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October 31, 2006
EFF HAVA complaint leads to uniform voter intent standards
Olympia—Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed recently issued new rules in response to an administrative complaint regarding the lack of state standards for determining voter intent. The complaint was filed on August 30 by the Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF).
The complaint focused on Washington’s practice of having election officials review ballots to determine “voter intent.” Counting machines won’t accurately read incorrectly marked ballots, so officials duplicate these ballots to ensure the voter’s intent is honored.
Many times a voter’s intent is unclear, however, leaving canvassing boards to decipher what the voter intended. EFF reviewed the ballot duplication standards in 34 Washington counties and discovered that few had any written guidelines for how to determine voter intent. Those that had standards in place were different to the point of contradicting each other. This inequality violated the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed in 2002, which requires states to enact a “uniform standard of what constitutes a vote.”
After EFF filed its complaint (based on the HAVA provision), Secretary Reed’s staff created a 37-page booklet of standards for canvassing boards to use in determining voter intent. Emergency rules mandating use of the standards were put into effect on October 24, 2006.
“Secretary Reed’s actions remedy a problem that goes to the very heart of election integrity,” said Jonathan Bechtle, Director of EFF’s Voter Integrity Project. “Voters need to have confidence that their ballots will be counted accurately and treated equally. If fully implemented, the new standards would go a long way toward ensuring that happens in the state of Washington.”
EFF will be monitoring the implementation of these standards throughout the 2006 general election.
Additional Information
Standards booklet
Emergency WACs
EFF Complaint
Original EFF press release on complaint
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