Time to Review HAVA Deadlines

In Rush to Meet Federal Deadlines
Voter Registration Project

Begins to Show Signs of Stress

By Greg Moses

While the Texas Secretary of State and his office are maintaining an optimistic ‘can do’ attitude toward meeting federal mandates to produce a statewide database and election management system by Jan. 1, a plain reading of documentary evidence indicates that pressures are already building inside the project and that some federal adjustment of the timeline may be in the best interest of voters and voting officials in Texas. An adjustment would also allow project workers to spend more time on quality issues.

A statewide voter database mandated by federal law to be ready by Jan. 1 looks like it will be completed no sooner than Feb. 2 according to project documents made available to the Texas Civil Rights Review this week. While the one month gap may be understandable under the circumstances, it is one of several signs that the ambitious project presents complex and difficult challenges for state officials and private contractors alike. And Texas may very well be ahead of the game compared to other states.

The combination of optimism and concern is summarized in notes concerning a two-day review of the database project conducted in late March. On the one hand state management reports that the review produced “Excellent Results. The system vision is beginning to take shape.” But the next sentence says a mouthful: “Many details remain, though.”

“Counties are concerned” about a “Perfect Storm” of new systems coming on line all at once says one project note from early January. County officials will be training employees to deal with new electronic voting issues while they also try to cope with the new voter registration system and a new election management system that keeps up with candidate registrations and ballots.

“Don’t know if there’s much we can do about this,” says a note from early January. “Fed law drives the dates.” The note goes on to suggest that the SOS office may be able to “assist the counties somewhat” with the electronic voting issues and adjust the schedule for bringing the ballot definition software online. But the issue is not marked for high priority.

If fed law drives the dates, perhaps fed law can be changed?

By early March the SOS staff was complaining that document reviews for the project were too rushed. “SOS staff reviewers are feeling very rushed with the volume of documents requesting review concurrently,” says one report. “They are concerned that they will miss something. Quality is suffering.” In response to the complaint, one manager writes that the project needs “better pacing of deliverables.”

But the stress in the project was also evident from the side of private contractor Hart InterCivic whose “deliverable” software of March 15 came without installation instructions or a users guide.

In late January a focus group of county officials did not much like a Hart InterCivic proposal for a two-step process for registering voters, where data would be entered for later review and approval. A phone call from an SOS staffer to a county worker revealed that the system now used by counties employs a one-step process. Again, it’s not clear how the SOS will resolve the issue between county officials and software developer Hart InterCivic.

One of the first problems faced by project managers was where to host the database servers. Apparently state guidelines encourage computer functions to be centralized at a West Texas facility, so the project needed a waiver from the Legislative Budget Board in order to set up their servers in Austin. While the computers may eventually have to be housed in a West Texas warehouse, the database is being developed in Austin.

Another question came up regarding the use of mapping. Texas officials envisioned a mapping system that would allow counties to make redistricting plans and submit them to the Department of Justice. But the system that mapping contractors were preparing for the state would only be able to designate existing district lines, not “plans.” It’s not yet clear how that issue will be resolved.

Another issue involves the assignment of login IDs and passwords. The current voter database used by the Secretary of State (SOS) allows the state to assign master logins for each county that can be delegated by county officials, but the new system would centralize all login assignments through the SOS.

Will a deluge of public hits to the system block access by county officials during crucial times? How will user roles and passwords be defined? Will counties be able to keep their subsets of data locally? The answer to the last question is “not within scope” say the documents, meaning that the project is not designed to allow it.

Project manager Bob Futrell told the Texas Civil Rights Review during a previous interview that complex projects often have rough going during the early phases, followed by smoother operations later as the initial difficulties get worked through. And Texas SOS Roger Williams promises to make things work. But if Texas is one of the better organized states at this point in the process, and if lower level workers are expressing worries about workflow, project scope, and timing, the wiser course of action may be to encourage a federal review of the parameters that have been imposed upon the states by the mandates from the Help America Vote Act of 2002.