Continuing our 2010 Issues in Election Administration series, a suite of materials designed for anyone wanting to know more about key issues, today Project Vote is releasing a new full-length policy paper, No Match, No Vote.
Congress passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002 to impose fair and more uniform standards for state election administration, including provisions to streamline and modernize voter registration databases and establish identification requirements. However, some states have misinterpreted the intent of HAVA and passed onerous “No Match, No Vote” laws. Under such statutes, if a state is unable to match the information on a voter’s registration application with information in an existing government database, the application is denied outright.
As the new paper explains, however, research shows that matching voter data with other government databases is an unreliable, error-laden process, and that conditioning the right to vote on such a flawed system will inevitably disenfranchise eligible citizens.
No Match, No Vote summarizes the history, research, and key court cases related to the issue, and provides recommended best practices for states to adopt to help ensure that no eligible citizen is disenfranchised. We hope that you will find this paper useful in your work.