EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | David Holtzman
Organization : | Holtzman Law
Post Date : | 9/30/2005
General Comments
Comment : | Dear Commissioners: I attended your hearing in Pasadena on July 28,2005, and found the discussion interesting. Please consider the following comments about your proposed voluntary voting system guidelines. A. Procedure 1. Insufficient Statutory Mandate for Proposal I'm confused. Although the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) contains references to "the voluntary voting system guidelines" (the WSGs), I could find in the law no mandate for you to adopt those guidelines. You are deemed, however, to have adopted certain pre-existing Federal Election Commission standards as the first set of VVSGs (HAVA Sec. 222(e)). Although the proposed WSGs (on page 1) state that HAVA Section 202 directs you to adopt WSGs, Section 202 merely refers to "duties" "relating to the adoption of [WSGs)" and does not direct you to adopt WSGs. HAVA appears to give you no explicit direction about what the WSGs should contain. If you adopt new WSGs as proposed in the Federal Register (70 FR 37378), it appears that you will have exercised standardless discretion. I'm not sure what the point of that is. Your WSGs would have no legal force. You should do your mandated work before you do this. Section 311 of HA VA requires you to adopt recommendations with respect to Sections 301, 302 and 303. You could call the Section 301 part of this "voluntary voting system guidelines" because it's supposed to be "voluntary guidance" (Sec. 311) about voting system "requirements" (Sec. 301), but that would be a bad idea, engendering confusion with the "VVSGs" mentioned in Sections 221 and 222 (Part 3 of Title II).