Arizona Awards Contract for Statewide Voter Registration Management System

The state of Arizona awarded IBM a $9.4 million contract to assist the state in developing and implementing a statewide system to make voter registration more efficient, secure and accurate.

The new Voter Registration Arizona System II will use IBM xSeries 346 and 336 systems and Election Systems & Software's PowerProfile Enterprise EditionR voter registration and election management software with the goal of implementing a secure, centralized database of registered voters. The Web-based system will enable election officials in all Arizona counties to process registrations on a centralized system, identify and eliminate duplicate voter registrations and, when necessary, automatically transfer voters from county to county.

This new system is designed to meet the requirements of the national Help America Vote Act of 2002. It requires that by the 2006 elections, states must have a statewide, centralized voter registration database.

Arizona installed a phase-one project in January of 2004, meeting the early, basic requirements of HAVA and becoming one of the first states in the nation to do so.

"VRAZ-II will build on the great success of VRAZ-I", said Jan Brewer, Arizona Secretary of State. "The new system will make it much easier to ensure that voter registration processes are the same across the entire state, allowing all citizens to have a similar voting experience. It will also increase the timeliness and accuracy of the voter registration data."

In most states, voter registration data has been maintained at the local level. Increasing mobility of the population results in voter registration files that are quickly outdated, increasing the complexity of voter registration management and the possibility of voter fraud or inaccuracies.

Some Arizona counties have been on their current voter registration systems since the early 1980's. The new system will replace those old systems with newer and more reliable technology.

The new system will be designed with the goal of helping to reduce voter registration fraud and increasing registration accuracy by providing real-time duplicate voter matching, utilizing court record and death record matching capabilities, and matching voter registration data with the Motor Vehicle Division's driver license database.

More contract news available at Government Contract News.