Is Your State Ready for the Midterms?

With midterm elections around the corner, candy and trick-or-treating aren’t the only things on the mind. People are also thinking about voting. For everyday citizens, this constitutes mulling over candidates and political parties. For state administrators, however, this involves reviewing and certifying that voting and registration systems are adequately set in place.

Shortly after the 2000 presidential election controversy where nearly two million ballots were disqualified, the Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA) was enacted. HAVA created the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and mandated that states and localities improve their election procedures. This included upgrades to voting machines, registrations processes, and poll worker training.

HP Elections Management Services help states meet these goals and achieve full compliance with HAVA. Their election management software provides a centralized, statewide voter registration database as required by HAVA. It interfaces to other agencies like vital records, department of motor vehicles and the justice system. HP’s solutions also automate the functions needed at the state, district, and precinct levels to plan and execute elections.

HP’s election management solutions are the most used out of any alternative in the U.S. Currently, 13 states employ HP’s system, with over 40 million U.S. voters registered with their solutions. The software is customizable, which means future changes require simple reconfigurations rather than wholesale redevelopment. Thus, states can respond quickly to new legislation and rules.

It’s not only HP’s technology that makes their solutions appealing to states, however. It is also the knowledge of their people. Experts include former state and local election officials who know the law and have experience holding compliant, fair, and efficient elections.

HAVA compliance features include:

• Statewide voter registration database
• Automatic identification of duplicate registrations
• Comprehensive reporting with customization options plus ad hoc query

Additional perks include:

• Precinct management
• Redistricting
• Election planning
• ID of voter eligibility Absentee ballot management
• Printing of poll books
• Identification of ballot options by voter’s address
• Poll worker management Petitions management
• Jury selection

Case Studies

In Oregon, HP successfully converted the State’s Centralized Voter Registration system to meet the HAVA compliance deadline. In 2011, HP developed an interface for geographic information systems (GIS) to ease the burden of redistricting for local elections officials.

In New York, state election officials and HP worked together to establish NYSVOTER: a statewide database and data exchange program for voter registration data. The program interfaces and communicates with existing election management systems in each of New York’s 64 counties. The objective was to meet HAVA compliance cost effectively and eliminate duplicate voters. To this end, HP developed a comprehensive and custom solution that included software, hardware setup, data conversion and design, development, and implementation of the state’s system.

HP can help your state or locality ensure the execution of fair and efficient elections. Now, go out and vote!

Read additional HP case studies here!

Featured Image Attribution: John Morton