The most recent addition to the ever-growing list of election pitfalls that rate high on the disenfranchisement potential chart was reported on in Wired last week. Statewide, centralized voter-registration databases mandated by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002 are debuting in a number of states in November and they are far from ready for prime time. Prior to HAVA, each county or election district maintained its own voter list and there was no communication between districts.

“States were supposed to consolidate their lists by Jan. 1, 2004, but most got an extension to 2006. Creating a statewide system that interfaces with multiple county registration databases built by different companies proved to be difficult. About a dozen states missed the 2006 deadline, and four were sued by the Justice Department.” [Wired]

Voter registration lists have been the source of numerous problems at the polls in recent elections. Attempts to clean up lists in Florida in 2000 led to the infamous purging of thousands of voters who shared names with ex-felons from the rolls. And it was the high incidence of voters not finding their names on lists when they arrived at the polls that led to the mandate for provisional ballots (also via HAVA), which have arguably created a whole new category of problems.

So it is troubling that yet another HAVA provision that was intended to solve problems at the polls is threatening to disenfranchise thousands of voters. At issue is how the states are conducting database matches of new voters under HAVA. New registration applicants have to be matched against social security or motor vehicle records. The matching process is prone to errors of typos and transposition.

States vary in how they treat applicants whose records don’t match, and experts say rules in some states could prevent thousands of eligible voters from casting ballots or having their votes counted in November. Those who don’t match in Oregon, for example, can cast a ballot, but their vote for president or any other federal race on a ballot won’t be counted. There are currently about 9,500 voters in Oregon who fall into this category, but a state spokesman says matching issues will be resolved with most of them before November so they can vote in federal races. Fewer than 500 voters were affected by this during the state’s primary. [ABC news]

Critics of the way these lists have been built point to lack of transparency in the process in addition to matching procedures developed with less-than-scientific standards. But given the multitude of problems that have arisen out of voter registration lists, perhaps we should be questioning the central role the lists play in the voting process.

Voter registration databases are central to the democratic process in every state except North Dakota — which doesn’t require registration. Everywhere else, the registration roll is the gatekeeper determining eligibility to vote in an election.

According the U.S. Census, in 2000 about 1.3 million registered voters said they didn’t vote due to the trouble with their registration.

Election Day registration (EDR), also known as same-day registration, has been promoted by many election reform experts as the solution to these kinds of problems. Currently, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Wyoming have Election Day registration. Eric Marshall, from the National Campaign for Fair Elections, explains EDR.

In states without EDR, voters with even the slightest problem with their registration and people who missed the registration deadline were unable to cast a ballot that counted or did not go to the polls at all. With EDR, students who live on campus and are motivated to vote for the first time in their new jurisdiction, low-income voters whose economic situation requires them to move often and who do not know the rules about changing their address, voters whose registration was not properly transferred by a social service agency, or voters who had their information entered incorrectly by an overworked election official all of them would be able to register and vote on election day. [PBS]

It’s not surprising that the creation of statewide voter lists is complicated and frought with problems. But it’s time we see the forest through the trees and stop wasting precious election administration dollars on database matching and list cleanup and start pursuing a policy that will make it easier for Americans to cast a ballot.

Maggie Bowman is a filmmaker living in Chicago who produced Election Day (Arts Engine/Big Mouth Films), a vérité documentary that follows a dozen American voters on November 2, 2004. She has worked on films about Haitian presidential elections, Catholic seminarians, American mothers, and Artic villagers. Prior to her work in film, Maggie was a union organizer and consultant for five years, working on campaigns with taxi drivers in the Bronx, nurses in Chicago, and home health aides in Brooklyn, among others. She likes taking walks through Chicago alleys.

(Photo: Alaina B. Flickr photostream)