Court Opinion

ID: 9576170
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:21:24.118208+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:01:27.926034
License: Public Domain

KETHLEDGE, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I write briefly to note my disagreement with Judge Moore’s statement of the interpretative issue before the court. Judge Moore asserts that “the issue before this court” is whether the Help America Vote Act (“HAVA”) “compel[s] states to use a certain type of match system to verify voters.” [Moore dissent at 731.] I respectfully suggest that is not the issue. The issue is whether — whatever “type” of system a state might use — the system must yield a certain functionality of result. What the system must accomplish, and not how it must accomplish it, is the issue here. And HAVA speaks directly to that issue, by requiring that voter-registration and motor-vehicle information be matched “to the extent required to enable [the chief elections official and the Secretary] to verify the accuracy of the information provided on applications for voter registration.” 42 U.S.C. § 15483(a)(5)(B)(i) (emphasis added).
The problem, it appears, is that the Secretary’s matching system does not enable anyone to do anything with the information it collects. And that, in my view, means the Secretary’s system likely falls short of the functionality that HAVA requires. For this reason, among others, I believe the district court did not abuse its discretion in entering the order before us.