Helping America Vote: The Limits of Election Reform

by Martha E. Kropf, David C. Kimball

A repeat of the Florida debacle in the 2000 presidential election is the fear of every election administrator. Despite the relatively complication-free 2008 election, we are working with fairly new federal legislation designed to ease election administration problems. The implementation of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) raises the question, how effective have reforms been? Could another Florida happen? Helping America Vote is focused on the conflict between values of access and integrity in U.S. election administration. Kropf and Kimball examine both what was included in HAVA and what was not. Widespread agreement that voting equipment was a problem made technology the centerpiece of the legislation, and it has remedied a number of pressing concerns. But there is still reason to be concerned about key aspects of electronic voting, ballot design, and the politics of partisan administrators. It takes a legitimacy crisis for serious election reforms to happen at the federal level, and seemingly, the crisis has passed. However, the risk is still very much present for the electoral process to fail. What are the implications for democracy when we attempt reform?

158 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2011

About the author

Dr. Martha E. Kropf is a political scientist whose work focuses on election administration, political participation, and the policy process. Currently, she is Professor of Political Science and Public Administration at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Reviews

[Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

From http://weeksnotice.blogspot.com/2012/...

I recommend Martha Kropf and David Kimball's Helping America Vote: The Limits of Electoral Reform (2012). Martha is a friend and colleague down the hall here at UNC Charlotte, so I'm biased, but this is a nice, succinct look at the mess left in the wake of the 2000 presidential election and the unintended consequences of the 2002 Helping America Vote Act. Basically, our system of voting is even more messed up than you thought.

They discuss the issues of access (making sure there are as few barriers to voting as possible), favored more by Democrats) and integrity (making sure there is as little fraud as possible, more favored by Republicans) and how they came together in 2000 to make both political parties focus on voting technology as the main answer to the country's electoral problems. That did reduce residual votes, but the specific type of technology matters a lot and of course there is wide variation of technology even within states. Further, aside from technology, they show empirically how ballot design affects voting.

Another unintended consequences is the consolidation of polling places as a way to save money since the new technology is pricey (and keeps requiring updates). That, in turn, makes it harder for many people to vote because they have to travel farther to do so and/or because they don't know where to go. For this reason, consolidation leads to decreased turnout.

And finally, the individuals administering the elections matter. They have political preferences of their own, and how they are chosen varies considerably. As they discuss, that point has received far less attention than the machines.

Their discussion of the morass of local, state, and federal laws and regulations also reminded me a lot of immigration. In both cases, you end up with a patchwork of confusion. States simultaneously want autonomy but also want the federal government to help fund reform.

A final point is that in the broad debate over the policy relevance of academia, the book shows how academic studies were important in defining problems of access and integrity.