Implementing Election Reform in the Context of American

IMPLEMENTING ELECTION REFORM IN THE CONTEXT OF AMERICAN FEDERALISM: THE CASE OF THE HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT (HAVA) OF 2002 By Vassia Stoilov Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Public Affairs of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Public Administration 2012 American University Washington, D.C. 20016 © COPYRIGHT by Vassia Stoilov 2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DEDICATION To Mom, Dad, Grandma and Taso. ELECTION REFORM IN THE CONTEXT OF AMERICAN FEDERALISM: THE CASE OF THE HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT (HAVA) OF 2002 BY Vassia Stoilov ABSTRACT The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 marked the first time in U.S. history when federal funds were allocated for the administration of elections. This legislation put forth several minimum standards to be implemented across the states and was one of the rare federal interventions in election administration, which the state and local level governments had been traditionally responsible for managing. HAVA had a different reception across the states, which were responsible for developing HAVA implementation plans. Some states were able to meet the deadlines mandated by HAVA, while others found themselves in noncompliance in 2006—the final deadline for becoming HAVA-compliant. This variation in implementation prompted the research conducted by this dissertation. This dissertation thus looked into what factors account for the variation in the implementation of HAVA election reforms across the states? This research question was analyzed through the theoretical lenses of intergovernmental relations and federalism as well as policy implementation using the following research methods: literature review, case studies (of Maryland and New York), and a multivariate regression analysis conducted for all 50 states 4 I hypothesize that states with: 1) stronger power vis-à-vis localities, 2) nonpartisan election administration, 3) unified party control of the legislature, 4) government ideologies at the middle of the liberal-conservative continuum, and 5) lower median household levels are more likely to have higher levels of HAVA implementation. The results of the multivariate analysis revealed that partisanship was a statistically significant variable explaining the implementation of Section 101. This finding confirmed the hypothesized relationship that nonpartisan election administration is likely to be associated with higher levels of HAVA implementation. Also, the results reveal that state election administration control is a statistically significant variable, but not in the expected direction, suggesting that less state control, i.e. devolution to lower tiers of government, is more propitious for the implementation of Section 102. Additionally, state government ideology was also found to be a statistically significant variable, with scores closer to the most conservative value along the liberal-conservative continuum leading to higher levels of implementation of Section 251. 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS With great appreciation to my dissertation committee—Dr. Robert Durant, Dr. Robert Pastor and Dr. Beryl Radin—for their mentorship throughout my Ph.D. and for the intellectual stimulation. I am very humbled by all your accomplishments and hope to follow in your footsteps. To friends and family who supported me along the way, I wish to say a simple thank you as it is difficult to verbalize how important you all were. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ 4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .................................................................................................. 6 CHAPTER 1: WHY ELECTION ADMINISTRATION MATTERS…………………….7 CHAPTER 2: THE HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT: MAJOR PROVISIONS AND EFFECT ON ELECTION ADMINISTRATION IN THE U.S. ………………………...50 CHAPTER 3: MARYLAND AND NEW YORK: THE TWO OPPOSITES IN HAVA’S IMPLEMENTATION CONTINUUM…………………………………………………..81 CHAPTER 4:THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK, RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY……………………………………………………………………..110 CHAPTER 5: FINDINGS……………………………………………………………...170 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR THEORY AND PRACTICE..182 7 CHAPTER 1 WHY ELECTION ADMINISTRATION MATTERS Elections are a critical, though not the only, component of democracies. Reports of problems encountered in the close 2000 U.S. presidential election with respect to voter registration lists, absentee ballots, ballot counting, and outdated voting systems raised concerns about the accuracy and fairness of the election system. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) was enacted, which requires the implementation of major reforms in these areas in the highly decentralized US electoral system. In this decentralized system of American federalism, HAVA changed the electoral administration landscape through a redistribution of authority over election administration (Shambon 2004; Alvarez and Hall 2005; Liebschutz and Palazzolo 2005). It gave states a stronger role in the management of elections and generated an expanded federal role. It did so primarily through the creation of the Electoral Assistance Commission (EAC) and through its Title III requirements, which give states a set of uniform administrative requirements. The stronger role that states have lies in the broad discretion awarded to them in the implementation of the HAVA. Hence, although under HAVA federal, state, and local governments each are affected by the statute’s requirements, states are ultimately responsible for its implementation. They must institute compliant voting systems, statewide voter registration databases, provisional voting, and other requirements. Moreover, they are ultimately responsible regardless of the 8 participation level or decisions made by local governments. HAVA also marked the first time that federal funds were given to the states for election administration, albeit only once. All these changes, however, are not firm as intergovernmental relations are in a state of flux. With the passing of the January 1, 2006 deadline for implementation of critical HAVA requirements, there were mixed results. A variety of descriptive reports were issued to track what changed and what didn’t since 2000 and since the enactment of HAVA.1 For the most part, however, they did not attempt to explain variation. The lack of literature on this topic is symptomatic of a larger gap when it comes to the study of election administration. Needless to say, the lack of literature on election administration from a public administration perspective is even more acute, with a few exceptions, such as a symposium volume of the Public Administration Review in 2008 dedicated to election administration. Political scientist Joseph Harris (1934) has been credited as the only scholar who has engaged in a systematic treatment of the field of election administration (Hayduk 2005) and who has devoted a book to the topic of election administration in the United States in the past 100 years (Hall 2006). However, Judith Jamison’s 1952 book on local 1Some examples of such reports are: Electionline.org’s annual reports of the state of implementation of HAVA; The Century Foundation’s Playing Games with Democracy; Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) reports The Nation’s Evolving Election System as Reflected in the November 2004 General Election and Additional Data Could Help State and Local Election Officials Maintain Accurate Voter Registration Lists; Demos’ HAVA Implementation in the 50 States: A Summary of State Implementation Plans; The Election Center’s Election 2004: Review and Recommendations by the Nation’s Election Administrators. 9 election administration in California also deals with this topic.2 Nonetheless, her book focuses only on election practices in California, while Harris looks at all 50 states. Furthermore, Jamison’s work is pronouncedly descriptive, focusing only the various stages of the election management process. There have also been several other publications that have focused on election administration, which, like Jamison’s book, have been overlooked. In 1971, Richard Smolka began issuing the Election Administration Reports, a biweekly newsletter for election officials. Smolka’s newsletter focuses on policy changes and data on election administration throughput the US. In addition, the U.S. Federal Elections Commission (FEC) had issued its Journal of Election Administration, a periodical containing articles that addressed laws and policies impacting the administration of elections and describing specific election related procedures and structures. The FEC also issued Innovations in Election Administration, a series intended to acquaint state and local election officials with innovative election procedures and technologies that had been successfully implemented by their colleagues around the country at that time. There has been a plethora of political science scholarship on the impact of election administration practices on voter turnout. These studies have looked at voter registration requirements (e.g.: Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980; Erikson 1981; Powell 2 J. Harris has been the only person credited with having done any systematic study on election administration by several authors (Hayduk 2005; Hall 2006). Searches of the Library of Congress yielded his book as the earliest one dealing with this topic. A substantially thorough search of library databases led me to discover Jamison’s book on election administration in California, which has been overlooked by other

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