to achieve at some 

point later this year. 

Ms. HILLMAN. Congressman, you did raise a very important point 

about the auditability of the systems, the touch screen and DRE 

systems, and that is a matter that our Technical Guidelines Committee and NIST are looking into for us. 

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Thank you. As you know, we have had some severe problems in California with the secretary of state. He has now 

resigned, and I understand that you are auditing the use of the 

funds out there, which I very much appreciate and think an audit 

needs to go forward despite the resignation. I think it will shed 

some light on not only what has happened in California, but potential ways the system is perhaps being abused. It may exist elsewhere. I wonder if you could comment on how this audit will be 

conducted. 

Ms. HILLMAN. This year will be the first year that the Election 

Assistance Commission will undertake one of our significant responsibilities, which is receiving reports from the States. And because of the lateness of our cycle, we will be receiving reports on 

expenditures under both Title 1 and Title 2 of the Help America 

Vote Act. 

So we have been providing guidance about the kinds of information that needs to be reported to us. Upon reviewing those reports 

and looking at the single-State audits that will be available from 

the various States, we will make a determination as to whether we 

think there is anything in the report that warrants our further consideration of a special audit. 

At our meeting in January, we did adopt policy and procedures 

for special audits, and then we did vote to audit California based 

on information that we received through the California State auditor’s office and that report. Our next step, we have to obtain the 

services of an auditing entity. We are considering two options. One 

is another Federal agency with experience auditing Federal grants, 

payments, requirements, or an outside firm. And as soon as we 

have that in place, we will begin the audit, and we will be looking 

at an audit of both financial and program compliance. 

We are informed by the California State auditor’s report, and we 

will be informed by the single-State—I believe I am using the correct reference—single-State audit that will also come out. What we 

want to do is take a look at a much bigger percentage of the expenditures than did the California State audit report. So I am exVerDate Aug 31 2005 22:46 Apr 19, 2006 Jkt 026991 PO 00000 Frm 00190 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A991.XXX A991

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pecting that we will have the audit completed sometime late spring 

or early summer. 

Mr. DOOLITTLE. Thank you. 

The CHAIRMAN. Gentlelady from California. 

Ms. LOFGREN. As a temporary member, I believe I am not able 

to participate. 

The CHAIRMAN. If you would like to. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Listening carefully to the paper trail argument 

and the level of confidence, I will just advance an opinion that part 

of what our mission here to do is to assure the integrity of the vote, 

but also to build confidence on the part of voters. And the ability 

to conduct a recount, I think, is part of that confidence building. 

Whether or not a recount is ever conducted, that it could be, I 

think, builds public confidence, and for that measure alone ought 

to be included. 

Is NIST addressing the issue of the multiplicity of technologies 

and the possibility of a paper trail and conforming to that multiplicity of technologies? 

Mr. DEGREGORIO. Yes, they are. We gave that charge to the committee when it was first instituted in July of last year, and just recently the committee passed resolutions to deal with this issue and 

to make sure that if a jurisdiction or a State mandated a paper 

trail, that there would be requirements and guidelines for the use 

of that paper trail, which would include the auditability and any 

kind of recount that the system may have to go through after an 

election. 

Ms. LOFGREN. As a brand new member, I will limit my question 

to that, Mr. Chairman, and as I continue to be a member, I will 

have more. 

Mr. SOARIES. Congresswoman, there is a very active movement 

of technologists and voting vendors who are pursuing a track of 

voter verifiability through an audit trail that does not include 

paper, and I think the exploration of that emerging technology will 

offer States options who are seeking to do precisely what you described, and that is to have maximum auditability and at the same 

time an option to using paper. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Mr. Chairman, at some point, maybe the committee has already done this, but I think it would be very informative if we could arrange at some time to have some of these machines displayed for us along with some geeky types who hack into 

them so we might have an understanding. It is one thing to sit 

here and get a report, but I think it would be very informative if 

at some point we could arrange that. Just a suggestion. 

The CHAIRMAN. We can do that. When we were talking about the 

voting machines, we had a forum here a couple of years ago and 

had a lot of different machines. I think we had it for 2 days, and 

House staff came. 

Gentlelady from Michigan. 

Mrs. MILLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to revisit, I think, what was your original question, 

and I also serve on the Armed Services Committee, so I have a 

complete consternation about our military members whether or not 

they are able to vote in a timely fashion. And I believe that the Department of Defense has let a contract to a vendor to develop a sysVerDate Aug 31 2005 22:46 Apr 19, 2006 Jkt 026991 PO 00000 Frm 00191 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A991.XXX A991

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tem whereby the military would be able to download their ballots, 

although I am not sure with technology being where it is today. It 

could be years away, obviously, for a complete ballot to be 

downloaded. I was wondering as we were talking about standards 

if you are aware of this contract and to what degree the EAC was 

involved, if at all, with developing these standards. And in consultation with the DOD for such a contract, it would seem there 

would be an appropriate agenda for your responsibilities. 

Mr. DEGREGORIO. Thank you, Congresswoman. 

We are certainly aware of the agency that was given this contract, Omega Technologies. However, we were not brought into the 

picture, nor were we asked our opinion on the process that they 

used to select the company. And there was some controversy involved, because it was felt that it was let under the Department 

of Defense, and perhaps there were some partisan contributions 

given by this company in the process that tainted any work that 

they did. 

I certainly suggested to the Pentagon that anything that they do 

in this area be bipartisan, and I suggested to them that perhaps 

they contract in the future with some local election entity in the 

Washington, D.C., area; there are plenty of them around here that 

are bipartisan, so partisanship wouldn’t come into play when we 

are dealing with votes that may come in that people may see. 

So we certainly hope that in the future we have the opportunity 

to work with the Federal Voting Assistance Program and the Pentagon to improve this process to keep the controversy to a minimum and to keep voter participation by our military men and 

women and voters overseas to a maximum. 

Mrs. MILLER. I appreciate that. That was very candid to say so, 

and I would be interested to follow up myself on the way it is 

going, because it does have great potential, obviously, to be able to 

use that kind of technology. I think people on the submarines, people have an opportunity to download. 

Shifting gears, but continuing to talk about the standards, and 

I am, as we are all, about this resolution that NIST passed this 

last week. And the next panel, I see some of my former friends, secretaries of state out here, will want to address it. But it is my understanding that the resolution that was passed was overwhelming. 

I think it was 22 out of 24 secretaries that were in attendance. It 

was a large amount. But perhaps some of the reason, part of the 

reason that they might have some consternation and passed a resolution is because they don’t have the standards yet, for instance, 

on the statewide election voter registration list. And I know it was 

talked about in your testimony that you are looking perhaps at 

summer. Someone said summer. And I know the chairwoman also 

mentioned the term ‘‘interactive.’’ I have a couple of questions. 

First of all, I don’t know how we define interactive. I would like 

to know your best definition of what that means. Interactivity obviously is going to be a critical element of that. And as you are developing your standards, what is your criteria status thus far; if there 

is anything we should know in regards to that. And it would 

seem—are you looking at some of the existing States’ systems? 

And not to keep going back to Michigan, but we all have our personal perspectives, so I have to mention in Michigan we developed 


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the qualified voter file many years ago before HAVA came along. 

And in Michigan—I don’t know that we are unique in the Nation, 

but we have a very decentralized system. In most States where you 

have the county clerk maintaining the voter registration rolls, in 

Michigan it is every clerk, every village clerk, township clerk, city 

clerk, to the extent that we had over 1,700 municipalities maintaining their respective voter registration files and then to meld 

them all into a statewide computerized voter registration list was 

sporting; very challenging, but it worked out great. 

And our system is interactive in that it is Web-based. There also 

is—and I think there are a number of States that do this as well, 

that the secretaries not only have the elections, but they have the 

DMVs. So we were able to construct that system built off of the 

driver file and the State identification file. And that particular system I will note was noted in the Ford-Carter Presidential Commission as a national model. I am sure there are other national models. 

And I only say that by way of as you are developing your criteria 

for your standards, what is happening with that, and are you looking at these other systems? Because I am sure the secretaries have 

great consternation about developing a system now. They spend a 

lot of money on some system, and then in the summer or whenever 

come to find out it is not a system that is meeting your standards. 

So I ask you that. 

Ms. HILLMAN. Thank you for the question, Congresswoman. I 

think there were three or four dynamic components to your question. One is with respect to the statewide voter registration databases, we don’t develop standards on that, but rather we would 

issue guidance. And HAVA gives us some requirements as to how 

we do the guidance, which would include the development of the 

draft guidance, hearings, publication in the Federal Register for a 

period of time for comment. So it is guidance on that part of the 

Title 3 requirements that we would issue. 

We did at our December 2004 meeting have presentations from 

four States about their experiences with their statewide voter registration databases. We note that, I believe, it is 17 States have 

their statewide voter registration databases operational. Some 

States have begun that process. And the purpose for holding that 

first hearing, if you will, it wasn’t really a hearing, but we did a 

panel presentation, was to gather early information to get a sense 

as to the amount of work that we would have to undertake to come 

up with the guidance. And some States—we had Michigan, Kentucky, South Carolina and North Carolina, and Kentucky and 

Michigan both have had longtime experience with this. At least one 

State said they had to go back to the drawing board—I think it was 

Kentucky—and start over again. They couldn’t do that again now, 

but that as they were working through their system, they realized 

that some parts of it weren’t working. 

The guidance that we will provide is voluntary, but we draw 

from the real experiences that elections administrators have had 

with the system. We know there are discussions between State 

election officials and locals about the—I won’t say ownership of the 

databases, but the locals have their database in the States. 


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With respect to interactive and real-time, that is one of the big 

challenges that we will have to give definition to that in a way that 

provides good guidance, but doesn’t at all impede on any State’s 

ability to set up the type of system that it can afford and manage 

over the long haul that will service its locals, that the locals will 

be able to use. For some jurisdictions this is going to be a major 

undertaking. It is going to require database, no hardware, and so 

on and so forth. Some States shy away from purchasing over-thecounter software, if you will, and want their own setup. Most 

States don’t have what Michigan has in place, and that is the Department of Motor Vehicles and the elections responsibilities in one 

place. It has to be coordinated. Some States are having to work 

with Social Security Administration, you know, to figure out how 

the files will be able to talk to each other. 

We recognize that is a huge undertaking, and we appreciate the 

States wanting to receive the guidance from us. As you probably 

have picked up in earlier testimony, unfortunately, we started way 

behind the eight ball with respect to not only our being appointed 

late, but not having a budget in 2004 that permitted us to do any 

research last year. And we do not have the in-house staff capacity 

to do all the research. We will have to contract some of this out, 

because in the fiscal year appropriation, Congress did cap us at 

having 22 full-time staff. So we are having to put together the capacity to do the research. 

So under ideal conditions, this guidance would have gone out last 

year. We do believe we are going to be able to provide guidance in 

sufficient enough time that even for a State that starts the initial 

planning—in my remarks earlier, I talked about, you know, 

changes and improvements take thoughtful planning and time. So 

as the thought and planning process is going on, our guidance will 

be in time for any State to be able to revise, correct and do whatever before final implementation and still have several months to 

be able to do a trial run, if you will, before January 1, 2006. 

Mr. DEGREGORIO. If I may add, Congresswoman, because I know 

that under your leadership as secretary of state of Michigan, you 

worked closely with the 1,500 city clerks. I had the opportunity before the election to go to Troy, Michigan, and visit with Tony Bartholomew, the city clerk there, to see how that system worked, because I know that when HAVA was drafted, the State of Michigan 

system was an element and a very important element as they 

drafted the statute. 

As you recognized, as the former secretary of state, there is always a tension between the local election officials and the State, 

and in some States the tension is quite high on this issue, and we 

recognize that. And the Commission wants to try to help the States 

and locals to get together to partner and make this work as Congress intended. 

In the State of Illinois, the State board of elections and the election officials are miles apart. The State board of elections want all 

the registrations to come to Springfield, and the 86 county clerks 

and elections said no. And we want to provide answers for them, 

some guidance. They have to work it out themselves. We are not 

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vide some interpretation that helps them come together to make 

this work. 

Mrs. MILLER. I know I am out of time here, but let me suggest 

then as you are developing guidelines, even though you can’t mandate it, a critical element—and this is not inherent to Michigan, it 

is anywhere—is that the same address be used for your voter registration as it is for your driver’s license. We passed a piece of legislation in Michigan to that effect, and I know some other States 

have. 

When we fired up the qualified voter file in Michigan and melded 

all of the lists together, we eliminated almost 10 percent of our list. 

We had about 7 million, and we eliminated about 700,000 names. 

And when we passed that legislation, we really fine-tuned the system, and there should be no reason why—I mean, whatever address you want to use, okay, but you could only have one address 

in the system. That is something I would suggest strongly that you 

put in your guidelines; otherwise you are never going to have a 

clean list. 

Ms. HILLMAN. Thank you for that comment. And we do recognize 

that once these databases are in place, there will be, as you said, 

a 10 percent cleanup of the rolls, if you will. There will be significant cleanup of the rolls, and then will come into question the 

purging process. So the transparency of the State’s activities to develop this database, keeping the information flowing to the groups 

and individuals that work on voter registration so that they understand if they are told there was a 15 percent purge once the database was done, then we will understand that, and we won’t see the 

kind of reaction to this as we saw with provisional voting. 

We didn’t know a year ago that provisional voting was going to 

be the subject it was, but we can anticipate now that when any 

voter group hears that a significant portion of the voting registration list of the State was purged, they are going to want to know 

who, what, when, where, why, how. Part of our guidance will be 

encouraging States’ transparency of process, frequent communication with the groups, and ongoing information, and a visible written plan that explains step by step what they are doing and why 

they are doing it. 

The CHAIRMAN. I want to thank the panel. We are talking about 

secretaries of state coming out here, and that has been bandied 

about. But my Secretary of State Tim Blackwell was the first person who picked up the phone and called me with HAVA, and we 

appreciated that. And Secretary of State Thornburgh is here. He 

was the first one on the spot, too. Secretary of State Priest. 

So I didn’t want to make a bashing statement. I will say probably also to defend NASS in the sense from their perspective, and 

it doesn’t have as much to do with you all, somebody doesn’t like 

something, there is a bill to amend HAVA and another bill to 

amend HAVA. And there were so many of them before the election 

that I think probably in the minds of secretary of states, you know, 

how far is this thing going to go that is kind of overdone, even 

though there are good issues and important issues. But there was 

such a proliferation of bills, and that is probably a signal from 

them to us also. 


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With that, I want to thank you for your great work and your 

time today. 

The CHAIRMAN. And the next panel, speaking of secretaries of 

state, are here, and appreciate their patience and will move right 

on to introducing the panel. 

I want to thank the secretaries of state for being here and for 

your patience. We have Rebecca Vigil-Giron, the New Mexico secretary of state and also the current president of the National Association of Secretaries of State; Ron Thornburgh, who is no stranger 

to the committee, and who is the Kansas secretary of state; Chet 

Culver, the Iowa Secretary of State; and Todd Rokita, the Indiana 

Secretary of State. And appreciate your time. And we will start 

with our Secretary of State from New Mexico. 

STATEMENTS OF REBECCA VIGIL-GIRON, NEW MEXICO SECRETARY OF STATE; RON THORNBURGH, KANSAS SECRETARY 

OF STATE; TODD ROKITA, INDIANA SECRETARY OF STATE; 

AND CHET CULVER, IOWA SECRETARY OF STATE 

STATEMENT OF REBECCA VIGIL-GIRON 

Ms. VIGIL-GIRON. Good morning, Chairman Ney, Congresswoman 

Millender-McDonald and distinguished members of the committee. 

Thank you for your invitation to address the committee today, and 

I bring special greetings from my Governor, Governor Bill Richardson, and special greetings to Congresswoman Millender-McDonald 

from him. 

My name is Rebecca Vigil-Giron, and I am the secretary of state 

for New Mexico and the president of the National Association of 

Secretaries of State. During the long run-up to election day 2004, 

we heard some critics say that it would be an election administration nightmare. Now looking back, the general consensus seems to 

be that the elections ran smoothly overall. 

My peers and I knew that we were staking our reputations on 

the success of that day, and we worked hard to comply with the 

mandates of the Help America Vote Act. In fact, we successfully administered free and fair elections for the most part, even though 

HAVA has not been fully funded and the Federal Commission it 

created was 9 months late taking office. 

Every State met HAVA’s 2004 deadlines. Several States even 

completed reforms that could have been postponed until 2006. At 

least nine States were ready with statewide voter registration databases, and Americans with disabilities voted independently for the 

first time in many States. 

My colleague, Secretary Ron Thornburgh of Kansas, will speak 

more about the national picture, but I can tell you that in New 

Mexico, Federal funding for election reform helped us improve our 

electoral process. New Mexico prepared for the election with an unprecedented nonpartisan voter education program that was one of 

the most successful in the country. We produced television and 

radio spots in English, Spanish and Navajo that were aired statewide. As a direct result of that campaign, more than 1 million of 

my State’s 1.9 million residents are registered to vote. We registered 152,000 new voters between January and October of 2004, 

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istered voters. Voter turnout was 26 percent higher than in the 

2000 Presidential election. More than 160,000 new voters cast ballots in November 2004, thanks largely to my voter education campaign. 

For the first time ever, New Mexico offered provisional ballots. 

More than 18,000 New Mexicans voted provisionally. And even 

though not all of these provisional votes were certified, not a single 

person was disenfranchised. I do believe, though, that uniform 

statewide standards for the certification of provisional votes will 

need further refinement in New Mexico and in all States. 

New Mexico is the only State in the Union with a State constitution that requires us to provide all election materials in both 

English and Spanish statewide to all voters. This year we also provided written and oral election information in the languages of the 

Navajo Nation, the Mescalero and Apache Nations and 19 Pueblo 

Nations. New Mexico leads the country in this area now, but 37 

States are now required to determine how to effectively reach language minority populations. 

We are also just months away from completing the installation 

of our new statewide voter registration system. New Mexico will be 

one of the first States in the country to have a central system in 

place that is in full compliance with HAVA. We expect that our 

system will be a turning point in election management. The system 

will significantly reduce duplicate registrations. It will help ensure 

that only legitimate voters are on our voter rolls by using our new 

statewide deceased and felon files. The system will provide a 

backup data center for disaster recovery, something that New Mexico counties could not have afforded on their own. My office will always have an accurate, up-to-date voter file and will no longer 

have to depend on monthly updates subject to human error. 

Advanced technologies like bar codes and document scanning will 

make public employees more efficient and save taxpayer dollars. 

The system is a significant advancement in election technology, 

and it was funded with HAVA dollars. It is a tribute to the foresight and vision of this committee. 

New Mexico’s progress points to the fact that HAVA is working. 

I urge the members of this committee to continue to support HAVA 

in its original form and to fully fund the law. I have full confidence 

that with your support, we will finish the job of protecting our democracy for future generations, and I want to thank you, and may 

God bless you in the new year. 

[The statement of Ms. Vigil-Giron follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Secretary Thornburgh. 

STATEMENT OF RON THORNBURGH 

Mr. THORNBURGH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to 

be back before the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to spend 

some time with you this morning. Obviously, a lot of work has been 

done. My colleagues are going to spend time talking specifically 

about certain elements within the State. I hope to present a bigger 

national picture and paint that picture a little more for you. 

The November 2, 2004, election operated, in my opinion, just the 

way Congress intended in that it was—there were certainly scattered stories of election glitches, of equipment glitches. There were 

a few stories of poll worker errors. But there were no widespread 

claims of disenfranchisement as we saw in the previous Presidential election. 

Our system certainly is not perfect. There were too many long 

lines and too many provisional ballots cast, not as a reflection that 

provisional ballots are a bad thing, but we can do a better job in 

keeping the records clean so there is not a need for provisional ballots. However overall, last November’s election was successful, and 

elections are better today than they were just a few years ago because of the great work of this committee. 

You designed HAVA several years ago with very clear goals: historic reform, consistency nationwide, appropriate funding, broad 

guidelines, and you left the specifics to the States. You created a 

good system that balanced Federal and State interest. And after 

HAVA only being 3 years old, the reforms are working. 

I would ask that Congress continue to stand by the system it created. The investment and the outcomes can only be realized with 

continued full funding with the Help America Vote Act. We, the 

States, have made significant progress. In this last year, every nonexempt State provided provisional voting for the first time in 

America. Nine States, and in some counts it is as much as 15 

States, central voter registration was available prior to the extended deadline of the Federal guidelines. Thanks to HAVA funds, 

changes were made in a number of States, the way in which we 

educated voters, the way we reach out to voters, provide information about polling place availability. And in Kansas I am proud to 

say for the first time in our history as a State, every single polling 

place was ADA-accessible. It is an extraordinary challenge and effort by HAVA in order to be able to do that. 

Despite significant progress in what we believe to be a very short 

time, we are concerned by what we see as a movement to federalize 

elections. Let me just state very clearly, I believe, and this is my 

personal opinion, the biggest fear among the States is a continued 

expansion of the Federal role through regulatory oversight and 

micromanagement. 

I would assume we will have a chance to discuss the NASS resolution at some point, so I won’t go into great details right now. 

President Reagan said in his 1983 State of the Union address 

that one of his goals was to restore State and local government to 

their roles as dynamic laboratories of change in a creative society. 

We certainly owe a great debt to our Federal partners, and we 

have all benefited from bold State experimentation: In the State of 


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Oregon, where we have mail voting and 85 percent voter turnout, 

where nearly every vote is cast through the mail; in six States with 

election day registration, we had 74 percent voter turnout. And if 

we standardize everything, we lose the ability to create those kinds 

of systems that allow others to learn from that process. 

There has been great innovation and leadership. The ingenuity 

and change cost dollars. Congress has not yet provided full funding 

to provide for the long-term management and updates that will certainly be a part of where we go. Congress has clearly defined your 

desired outcomes. The States clearly must be allowed to do what 

we do best, and that is figure out what works best for our own cities. Congressman Ney, I think you have heard me say it before, 

what works for New York City doesn’t work for Cawker City, Kansas, home of the world’s largest ball of twine. We have to understand the distinctions. Congress must also clearly stand up to its 

obligation and fully fund the requirements of HAVA. 

Thank you for the opportunity to be here, and look forward to 

answering your questions. 

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. 

[The statement of Mr. Thornburgh follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Secretary of State Rokita. 

STATEMENT OF TODD ROKITA 

Mr. ROKITA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. It is a pleasure to be invited to speak with you here today 

about the Help America Vote Act. In Indiana, we still say HAVA, 

not HAVA. So it is a little bit different for us. 

To speak about the Federal legislation, to me a constitutional 

point, that really was legislation to help not a national election, but 

the elections in 50 sovereign States. And some of those elections 

dealt with elections for Federal office where those offices are held 

in a stateless city. I want to thank you, Chairman Ney. If I understood you right from your comments, you still support full funding 

of HAVA, and you will get that for us, and that is very much appreciated on behalf of the people of Indiana and the rest of the secretaries that are here. 

When I first was elected secretary of state January 1, 2003, I 

sent a letter out to all our 92 county clerks, and if you ever want 

to have a discussion in federalism, I invite you to have a hearing 

in Indiana, and I will bring my 92 county clerks and talk about 

government closest to the people. It is something they certainly believe in. But we have been working on this since day one, and in 

order to be successful with the Help America Vote Act, you have 

had to start working from day one and lay the foundation and do 

the brick building to bring us where we are today in Indiana. And 

we are at the verge of success with implementing Congress’s intent. 

You have to bring everyone to the table. In Indiana, we went beyond bipartisanship. We went to tripartisanship. Where it was left 

for us to develop a plan, we brought 28 members to the table, all 

the political parties, the media, the military, the advocacy groups 

and our county clerks. And my office, my job has changed dramatically from my predecessor’s. I can tell you that I spend at least 70 

percent of my job as secretary of state on this, and that has never 

been done before. And I know that some people believe the only 

other thing that the secretary of state has to do is watch the State 

seal, but there are a lot of things going on in our statehouse. 

When Hoosiers went to the polls in 2000, over 50 percent of them 

voted on what has become the much maligned and antiquated 

equipment. As I have the honor to speak with you today, that number has gone down to 10 percent, and we are well on our way to 

zero percent. Everyone is on better equipment by January 2006. 

We are on track with our statewide voter file, and that, again, 

you have got to understand the importance of foundation laying to 

get something like the statewide voter file done when you haven’t 

had one in your State. In Indiana, we had 92 separate files. 

We also have an overseas voting guide, which has been labeled 

a best practice by the Federal Voting Assistance Program, and our 

education and outreach continues to grow at levels that Indiana 

has never experienced before. 

There was some talk about provisional balloting. In Indiana, we 

have a common-sense approach to provisional balloting, and that is 

you have to be in your precinct in order for your ballot to be counted, and there are some very good public policy reasons to do that. 

One of them is that if you allow what I call poll crashing, to go 


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anywhere you want to vote, you have some very large administrative headaches. It would be impossible to know how many provisional ballots to even print if that was going to be the case. You 

would also send the wrong message. You would say it is more important to vote for President of the United States than for mayor 

or city council. And I don’t have to tell this committee that a lot 

of the decisions that affect our lives are made by those local races. 

And then consider the public policy of a tie vote in a race. In 

2003, in the Frankton-Lapel School Corporation race, there was a 

tie vote. If people weren’t made to vote at the precinct, how would 

that person feel if they didn’t have a chance to cast that tie vote? 

That tie was actually decided by a court, which brings into focus 

a larger issue. 

At some point we have to take these elections back for ourselves. 

The Constitution, if you look through it in that very objective, clear 

lens that Thomas Jefferson prescribed for us, the people are to 

elect our leaders, not the courts. And I would urge this committee 

as it goes through its deliberations to keep that in mind. 

One last point as I finish up with my remarks. We have not had 

a perfect election in this country since 1776. I would venture to say 

we haven’t had a perfect election in the history of this world. In 

Indiana, 30,000 people were in some way or another responsible for 

our elections. And I don’t pretend to know the Bible better than 

Reverend Soaries, but I know it talks about the imperfection of the 

human, and I do say that what elections have to be, as we all feel, 

I believe, free and accurate, with everyone having equal opportunity and access if they are eligible voters to the polls. And that 

is what HAVA does, and that is what we are working for best of 

all at the State level. Thank you. 

[The statement of Mr. Rokita follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. Secretary of State Culver. 

STATEMENT OF CHET CULVER 

Mr. CULVER. Thank you, Chairman Ney, Ranking Member 

Millender-McDonald, Congressman Brady and Congresswoman 

Miller, and distinguished members of the committee, for your invitation to be here. My name is Chet Culver, and I am Iowa’s secretary of state now serving in my second term. 

In February of 2001, I served on a special election reform task 

force created by the national secretaries of state, or NASS. Our 

goal was to provide Congress with information and make recommendations in an effort to solve many of the election administration problems revealed in the 2000 Presidential election. Much 

of this input was reflected in the legislation that ultimately became 

the Help America Vote Act, or HAVA. 

Having had the opportunity to work on HAVA since its inception, 

I want to express my appreciation to the bill’s cosponsors, Chairman Ney and Congressman Hoyer, Members of Congress who supported the bill, and the congressional staff who have provided valuable assistance. This is an excellent piece of Federal legislation. I 

believe, properly implemented, HAVA will dramatically improve 

election administration in the United States and help tens of millions of Americans vote. 

Because of HAVA and the financial resources it provides, Iowa 

is positioned to lead the Nation in these critical reform measures. 

We are making real progress. Our goal is not only to comply with 

this Federal law, but to create a model for HAVA implementation. 

Today I was asked to report on three aspects of Iowa’s HAVA implementation: First, our experience with HAVA. Simply put, our 

experience has been an extremely positive one. It has brought together Iowans in a bipartisan way, and we have made positive 

changes to the process that lies at the core of our democratic values: voting. Since we began implementation, we made it a priority 

to reach out in an inclusive fashion. Underpinning our State plan 

is more than 2 years’ worth of input gained from 19 public meetings. For this effort, we reached out and involved voters, poll workers, elected officials, disability advocates, new citizens, diverse ethnic groups and many Iowans who have difficulty voting because of 

sight impairments or low reading skills. In addition, we recruited 

volunteers to participate on a dozen HAVA committees, subcommittees and user groups. 

Twenty-eight HAVA committee sessions were held in 2003, and 

25 sessions in 2004. Our objective in reaching out in such an extensive way was to guarantee that implementation would be embraced 

by all Iowans with the goal of helping them vote. As a result, 

Iowans will now experience HAVA’s impact through better voting 

machines, a more efficient statewide voter registration system, improved election official and poll worker training, and unprecedented 

voter education efforts. 

The second part of my testimony relates to the impact HAVA had 

on our 2004 election. I am pleased to report that HAVA had an extremely beneficial impact on the recent election. HAVA helped 

more Iowans participate in our democratic process than ever before. For the first time in the history of our State, Federal funds 


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were allocated to improve election administration and help Iowans 

vote. 

In 2004, we spent nearly 1.1 million of our $30 million in HAVA 

funds. We spent it in the following ways that led to 95 percent 

voter registration and 75 percent voter turnout. We leased new voting machines to replace antiquated lever machines and hand-counted paper ballots. We made 37 more polling sites accessible for persons with disabilities. We conducted unprecedented statewide 

training for 127 county election officials. We provided a single uniform curriculum for training 10,000 poll workers. We made 1.3 million voter guides available to Iowa households. In each precinct we 

provided information highlighting voting rights and responsibilities. We produced Braille instruction booklets for every precinct. 

We translated HAVA-specific voting rights information into multiple languages. We developed a toll-free assistance hotline and a 

Web-based on-line election center, and we mailed voting information to 10,000 Iowa National Guard and Reserve family members. 

All of these HAVA initiatives contributed to the highest level of 

voter participation in the history of our State. A record 2.1 million 

Iowans are registered, and a record 1.5 million Iowans voted. 

Iowa’s turnout ranked sixth in the Nation in 2004, up from the 

tenth spot 10 years ago. 

Finally, Mr. Chairman, let me describe our plans to ensure 

Iowa’s complete and timely HAVA implementation. First of all, we 

are very proud of our HAVA State plan and the extensive grassroots input that contributed to it. An EAC Commissioner who reviewed our plan rated it as one of the very best State plans submitted. Our plan is the road map to successful HAVA compliance. 

Voters, elected officials and technical experts will continue to be 

involved as we move forward. In addition, our office plans to visit 

each of Iowa’s 99 counties over the next year to ensure statewide 

implementation. 

Just as the planning process has been open and inclusive, we will 

continue to be diligent in our efforts to provide ongoing information 

to the general public and policymakers. Our Iowa plan, the Iowa 

HAVA plan, meeting summaries, budgets and timelines are posted 

on our office Web site. 

Let me briefly outline the budget as it is divided into three 

HAVA core areas. Technology: We will use 17 million to purchase 

HAVA-compliant voting systems, and we have budgeted 6.5 million 

for the development and implementation of new statewide voter 

registration systems. For voting machines, we are developing an efficient and cost-effective purchasing process. We developed an 

equipment funding formula that emphasizes equality and provides 

counties with up to 90 percent of the cost for their voting equipment. Machine replacement will be completed to coincide with two 

statewide elections in 2005. 

In summary, I feel we have a plan in place and the commitment 

to excellence to ensure that all components of HAVA, technology 

training and education will be successfully implemented. We will 

get the job done by 2006. The changes we are making in Iowa’s 

election are far-reaching, and they have already helped tens of 

thousands Iowans vote just as the Help America Vote Act intended. 

We recognize we couldn’t be making improvement reforms if it 


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weren’t for HAVA, so I am here to thank you, Mr. Chairman, and 

Ranking Member Millender-McDonald and the members of this 

committee for your invitation to be here and your leadership on 

this critically important civil rights and voting rights issue, especially as we celebrate the 40th anniversary in 2005 of the historic 

Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

Thank you on behalf of the citizens of Iowa for providing us with 

this tremendous opportunity to make good election administration 

the very best in the country. It is an honor and privilege to testify 

today, and I would be happy to respond to your questions. 

[The statement of Mr. Culver follows:] 


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The CHAIRMAN. We have to go vote, and only have one vote, and 

will return if you can stay. I do want to mention as we go, and, 

again, we will come back, but it is so critical for the remaining 

$900 million to be funded; otherwise it is an unfunded mandate. 

We promised 3.9 billion. Congressman Hoyer, Speaker Hastert, 

Leader Pelosi, at that time Bill Young now we have, and Jerry 

Lewis as the Chairman from California, and we have to work to 

get that funding, because we can’t turn around and say we have 

3 billion, and we are 900 million short. We have to have the whole 

thing. And I am hoping—and it has to be done this year, too; otherwise I think you are going to be hurting to spend the rest of the 

money to implement HAVA. 

So we will recess and be back. 

[Recess.] 

The CHAIRMAN. Committee will come to order. I want to thank 

the panel, the first panel and also your panel. Very impressive testimony. 

I want to ask a couple of generic questions, and anybody who 

wants to respond, provisional voting and any comments on, you 

know, a need for any tweaking of the system—uniformity. I have 

never believed—and I was asked this many times obviously this 

year, especially coming from Ohio, the number one battleground 

State in the Nation—but I was asked several times about how our 

State counts, whether they count the provisional balloting. That 

wasn’t our role. Our role was to make sure people got a provisional 

ballot so they would not be disenfranchised. I don’t think I can sit 

here and say, Ohio, here is how you determine whether you count 

that or not. So that was where I was coming from. 

But is there anything in the system that needs to be clarified on 

provisionals or any comments on that? 

Ms. VIGIL-GIRON. Mr. Chairman, I am sure my colleagues will 

have their comments as well, but I think when you left in general 

open-ended for States to decide, I think that was a good thing, by 

the way. We are now having to tweak what our State law and the 

uniformity and how we certify those envelopes with the information 

to be able to even include those ballots into the count. That is 

something that we are working on. I have rulemaking authority in 

my State and can develop guidelines in regards to what they are 

actually looking for the certification of those provisional envelopes. 

We are right now in the middle of a legislative session, and they 

are trying to determine if we should go and follow what Ohio did 

and just allow a voter to vote within their precinct only rather than 

what we do right now in New Mexico where you can vote anywhere 

in the county. The argument, of course, is that we have districted 

races, State legislators, representatives, State senators that are 

districted whose vote may not count if that voter votes outside of 

that line, that district, and therefore they will not be able to celebrate in achieving more votes in that election. 

I even have a proposal from my attorney general that would address anywhere in the State you can vote. But then, of course, that 

would leave everything else on the bottom excluded to count those 

votes. I have got that argument. 

So I don’t know where my State is going to initially go in changing that aspect of where can I vote. Certainly the central data sysVerDate Aug 31 2005 22:46 Apr 19, 2006 Jkt 026991 PO 00000 Frm 00233 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A991.XXX A991

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tems that we are going to be building, all of us, throughout the 50 

States are going to assist us eventually; not today, probably not for 

the 2006 election or even the 2008. It is going to be very costly to 

have statewide voter data systems in place at all the polling places 

so that if a voter does present themselves, they can actually look 

up where you are registered to vote, and they can also look up if 

you voted early or absentee. It would be indicated immediately on 

that central voter data system. 

We will probably see fewer provisional voters out there because 

of our voter education aspect, that piece of it, because we are going 

to be contacting registered voters and making sure they know exactly what their precinct number is, their polling place is, House 

district, Senate district, and, of course, merging that central data 

system with motor vehicle records as they do in Representative 

Miller’s State, and also taxation of revenue, tracking people to their 

correct residences. 

This central system is probably the most important piece of 

HAVA. Of course, everything works together, but that central voter 

data system is very, very important, and a lot of our States are 

very much behind in building them. So that is the other piece we 

are probably going to be asking Congress. I know the deadlines are 

set in stone, but we need to have some leeway in regards to building those central data systems. 

The CHAIRMAN. I have one follow-up question that I wanted to 

ask you because of the way you do vote in New Mexico. You can 

go countywide. What do you do, for example, take my home county 

of Belmont County, and I live in St. Clairsville, and down on the 

river is a town called Bellaire. If you can vote countywide and I go 

down to Bellaire to vote even though I am from St. Clairsville, and 

I sit there and vote on the Bellaire school levy as a nonresident, 

how do you pull that out and separate it You surely run into this 

in New Mexico. 

Ms. VIGIL-GIRON. Provisional ballots are hand-counted, and each 

one of those—after the certification of that envelope and that voter, 

and those envelopes are opened and matched to that voter, that 

precinct would be assigned to them or whatever, and anything that 

they could not take advantage of will not be counted, will be eliminated. 

The CHAIRMAN. Have to go through by hand? I don’t know how 

you do it. Shocks me that you could. And then people would start 

to say, wait a minute, I know they voted on that school levy. 

Ms. VIGIL-GIRON. Every single one is challenged. Every single 

issue or candidate they are voting on is challenged. 

Mr. CULVER. Mr. Chairman, I, as you noted, agree with you in 

terms of the question and concerns and challenges with respect to 

provisional balloting in 2004. I ended up asking the attorney general of Iowa for help in his interpretation of the Federal law. As 

you know, there were a lot of court cases across the country, and 

they weren’t necessarily all making the same conclusion, although 

towards the end I believe they were getting more consistent in 

their rulings. But the tough part for me as the State commissioner 

of elections in Iowa was to try to follow the intent of the Federal 

law, which I believe was to help Americans vote. 


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We cannot forget that 4- to 6 million Americans in this country, 

according to Caltech and MIT, were disenfranchised in 2000. People that were eligible to vote, they were registered to vote and they 

showed up, and for all sorts of reasons, including showing up 

maybe at the wrong precinct or having some real confusion about 

where their precinct was, those votes weren’t counted in 2000. So 

I think we were left in the States with an unclear understanding 

certainly of what your intent was. 

There was some effort to reach out to the Department of Justice 

for some help and some interpretation. I believe early on in the 

process as we were preparing for 2004, they were urging the States 

to kind of draw their own conclusions. But I think this isn’t a role 

perhaps where the Election Assistance Commission could help. 

The resolution that was passed at NASS was brought up earlier. 

I personally support the continuation and authority of the Election 

Assistance Commission to establish guidelines, best practices and 

standards for—as we implement the Help America Vote Act. The 

EAC has accomplished a great deal. These four Commission members are uniquely gifted and talented and deserve enormous credit. 

And this is one area where I think they can, at a minimum, give 

the States some best practice ideas, some guidance, some direction. 

And I also agree that the States should have some rights as well 

in this process. But finally, I think it really comes down to training 

and voter education. 

I wasn’t able to finish in my formal remarks on the budget that 

I laid out in the HAVA plan. We have a million dollars earmarked 

for uniform training so that in Iowa, nearly 2,000 precincts, election officials and poll workers train people fairly so that they all 

understand the importance of ensuring election administration in 

Iowa is uniformly, fairly and consistently applied not only in Iowa, 

but I think across the country, because that was a problem in 2000. 

We didn’t have uniformity and fairness and consistent application 

of State and Federal election law. And frankly, in 2004, we didn’t 

have that with respect to provisional balloting, and it is very possible that as a result, tens of thousands of Americans were 

disenfranchised again. So this is an issue where we need some 

guidance. 

And finally on voter education. In Iowa, we are going to earmark 

$2.4 million in voter education that will allow us to put together 

things like this voter guide that went to 1.3 million Iowan households that helps Iowans find their precincts so we don’t have the 

provisional ballot challenges. We get them registered. This guide 

tells them how to register, when to register. It has a voter registration form in it. So I think the best practice and the solution at least 

initially is training and voter education, and that will hopefully reduce significantly the number of provisionals cast in the United 

States. 

The CHAIRMAN. One follow-up question I had for you. Now, there 

were lawsuits all over the country, and I didn’t join any of them. 

I was asked by people. I didn’t go on any of them. I didn’t want 

to start down that road. And—because I believe the courts will act. 

And if we think the courts have not acted correctly, we can come 

back. You know the fire drill here in the legislative process. But 

there was a suit, wasn’t there? And I apologize for not knowing, 


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but there was an organization that filed on you and the attorney 

general 

Mr. CULVER. That is correct, Mr. Chairman. There was a lawsuit 

filed brought by five Republican registered voters in Polk County 

against the secretary of state, a Democrat, and the attorney general, a Democrat, and the lawsuit was dismissed. 

The CHAIRMAN. And that was on the right of provisionals? 

Mr. CULVER. That was primarily—— 

The CHAIRMAN. Our secretary of state had one filed on him, too. 

Everybody did. 

Mr. THORNBURGH. Badge of honor. 

Mr. CULVER. Fortunately, we got through the process, and we 

were able to preserve the provisional ballots in case there was 

some sort of court challenge later and an effort would have been 

made later by a voter or a group to try to get those counted, but 

that never happened. 

Mr. THORNBURGH. Mr. Chairman, if I may expand just for a moment on that. It is my opinion that the purpose of provisional balloting in the Help America Vote Act was to ensure that we never 

again disenfranchise voters. I believe that has occurred in that 

every voter, when they go to the polling place, now has the opportunity in which to cast a ballot. I also believe very strongly that 

it is up to the States to determine the qualifications of the voters 

within their own States. So I believe, in short, that we have done 

good work, and we should leave it where it is at. 

The CHAIRMAN. I think we had a case, I think it was up in Jefferson County in Ohio, and a young man was home from college, and 

he went in and he said, I want to vote. And they said, you have 

already voted. He said, no, I didn’t, and they showed him where he 

voted, and he demanded the provisional, and they found out he 

didn’t vote. Someone had voted in his name. Now, had he not stuck 

to his guns, he wouldn’t have had that ballot. But that serves the 

purpose; even though they are saying you did vote, he didn’t. And 

so given the provisional allows that to be checked out. 

Mr. THORNBURGH. That is correct. And it gives us the ability to 

go back and check the facts one more time at a place that is not 

as harried as the polling places on election day. And through that 

thoughtful resolution of those very issues, those who have the right 

to vote and those who are qualified to vote, their votes are counted. 

Should you not have the appropriate qualifications, then it is my 

opinion that vote should not be counted. 

The CHAIRMAN. One thing we have to look past, is the actual 

deadline by midnight on election night where you have to have the 

winner or not. And I say that because some people were criticizing 

us in one of the States down South, I think it was, for possibly this 

would hold up an election for a few days or something. Well, you 

know, counting the provisionals, if it takes another couple of days, 

it takes another couple of days. And maybe people would not be 

happy with the outcome, their candidate didn’t get elected, but at 

least these things were counted. So if it holds up an election for 

a few days, I don’t think that is too much to ask. 

Ms. VIGIL-GIRON. Mr. Chairman, may I talk to that? Actually in 

New Mexico, we have 21 days before we certify an election. And the 

majority of the States have a number of days even beyond 21 days 


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to certify elections. I believe it is either New York or another State 

has until December 2 to certify the results. Now, we don’t—we 

have to talk about other paper ballots as well, it is not just the 

provisionals, and that certification process including or not excluding. 

We have on the front end absentee voting. In New Mexico in 

2000, we had 65,000 absentee ballots that were submitted. In this 

election we had 191,000 absentee ballots that had to be dealt with. 

That takes many, many days at the county level. It is not an overnight instantaneous gratification for any candidate or any issue 

that is being voted upon on election night. It is machine totals from 

that night that you can merge and tabulate and then begin the 

process of taking care of any other paper ballots, emergency ballots, 

in lieu of ballots, and making sure that those are either optically 

scanned, and if they are rejected from that optical scan reader, 

then you have to hand-count them. I mean, it takes many, many, 

many days. 

We have three audits that we perform in the State of New Mexico. The first one is the county canvass or audit. They submit all 

their results to us and tapes. We do the second audit from the secretary of state’s office. And then we have an independent auditing 

firm that checks what we have done. So this overnight concept 

would be really great if that were possible, but not with now the 

introduction of the provisionals on top of our absentee process. 

The CHAIRMAN. I have a couple of more questions. I would like 

to ask one more question and yield to our Ranking Member so we 

can both ask questions. And it is in regards to you had some controversy and read about it—and I don’t—I didn’t follow up prior to 

this, which I should have, but you had some controversy in New 

Mexico, the ID, the implementation of the ID. And I think the articles had said that there was a technical interpretation. It was 

tough to implement the ID requirement. Did you want to comment 

on that? 

Ms. VIGIL-GIRON. Thank you very much, Chairman Ney, Representative Millender-McDonald. As a matter of fact, the controversy was the misinterpretation of a certain party to expand 

voter identification to all voters, not just to the minimum requirements that we finally adopted based on the Help America Vote Act. 

First-time voters who registered to vote by mail who did not provide an ID at the front end, in other words mailed a photostat copy, 

will be asked at the polling place to produce some type of identification, and I outlined in my advertisements on voter identification 

and voter education what type of ID would be required. You can 

take this or this or this if you registered to vote by mail and did 

not provide it on the front end. So the controversy was they were 

misinterpreting that. I mean, it was very clear. And, of course, we 

were able to keep that particular law intact all the way up to the 

Supreme Court. 

The CHAIRMAN. Because when we wrote the Help America Vote 

Act, we went on for weeks about this of what was an ID. And somebody said you have to have a government-approved ID. What if you 

don’t drive or your State doesn’t have a government ID? We went 

through this I don’t know how many times, and we came out with 

the ID, or you could produce a bank slip or a wide variety of things. 


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I am not even sure in my own State, and I have to talk to people 

on the board of elections, what we did with that, because one of the 

problems that I think we had in our State is all the money—and 

we are going to have another hearing on this probably in the next 

X amount of weeks—but all the money that was spent out there, 

particularly 527s that spent this money to hire people to register 

people to vote, and in some cases because—and I am not complaining about registering people to vote—but when it was done by 

groups or advocacy groups or political parties, they are very meticulous. When you all of a sudden start to hire, in Ohio’s case, thousands of people, and you are paying money out there, then people 

will tend to—and, you know, a person who has been out of work, 

they get hired for 10 bucks an hour, they are going to get as many 

slips as they can. And we had a lot of errors, as I understand, from 

our board of elections. I am not sure what we did about the IDs 

in these cases of hundreds of thousands of new registrants. I am 

not sure what we actually did about it in our own State. 

Mr. ROKITA. In Indiana we had a similar issue, and it was resolved with a more conservative interpretation of the word ‘‘mailin.’’ because of the legislative dynamics in our State, we weren’t 

able to get a more liberal definition; conservative definition being 

that mail-in means only when delivered to the clerk by someone 

from the United States Postal Service. 

I can’t believe that was the intent of Congress. Maybe you can 

help in this discussion today. But whether it is an employee of the 

U.S. Postal Service or a third party, it is the same issue, and that 

is no one got to see this person register to vote, and therein lies 

a huge opportunity for negligence, not to say that anything is intentional, but also direct fraud. And you saw it in some of the actions of the 527s this last election. 

The CHAIRMAN. Your statement was about the post office had to 

deliver—I didn’t follow that. 

Mr. ROKITA. If you register for the first time by mail, you are required to show some kind of ID. Groups in our State were saying, 

well, because these batch of voter registration forms weren’t delivered by the U.S. Postal Service, they weren’t in the mail. But, in 

fact, they were delivered in person by a third person, who the clerk 

never got to see the original registrant. 

It seems to me that is the intent; when you all decided mail-in, 

that that is what you wanted. But that is an issue that is out 

there, and it is a large issue because it allows 527s and other overzealous groups like that to do some things, and it allows for negligence, those who might not have any direct intention, but may 

leave voter registrations in the trunk of a car for too long and drop 

them the day after. 

The CHAIRMAN. If you are a new registrant, you are supposed to 

produce some form of an ID. 

Mr. ROKITA. If you are a first-time new registrant by mail. We 

couldn’t resolve that issue what ‘‘by mail’’ meant. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And let 

me say that all of you are extraordinarily outstanding. Earlier comments did not pertain to you. I have—I do know of the gentlelady 

of New Mexico, and also send my best regards to my dear friend, 


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your great Governor, along with my good friend and your great 

Governor of Iowa. Both are friends and outstanding Governors. 

I had an opportunity to chat a little bit with Secretary of State 

Culver, and you are outstanding yourself; and the gentlelady, first 

Latina and now the chairwoman and president of NASS. I congratulate all of you. 

I understand—I talked with our county register recorder, and 

she spoke of the barrage of registration affidavits that she received 

in this last election. Certainly that goes right to you as well as Secretary of State Vigil-Giron that you spoke about, your absentee ballots that were just a tremendous number from the last election, 

Presidential election. It would seem to me like when you speak 

about this overload of ballots, albeit absentee or provisionals, and 

Secretary of State Culver talking about the need for uniformity, 

and EAC gave you best practices because they have gone all over 

the place to make sure they get the best practices, there certainly 

is a need to keep EAC, but—all indications—because they are your 

feet. They can move into other areas that you perhaps have no 

time to move into. And so I guess I am concerned about the resolution, given that they are mandated to do certain things. They recognize that they are not a regulatory system, and they have assured the chairman and I that they will not by any means venture 

into that area. 

Your open letter to Members of Congress indicated that—and I 

am just reading portions—in this case, uniformity does not equal 

success, and yet Mr. Culver said we need uniformity. Expound on 

that for me in terms of your resolution, because if you are going 

to have one State doing one thing and another State doing another 

thing, it seems to me there has to be some semblance of uniformity 

so that no person—as I was going to—and I will speak to Secretary 

of State Thornburgh about disenfranchisement after this, but 

please talk to me about that, because it seems to me like some uniformity must be put in place irrespective of States, small or large, 

and that should be driven by EAC. 

Ms. VIGIL-GIRON. Chairman Ney and Congresswoman MillenderMcDonald, I appreciate Congressman Ney’s comments early on by 

saying that he also does not believe that we should have the Federal Government overseeing elections, and that should not happen. 

The reaction or the fact that so many pieces of legislation are being 

written up and possibly even introduced right now as we speak in 

regards to election reform is, quite frankly, also reactions to probably what some of your Members of Congress are seeing out there. 

Uniformity was an issue we discussed back in 2001 after the 

2000 election, and we were very, very clear when we presented to 

you during a similar House Administration Committee. And the 

four areas that we were very clear about that you all incorporated 

and made sure to incorporate in the HAVA bill was the issue of a 

uniform voter data system, uniform data systems and standards 

that had to be produced by someone. The issue of voter education 

was another issue that was very, very clear, and poll worker training. That is what we came to you after—our election task force 

after the 2000 election. And I thank you, by the way, for taking 

those very clear messages that had to be addressed. 


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So uniformity is an issue, but in terms of uniformity across the 

State in regards to only the same type of voting machine, no, we 

can’t have that. So that is why the standards right now are being 

created or at least partnered with what is already in place with the 

2002 voting standards. 

To address the issues of the paper trail aspect of it, that has to 

be addressed. Now, the disabled community, of course, will see an 

optical scan voting machine that has the capability of listening to 

their ballot, but then they have to actually take the ballot and insert it. And so that may be a problem for the blind voters out there. 

They may not be able to place it. So they are going to have to require assistance to be able to place their ballot to be counted and 

tabulated. That is a standard of a different type of voting machine 

that we cannot create. 

And I, of course, also respect the work of the EAC and they are 

doing an excellent job. The fact that we are 9 months behind schedule to 11 months behind schedule, that was also something that 

was debated during the meeting where the resolution was presented. We were talking about the rulemaking aspects of the EAC, 

which, of course, was something that none of the secretaries wanted to see. It was not attacking the work of the EAC or the individual Commissioners. They are doing an excellent job. It was this 

reaction of all the legislation that is being introduced that I hope 

that you will, from this committee, and, of course, from the original 

sponsors of this legislation, keep at bay and make sure that it does 

not happen. 

I believe that the EAC is doing a great job, and that they have 

a real purpose as a partner with the National Association of Secretaries of State, and we all recognize that and do see their relevance, and they have got a lot of work, and they do need your support as well. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. So this resolution was an attentiongetter, and it has certainly been given our attention. It appears to 

me that when another—it says NASS position on funding and authorization of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, it is saying 

that duties assigned to them should be deferred to the National Institute of Standards and Technology. So it appears to me like, in 

essence, you are trying to say they should move out and let this 

group take over, which, in fact, this group has limited capabilities 

of doing that which you are talking about, education and training, 

that was so explicitly in HAVA. 

And certainly I can see you getting a little concerned about the 

myriad of pieces of legislation that is coming before us as it does 

all the time after an election. But I will assure you with this chairman and this Ranking Member, we will try to find the nexus of 

amending some of—and improving upon HAVA and allowing you to 

have the flexibility that you must enjoy doing your job as secretaries of state. 

Mr. Culver. 

Mr. CULVER. Quickly, Congresswoman Millender-McDonald. I believe the NASS resolution arises from frustration with the lack of 

certainty in many HAVA areas and from the concern from some 

NASS members with the Federal intervention into what has traditionally been State rights or State issues. 


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I support funding to the EAC and the continuation of the EAC 

authority to assure American voters that every vote is properly 

counted, and everyone who is entitled under State law to vote has 

the opportunity. And so I support the continuation of authority for 

the EAC to give guidance, direction, guidelines and best practices 

along with other groups like the National Association of State Election Directors. This is a partnership. We need to bring everyone to 

the table, and Congress, to ensure that we never again have the 

problems that we had in this country in 2000. 

You know, elections, as we knew them before, it is changed. This 

is the first time since 1789 that the Federal Government has had 

a direct role in election administration. So it is no surprise that 

there is some pushback with respect to this new landmark piece of 

Federal legislation that I believe is well-intended and necessary to 

help people vote. And we can’t just simply go back to the States 

rights argument. That didn’t work in 2000. We have 46 million people in this country that were disenfranchised. I don’t think anyone 

in this room thinks that is okay. So we have to be very careful as 

we implement this to not create the same problems potentially all 

over again. 

And I am not suggesting that it is necessarily a perfect fit either. 

I think this is a challenge, but we are all up to it. And I am glad 

we are having this hearing today because in the next 21 months 

in every State in this country, we better make darn sure that we 

protect voter rights in this country and don’t repeat our past mistakes. And, Mr. Chairman, to your credit, I don’t believe we are 

going to do it again, and we have a lot of work to do, and the EAC. 

The CHAIRMAN. I appreciate your comments and also the comments that you made about keeping the legislation at bay, even 

though I was shocked, because I didn’t know this was coming by 

the resolution when I found out about it. I think it was last night, 

or our staff told me. Even though I was surprised and didn’t see 

it coming, and even though I don’t technically agree with it, I understand your motivations. And you see a lot of these things. And 

I cannot tell you how many Members, both sides of the aisle, have 

come to me and they say, you need to do this. You need to investigate that. You need to do it now. And this was before the November election. And we could have had, you know, 5 days of hearings 

a week, and I think—I don’t want to speak for Congressman Hoyer, 

but I think Steny Hoyer understood, as did other Members, but I 

think Steny Hoyer understood there was a balance there, and let 

us not open everything back up. We have to be cautious. We just 

don’t say, well, there is nothing more that we look at or tweak. It 

is a horrific balance, but I believe we all can work through it. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. With this chairman, we will. The 

one thing for sure, he is committed to making sure there is a balance. 

We were also thrown aback that so many pieces of legislation 

came so quickly after we sat for the 109th Congress. So do rest assured he and I will keep our eyes open. 

When we created HAVA, of course, we couldn’t put everything in 

it. We put those things that you secretaries of state talked to us 

about. We go back to the drawing board with what you have just 

outlined today, and we will continue that process of improvement. 


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But we do feel, Mr. Culver, that everyone should come to the table 

with this. 

And, of course, in the 1700s we had no idea that the Federal 

Government would be putting its mighty hand in this, but we are 

doing it very cautiously because we do recognize and respect States 

rights, and Federalism is certainly the mantra on the Majority 

side. So I do appreciate that. 

Let me just say a few things here. Mr. Thornburgh, you mentioned that you did not see a widespread of—well, not a widespread—of voter disenfranchisement. However, I think you would 

agree with me in this room that when one voter is disenfranchised, 

the country is disenfranchised to a great degree. So let me thank 

you for your synthesizing all of your systems. I think that is what 

you stated in your opening statement. And all of your precincts are 

ADA-accessible. That is a tremendous success, and we applaud you 

on that. 

But the provisional ballots—let me digress for a second. Ten 

hours of persons waiting in line ultimately had to leave without 

voting. The chairman and I and other Members of Congress get 

those calls. You do not necessarily get those. So we have to put into 

place—or you do get those? 

Mr. THORNBURGH. Thank you for recognizing. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. You don’t get as many as we get 

perhaps, but you get your share of those. The provisional ballot is 

when all else fails, persons divert to that. What can we do to enhance that And you may have spoken to that before I came in from 

voting, because I was held up on the floor talking to other Members 

about this hearing. They saw the first part of it on C–SPAN. But 

what can we do to improve upon provisional ballots, Mr. 

Thornburgh? 

Mr. THORNBURGH. If I may address that very quickly, and thank 

you for the compliments. I appreciate that. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. You have one more coming. You 

have the Kids Voting USA. Now, that I really do like. 

Mr. THORNBURGH. Let me just say perhaps this may be an area 

where me and my good friend the secretary of state of Iowa may 

disagree just slightly, where I heard discussion about the need for 

more Federal uniformity in a lot of different areas. I believe the 

standards should be, you tell me what you want accomplished, tell 

me what the objective is, tell me the goal and the desire, what you 

wish to see happen, and if I don’t do that, there is lots of oversight 

that DOJ can bring on board to make sure that I perform the task 

next time that you would like to see happen. 

I do agree with you that a single voter that is disenfranchised 

is too much. We have to do things to make sure that never happens 

again. The provisional ballot does allow—we have the mechanism 

to prevent that disenfranchisement from taking place right now 

with provisional voting. It is a blanket system. If there is a question about your status, you are allowed to cast a ballot. 

When we talk about the uniformity, it is important to note in the 

State of Kansas, like in the State of New Mexico, if a person shows 

up at any polling place within that county, then they cast that provisional ballot, and we will count those offices for which they had 

the ability to vote, the countywide or statewide or national offices. 


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However, I don’t believe that would work so well in districts in 

California, nor would it work well in districts in New York or perhaps in the chairman’s Ohio. 

We have to understand those elements, and that is where the 

ability for a State to determine the appropriate qualifications for 

a voter within their boundaries, I believe, is very important. So 

while we have the uniformity of a provisional ballot, the way in 

which we apply that as qualifications of voters I do believe is very 

important to maintain at the State level. 

Mr. CULVER. Let me just add quickly, if I could, I agree with Secretary Thornburgh in terms of, yes, we do have now, thanks to the 

Help America Vote Act, a system in place to give people a provisional ballot if there is a question about their eligibility. The problem is do we count them. The title of the bill was not to help everyone get a ballot; it was to make sure that people get those ballots 

counted. That is where some sort of consistency and uniformity at 

some level is required. 

I don’t care if you live in Dade County or Des Moines. I wouldn’t 

be satisfied if I were a voter in one precinct in one State and I had 

certain rights and protections, and my provisional may or may not 

be counted, and then somewhere else, you do the exact same thing, 

you don’t have your ballot counted? That is arguably disenfranchisement. 

I think our goal here is to count the ballots to help people vote; 

not to help them show up and give them a provisional, but to make 

sure their vote is counted and counted accurately. It is just not 

okay to hand out 2 million provisionals. The question is, are we 

going to treat those provisional ballots consistently and fairly in 

Florida or Kansas. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Mr. Culver, you have just made millions of voters feel very good, because that is what they want you 

to do. They want you to balance States rights with the right to 

vote. And you have to do that. You just must do that. This is a 

country of immigrants, and immigrants are becoming more and 

more involved in this political process, and so we must make sure 

that those who wish to vote and those who can vote can vote and 

their vote be counted. 

The last thing I think I have here that each of you can speak 

to, what is the status—and let me just compliment Mr. Rokita. I 

haven’t left you out. I wanted to compliment you on being one of 

the youngest to serve in the position of secretary of state. I want 

to give kudos to everyone today. 

What is the status of your State in implementing a computerized 

statewide voter registration database? Each of you can answer 

that. 

Mr. ROKITA. We are well on our way to meeting our deadline of 

January 1, 2006. Indiana was a State that didn’t have a statewide 

voter file. It had 92 separate lists. And the success—and we are on 

target to meet it again by the 2006 deadline. 

I can attribute the success in Indiana to the fact that we brought 

everyone to the table that we could. We had 28 members of our 

Vote Indiana team. We had 42 meetings. We kept getting the buyin of the county clerks. I personally visited every county clerk in 

all 92 counties in their office twice so far being in office, and we 


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talk one on one. And we didn’t need the EAC to tell us that, nor 

would I expect the Federal Government to tell me that, as a separate elected officeholder and, humbly say, leader. That is what 

leaders do, and you get the results. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Is it not the autonomy? 

Mr. ROKITA. Statewide voter file is coming along fine. We have 

a pilot starting next week in 10 percent of our counties, and that 

is an attestation to the buy-in that we have of the local officials. 

Fifty percent of the counties wanted to be pilots just right out of 

the box. 

I do want to make one very short comment with regard to the 

last discussion, because I think there is something missing here. I 

took a constitutional oath to defend the Constitution of the United 

States and of the State of Indiana. Voters’ rights and States rights 

are not in conflict. Those are not mutually exclusive goals at all. 

In Indiana, we had a very small amount of provisional ballots even 

cast. It is not because they were turned away. We mainstreamed 

them right to the box through fail-safe procedures that protected 

the integrity of the ballot and the integrity of the vote. 

And there is some disenfranchise that hasn’t been mentioned 

here yet. It is just as equally bad to disenfranchise someone whose 

vote was cast but then stolen or diluted by someone who is not eligible to vote. Not only do we want to get every person to the polls 

and vote, but we only want do that when you are eligible to vote, 

when you are a citizen of the United States. And when we lose that 

distinction and lose that last clause of the sentence, I think we undermine the confidence of the voter, because there are millions of 

voters out there as well that would say, why go to the polls because 

they didn’t even check to see that my signature matches. They let 

everyone else just cast their provisionals. And I heard the secretary 

of state say that he wants everyone to be able to cast provisional 

ballots. They are not connecting the eligibility factor, and I think 

that undermines confidence as well. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. That is very true. However, you 

know there are a lot of registered voters, citizens of this country, 

who did not have that opportunity to vote. And so we cannot lose 

sight on that because irrespective—and I hear what you are saying 

and agree with what you have said, but just education is the key 

here. And I think a couple of you said that, education is the key, 

because there are many elderly folks who really don’t know the essence of provisional voting if something happens at their precincts. 

But thank you for those comments. 

Ms. VIGIL-GIRON. Thank you. 

In New Mexico, my first term in office in 1987, we were able to 

get an automated voter registration system in 33 counties where 33 

county clerks would report all of their voter registrations on a 

quarterly basis to my office. This was back in 1987. In 1999, my 

second term in office, we decided that we needed to go with the 

new technology and start building a central data system that would 

report to my office on maybe a weekly time period. And so we 

began the process with the State committing $2 million of their 

general fund money to begin the building of that central voter data 

system. 


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In 2002, when we passed the Help America Vote Act you all 

passed and signed into law in October, it became a different animal 

where it would be a real-time, on-line system. So going back to our 

vendor, we started building this new software, and so we have been 

in that process of building. We have all but four counties that are 

hooked into the central data system, and we will be up and running 100 percent to be able to check the felon files correctly, the 

deceased voters correctly, motor vehicle records. We will be able to 

identify 18-year-olds that need to be sent a voter registration application and instruction and application materials by April of this 

year. 

So I am very, very pleased that ultimately I think what we want 

to see is that all States are hooked up to a central data system 

where, across State lines, we can remove duplicate voters that 

should not remain on State lists if they are not living there and 

want to be registered to vote in their most current residence. So 

I am excited about what New Mexico is doing. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Kudos to you for an outstanding 

system. 

Mr. Thornburgh. 

Mr. THORNBURGH. I would like to say that I believe the State of 

Kansas is well on its way to a central voter registration system. 

There is a great deal of work to be done throughout America to implement what is a very tough element on this. 

Just probably for my own purposes, let me explain what I hope 

is the purity of my philosophy. You may have heard resistance on 

my part to too much Federal oversight. And at the same time, I 

had that same resistance to too much State oversight over the 

counties as well. And what we have tried to do in the central voter 

registration system is to ensure that the counties were the ones 

that designed this system. They know what the people who are 

doing the keystrokes or the work they are actually doing on that 

day, so they helped us design the system what we needed to accomplish and do. We provided the broad guidelines of what needs to 

happen within the system. The counties designed it through a wonderful task force we had put together for that. 

The bottom line is because the counties designed the system, the 

State provided the incentives, we had all 105 counties in the State 

of Kansas. Every single county voluntarily came on board with a 

county-designed election management system. That means they 

had to give up what they know and what they trust, buy in—not 

buy in, because it is being provided, but to become part of a statewide system because it was done with their ownership as well as 

with the incentives. 

I believe the State of Kansas is right on board to having a very 

uniquely designed system that will accomplish exactly what you set 

out for us to do through HAVA. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Mr. Culver. 

Mr. CULVER. The only other comment that I have, and I want to 

state this for the record, and it goes back to what Congressman 

and—Chairman Ney said about election results. You know, obviously, I think we can all agree that the Associated Press and CNN 

and other organizations just didn’t get it right in 2000. And then 

again in 2004, we had some questions and problems with exit pollVerDate Aug 31 2005 22:46 Apr 19, 2006 Jkt 026991 PO 00000 Frm 00245 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A991.XXX A991

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ing and projections. So I would ask Congress and maybe this committee, once again, to help us solve this problem of overzealously 

trying to figure out who won or lost elections. 

And I agree with Chairman Ney that we have to let the process 

work. And in Iowa, along with New Mexico, we were both extremely competitive, two of the closest States in the Nation, and 

there were some question about was there a delay in Iowa with respect to reporting or calling the race. And here is what happened 

quickly. As of noon the day after the election, county commissioners of elections in Iowa unofficially informed us that over 

40,000 absentee ballots were still outstanding. Also, 10- to 15,000 

provisional ballots were yet to be counted or sorted through. At 

that time, President Bush led unofficially by about 13,000 votes. 

Iowa election laws spell out the process and the time lines for 

counting these ballots. Iowa—the secretary of state in Iowa doesn’t 

call the race. We count the ballots. We certify that the ballots were 

counted and counted accurately. And local election boards in Iowa 

don’t start counting absentee ballots and provisional ballots until 

the Thursday at noon following the Tuesday election. So we all had 

to wait and see and be patient with respect to who ultimately won 

and lost. 

So Iowa’s election laws specifically lay out rules with respect to 

how we handle absentee ballots by mail, and in Iowa, they can be 

counted all the way until the following Monday at noon as long as 

they are postmarked prior to election day. So maybe this committee, and with your leadership, Chairman Ney, and your leadership, Congresswoman Millender-McDonald, we can kind of look at 

that as we move into the 2006 and 2008 cycles, because we still 

have to make sure that voters across this country realize and this 

is a States rights issue, that States handle counting of ballots a little bit differently in terms of their time lines and when they count 

provisional ballots, when they count absentee ballots. But it certainly potentially could lead to a lot of frustration and anger, once 

again, if, for example, in 2006 or 2008 we have a few States that 

are too close to call, and voters get a little uneasy about why they 

have to wait. 

And frankly, there was some misinformation out in 2004 about 

what was going on in Iowa, and it created an unnecessary rather 

political environment that Iowans certainly didn’t deserve, Republicans, Democrats and Independents, and the 1.5 million people 

who voted that day. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Your jobs are not easy. We appreciate the work that you do. We appreciate the work that you do, 

and we are here to assist you. Thank you so much. 

The CHAIRMAN. I just have a couple of quick questions. In our 

Ohio Legislature, they have basically told the secretary of state, 

you have to have a paper trail, so we are a State that requires 

that. And on the one hand—and they have bound our Secretary of 

State’s hands. He is being in a way pushed towards a decision now 

on the optical scan. Of course, that makes another problem because 

there is no standard yet on optical scan that I know of for the issue 

of if a person has a form of disability. That means Ohio is probably 

going to have to have a bifurcated system of if they go with optical 

scans, and then one machine is going to be a DRE, and then you 


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have to have one backup, because one pure mandate in HAVA is 

a machine per precinct has to be; not should be, but has to be. So 

if Ohio goes to optical scan, and you have six machines in precinct 

C, and one of them is a DRE, and that one machine breaks down, 

what are you going to do And if you have all DREs, and one breaks 

down—so that is another issue. Ohio will probably have to have 

two different types of machines. 

Was there anything done in your legislatures that the legislatures came back and said you must do this and mandated certain 

machines? 

Ms. VIGIL-GIRON. In New Mexico they are looking at this issue 

right now. My Governor seems to think that having a paper trail 

is very important. Most of our voting machines right now must follow the voting standards of 2002, which require them to have ballot image retention. I will have to remove a certain percentage out 

of my State. They were grandfathered in and allowed to stay in the 

State of New Mexico, so we are going to be moving those out very 

soon because they do not produce that ballot image retention. 

Paper trail can be defined many different ways. You are hearing 

the voter-verified paper trail is one system where they can actually 

scroll and see the way that they have voted. And it was implied 

here a while ago that you can manipulate anything for the final totals. You can go ahead and print it out the way they voted it, but 

then manipulate it so that it says something else. That is one system. 

Then you have the paper audit trail that is already produced 

from the majority of our machines. There are tapes, five tapes, that 

are produced at the end of the night from every single voting machine posted outside of the polling place for the public to view, and 

then the remainder of the tapes sent to the various areas where 

they must be verified and tabulated and kept as part of the inventory. And then you have the paper-verified paper trail that an optical scan has. I mean, you have a ballot that you have voted, and 

you have inserted into that optical scan reader, and if you voted 

right, it will accept it. If you overvoted, it will reject it. You will 

be given another ballot to be able to vote again with instructions. 

So you are looking at just different kinds of semantics, I guess, 

out there and different kinds of systems. We will have to have a 

DRE for HAVA-compliant, one per polling place. We will have to 

do that. We currently have those type of voting machine systems 

that were certified by the State Voting Standards Committee, and 

we adopt the Federal standards, and it is mandatory that we adopt 

them. For any voting machine company to be tested and certified 

by those testing authorities, they must get the certification in order 

to apply to the State of New Mexico, and then we test them based 

on our election laws. They must be stand-alone systems that can’t 

be hooked up to one another. They cannot transmit the results 

through the Internet. That is against State law. 

We are limited to a certain number of voting machines that have 

been certified for the State of New Mexico. If we add that extra 

component of the paper-verified voting machine system, we will 

want to make sure that the standards that are being created that 

do address those different types of paper audit trails or verified 


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paper trail, that we incorporate those if we are even going to include those in State law. 

Mr. THORNBURGH. If I may add briefly to that, I believe the discussion of verified voter paper trails is a very important one to 

have. My concern, quite frankly, if we drive a specific technology 

through statute, if we specifically say each voter has to be given 

a piece of paper, that eliminates any future enhancements that 

may take place. If we talk about each voter needs to be able to 

verify that their vote was counted in the way in which it was cast, 

then whatever technology becomes available 5 years from now, we 

can take advantage of that great technology as well. I don’t pretend 

to know a great deal of technology, but I know there are great 

minds out there that are thinking of ways to achieve this. If you 

tie our hands by saying it has to be a piece of paper that we give 

to that particular voter, I think you really have tied our hands. 

The CHAIRMAN. I am sorry I brought up the word ‘‘paper trail.’’ 

Linda Lamone is here from Maryland, director of elections, who 

helped us in the beginning, too, with HAVA to get us to where we 

are at today, and Maryland addressed this issue of checking the 

machines. So that can be addressed, and I think you went about 

that the right way. 

I have talked with Congressman Larson about the fact that—you 

know, of what they do with the casino equipment. But I did argue 

at the time on the paper trail, if you can fix the machine, then you 

can fix the machine to fix the paper trail. So the issue is making 

sure the machine has its integrity, I think, is a critical part to it. 

But the other thing, too, and you hit something on the head that 

really had scared me. I went over to see Senator Enzi, and he 

showed me the machine where it is all encased. If you have that 

paper laying out there, and the next person says, that is mine, I 

want to take that with me, then you are going to have that kind 

of argument, and also the issue of how secret does the ballot then 

become. And if you take this, and somebody is standing outside the 

door and has some type of authority over you to say, how did you 

vote, let me see what you did, those are all issues that arose about 

the paper issue. Who handles the paper? What do you do with it 

afterwards? But that doesn’t mean you still shouldn’t have 

verification of machines. We have to be obviously prudent about 

that so that nothing is fixed at the point of a company being able 

to rig it. 

Mr. CULVER. Mr. Chairman, I think that people of this country 

and the voters of the United States should decide what type of voting machines they want. We have up to $4 billion on the table 

thanks to you and members of this committee and the House and 

the Senate. We need to listen closely to what the voters in our 

States want, and this isn’t a problem. The manufacturers, the vendors, I guarantee you, with $4 billion available, they will provide 

what their customers and voters want. 

I think we ought to go out in the field in every county and cities 

across our States and listen to what the voters want. We need to 

restore voter confidence in this country. It is critically important. 

Look what happened in Washington State, for example, in the Governor’s race. This is important. They did a machine recount with 

precinct count optical ballots. The machine recount said pretty 


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much the same thing that the unofficial results concluded. It 

wasn’t until there was a hand recount that they picked up a—hundreds of votes, because marks, ovals, were not darkened enough. 

They were circled. They were checked. And so the election recount 

board in Washington State, to their credit, and Secretary of State 

Reed did, I think, a very honorable job; it wasn’t until they went 

through each and every one of those hand paper ballots, those optical precinct count ballots, that they realized that they were wrong 

and they didn’t count eligible votes. 

So I am not sure precisely what the answer is, but we need to, 

again, make sure that we count every vote as it was intended, and 

that is sometimes very hard when it comes to human error or 

faulty equipment or pencils that aren’t sharpened enough or misinformation about the instructions. I mean, we see a lot of voter errors, but we also see errors on the side of—sometimes on the election official side of the equation. So this is critically important, and 

I am glad we are having the discussion today. And I think we 

should do exactly what the voters of this country demand with respect to a paper trail or not a paper trail. 

The CHAIRMAN. On the other side of the aisle, with respect to 

Washington State, Republicans will tell you that votes were counted and then recounted, and then votes were added until the Democrats achieved what they wanted. I am giving the other side of this. 

I don’t pretend to know the whole story there, but I am just saying 

that, and I am not saying whether that is all correct or not. 

Having said that, though, let’s use that as an example, and forget what I said for a second, but use it as an example that if this 

was clarified in the beginning whether those 600 votes or 700 

should have been—in the first place should have been counted, 

there wouldn’t even be an argument. Maybe those 537 votes should 

have been counted and weren’t. But if we can continue to keep during these controversies—keep clarifying this and work now to clarify in the future the magic 537 or 600 votes or whatever it is in 

the state, we can hopefully avoid some of these controversies. 

The one thing that I wanted to say, and I imagine down the road 

in the future, you know, it will be like an ATM machine in a 

sense—you know, we can go over to Italy. And in Rome I can insert 

my card, and the gentlelady can insert her card, and we feel secure 

and confident to get our money, and it knows who I am with my 

code and things. Down the road, I could see the possibility of voting 

statewide because you are going to a machine, you know, you do 

the iris scan, and then it says Bob Ney. And you happen to be in 

Cleveland, Ohio, but you can vote in St. Clairsville for the school 

race, and that would work. 

Because we are not to that point, the one thing I wanted to again 

say that confuses me, I don’t know how we would do it, to your 

point, Secretary of State Culver. I don’t know how we as a Federal 

Government tell you how to count that provisional ballot. But I 

don’t know how we would go in and write one rule for every state, 

because when do people register to vote in your state versus New 

Mexico? It is worth discussing, but I am not sure how we do it. 

My last question. I asked about two controversies you all had. 

How about the other two secretaries of state? Did you have anyVerDate Aug 31 2005 22:46 Apr 19, 2006 Jkt 026991 PO 00000 Frm 00249 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 E:\HR\OC\A991.XXX A991

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thing that was—I didn’t read anything on the wire service, but did 

you have something that was horrific? 

Mr. THORNBURGH. Let me just say I really love good boring Kansas elections. There were no major controversies in the State of 

Kansas. We had local issues, and there were recounts, and there 

were a number of races decided by a handful of votes, but the process in place ensured that everyone who was eligible to vote had the 

right to vote. Those who cast provisional ballots, those ballots were 

counted, and we ultimately came to the right decision based upon 

the vote of the people. 

Mr. ROKITA. Mr. Chairman, Indiana had a very good election 

process. In my original comments, we have not had anywhere in 

this country or this world a perfect election, but people had equal 

access and opportunity to vote. We haven’t had lawsuits. We 

haven’t had planeloads of lawyers or media. And we are not a battleground State. 

It goes to a larger point, but again, we are kind of glossing over 

the constitutional aspects of this. We are coming to a point in this 

Republic, in this democratic process, where there is so much power 

to be retained or gained that people are getting to the point where 

anything can be said or done to gain an electoral advantage. We, 

as leaders at the State level, and this Congress, and everywhere 

who support to defend the Constitution need to remember what 

Congressman Ehlers said about the Nixon race. At some point, 

there was a dispute, and it was a very close race, but for the good 

of the country and confidence of voters, it was amicably decided, 

and the business of the land went on. And we have to get back as 

a group to that concept, and it can’t necessarily come from Washington, DC. 

The CHAIRMAN. I hope one of you are the battleground next time 

instead of us, although we did appreciate 50 some thousand people 

of both sides of the aisle that visited our state for 6 months and 

fed our economy. I knew there was something wrong when I was 

down in St. Clairsville with Bob Evans, and I walked in, and this 

guy had a hat on, and it said, ‘‘Coal is Dirty,’’ and considering that 

we are the highest coal-producing county. And I said, what are you 

doing He said, I am here campaigning for Kerry. And I said, ‘‘That 

is a good hat, keep wearing that.’’ But we had people from both 

sides of the aisle visiting our state. 

Ms. MILLENDER-MCDONALD. Mr. Chairman, let me just say that 

this has been absolutely an excellent hearing. We thank you so 

much for convening this hearing because this hearing has really 

enlightened me to a lot of things. This committee, and I think I can 

speak for the Members of Congress, we are not by any means trying to usurp the authority of the States. We are trying to see 

whether we can answer to the call of voters those who have been 

disenfranchised, and the operative word is access. Let us not forget 

that. Thank you so much. 

The CHAIRMAN. I want to thank the gentlelady and close by 

thanking again the first panel and also you for your wonderful testimony and great job you all are doing. And I really believe this 

brought a lot to the process today. And thank the gentlelady. 

I ask unanimous consent that Members and witnesses have 7 

legislative days to submit material into the record, and for those 


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statements and materials to be entered into the appropriate place 

in the record. Without objection, the material will be so entered. 

The CHAIRMAN. I ask unanimous consent that staff be authorized 

to make technical and conforming changes on all matters considered by the Committee at today’s hearing. Without objection, so ordered. 

Having completed our business for today and for this hearing, 

the Committee is hereby adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2 p.m., the committee was adjourned.] 


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