Following the chaotic and contentious Florida recall fight that ended up sending the 2000 presidential election to the Supreme Court, Congress moved to prevent any repeat of the dispute ballots, accusations of widespread disenfranchisement and electoral uncertainty that marred the final vote.

To remedy the situation, Congress drafted the Help America Vote Act, a federal law aimed at improving voting systems nationwide.

"Florida was clearly the impetus," said the bill's chief sponsor, House Democratic Minority Whip Steny Hoyer from Maryland.

However, while Florida was the most dramatic case of a troubled voting system, Hoyer points out that problems occurred in other states as well.

Most of the 2000 controversy centered on punch card voting technology, which has been used widely in the United States since the late 1960s.

Hoyer, and the bill's cosponsor Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, decided to draft a measure that would encourage states to get rid of punch card machines. President Bush signed the bill into law in October 2002.

"[W]e found the punch cards to be more error prone than any other of technologies available, and clearly we were intent on getting rid of the punch cards, but we did not … mandate any particular technology for communities to choose as alternatives," Hoyer told the Online NewsHour.

Instead, the law allows states and local governments to decide which technology to use. None of the $3.9 billion HAVA funding, however, may be used to purchase new punch card machines or to update an existing punch card system.

In addition to requiring states to adopt technology aimed at avoiding problems that occurred in Florida, the law requires upgrades of voting systems designed to remedy specific problems encountered during Election 2000.

The act stipulates that voters who are not listed as registered or eligible to vote may cast a "provisional ballot," which will be held aside until the voter's status is determined. If the voter is found to be registered and eligible the provisional ballot will be counted.

HAVA also requires that a voter be able to review a summary of his or her choices before casting the ballot. This "ballot review" requirement is supposed to address voter concerns -- such as those raised in Florida's 2000 election -- that complicated ballots caused them to vote for the wrong candidate.

The bill also contains provisions that require greater use and access for those with disabilities and greater privacy for all voters.

Hoyer said voting technologies are available that will meet HAVA requirements, including "optical scan" machines and "direct recording electronic" machines or DREs.

With an optical scan system, voters use a pen or pencil to fill out a paper ballot similar to standardized test answer sheets familiar to most Americans. A machine then reads each ballot and tallies the vote.

On DRE systems, voters use electronic devices, somewhat similar to ATMs, to enter their ballot choices. Some DRE machines also include features, such as Braille instructions, headphones and tactile paddles, designed to allow disabled voters to cast a ballot unassisted.

Most DRE machines, however, do not leave an individual paper record of a voter's ballot. Critics of the machines believe this lack of a "paper trail" is a flaw that will make electronic voting machines -- which they say are error prone and subject to tampering -- even more unreliable.

Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., has proposed amending HAVA to require voting systems produce a voter-verified paper version of every ballot cast, including those cast on electronic machines.

"Unless Congress acts to pass legislation that would ensure that all computer voting machines have a paper record that voters can verify when they cast their ballots, voters and election officials will have no way of knowing whether the computers are counting votes properly," Holt said in a August 2003 letter to The Washington Post.

The Holt amendment has yet to gain enough support to be passed, but the congressman claims the measure has 96 cosponsors in the House and says they and colleagues in the Senate will address the paper trail issue in early 2004.

Steny Hoyer told the Online NewsHour that he would prefer to leave the paper trail issue up to individual states and give them time to properly consider the issue.

"If technologically feasible and helpful it would be something that states may well want to adopt," Hoyer said, adding that he thinks the Holt amendment "pre-judges" the paper trail question.

"At this point I'd like to see what works," Hoyer said.

Some states are following Hoyer's recommendation and drafting their own rules.

California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has announced that his office will require all voting machines in California to provide a voter-verified paper trail by 2006.

Hoyer said that the general controversy over the reliability of DREs is something that will have to be considered by both the federal and local governments.

He said electronic machines used in his home state of Maryland have received favorable reviews from voters.

"The DREs were used in four of our counties last year, and almost uniformly the voters found it a very friendly, easy and verifiable way to vote," Hoyer said. "So I think the voter's experience is a good one, but obviously the voter is very concerned, properly so, and we're all very concerned that the votes be accurately tallied and the person that in fact gets... most of the votes wins the election. That after all is the final objective and the final test."

The congressman said HAVA instructs the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology, which issues advisory standards for technology usage, to help states evaluate the machines.

Funding
The $3.9 billion HAVA allocates for required voting system upgrades will be sent to the states that have met initial standards, including setting up state commissions on elections and implementing state-wide voter registration databases. States that receive funding will then parcel money out to individual localities.

Hoyer said $1.5 billion of the total $3.9 billion the act allocates was appropriated in 2002. About $833 million of that was still in the coffers of the federal government's General Services Administration in early December 2003 pending the confirmation of the HAVA-established federal Election Administration Commission.

Hoyer said the commission members have been appointed but Congress has not confirmed them. In 2003, however, Congress authorized the GSA to proceed with distribution of that $833 million.

Congress is slated to approve another $1.5 billion of HAVA funding in 2004, and Hoyer said he hopes President Bush will include a final $800 million in his budget.

"Some money has gone out. It has obviously been helpful to the states," Hoyer said of the HAVA funding. "A lot more money has been promised and pledged and it's my expectation that the Congress and the administration will support the sums we promised."

Main Points of HAVA
The Help Americans Vote Act, sponsored by Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Bob Ney, R-Ohio, passed Oct. 16, 2002, in the wake of the 2000 presidential election. President Bush signed the measure into law on Oct. 29, 2002.

The law encourages states to replace punch card and lever voting machines and requires:

-- By Jason Manning, Online NewsHour