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REVISITING THE U.S. VOTING SYSTEM: A RESEARCH INVENTORY

November 27-28, 2006

Convened by the American Association for the Advancement of Science

Tova Wang

CURRENT RESEARCH

Report to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission on Voter Fraud and Voter Intimidation

In September 2005, the EAC contracted with a Republican consultant and me to undertake a preliminary study of the incidence of voter fraud and voter intimidation occurring in the United States. The goals of the project were to establish a definition of voter fraud, conduct preliminary research into how prevalent fraud and intimidation is and what types of such activities are most common, and provide the EAC with recommendations for conducting further research in a second phase of the project. A draft report was submitted in August of 2006, and as of this writing is still under review by the EAC.

Project on Nonpartisan Administration of Elections, in collaboration with American University, Common Cause, and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights

Planned Research

Establishing Best Practices for State Challenge Laws and Practices, in collaboration with the Brennan Center for Justice

Highlights of Previous Research

Voting in 2006: Have We Solved the Problems of 2004? – primary author, in collaboration with Common Cause and the Leadership Conference for Civil Rights Education Fund, October 2006

Voting in 2006 was a detailed examination of whether ten key states had improved their election procedures since the problems reported in the 2004 presidential election. In addition to a full analysis of the state of reform on all the important election issues, the report includes a state-by-state analysis of where each state stands in its progress in improving its voting system.

Fraud, Reform, and Political Power: Controlling the Vote, From Nineteenth-Century America to Present-Day Georgia -- A research brief examining how the current debate over voter identification laws is a continuation of past partisan battles over claims of fraud and concomitant campaigns for reform, October 2006

Improving Voter Participation—A brief providing proposals for lowering barriers to the voting process and improving voter turnout, June 2006

Balancing Access and Integrity: The Report of the Century Foundation Working Group on State Implementation of Election Reform, July 2005

The 2004 presidential election was the first big test of the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA). Enacted in the wake of the deeply flawed 2000 election, the law was passed in an effort both to improve the voting process and to increase voter access. While there were improvements in the voting process in a number of jurisdictions, the ways in which many states carried out the law’s mandates produced a number of unintended consequences, resulting in allegations of fraud and voter disenfranchisement. The Century Foundation assembled the Post-2004 Election Working Group to find ways for states to implement future elections in a way that balances ballot integrity with voting rights and accessibility. The report covered the topics of voter registration, provisional ballots, statewide voter registration databases, voter identification, testing and certification of voting machines, and early voting. Tova Wang was the Executive Director of the group that included Guy Charles, University Of Minnesota Law School; Edward Foley, Moritz College Of Law, The Ohio State University; Samuel Issacharoff, New York University School Of Law; Martha Kropf, University Of Missouri, Kansas City; Norman Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute; Roy Schotland, Georgetown University Law Center; and Daniel Tokaji Moritz College Of Law, The Ohio State University.

Voting in 2004: A Report to the Nation on America’s Election Process, in collaboration with Common Cause and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund, December 2004

In December 2004, the three organizations hosted a day-long event on Capitol Hill evaluating the 2004 presidential election. This report discusses the findings and recommendations that emerged from that session.

Crashing the Parties: The Problem of Ballot Access, September 2004

African Americans, Voting Machines, and Spoiled Ballots, September 2004

Primary Education, in collaboration with Electionline.org, January 2004 – a report examining national and state reform issues that could have an impact on the 2004 primaries.

Reports on the 2001 Elections in New York City, New Jersey and Virginia, October 2002

Reforming the Voter Registration System, July 2002

To Assure Pride and Confidence in the Electoral Process, National Commission on Federal Election Reform (“Carter/Ford Commission”), July 2001