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Vermont Secretary of State Discusses State Voter Registration Databases


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August 7, 2007 By

Vermont Secretary of State Deb Markowitz was in the nation's capital Monday to speak to the National Academies' committee on the Future of State Voter Registration Databases. Markowitz, who is the immediate past president of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), was asked to speak about Vermont's experience in building a statewide registration database using state employees, rather than an outside contractor.

"It was not easy for most states to meet the January 2006 deadline of the Help America Vote Act," Markowitz explained. "There was little time to do proper planning and bidding for contracts since the federal funding was provided to the states only 18 months prior to the completion deadline. In addition, the Elections Assistance Commission didn't issue its federal technical guidelines until July 2005 -- well after the time that states needed to have their systems built so that they could be adequately tested prior to becoming live on January 1st of 2006."

Markowitz told the committee that she is proud of what Vermont has accomplished. "Many Vermont communities do not have broad-band connections, and some clerks in our smaller towns managed their checklists with pen and paper rather than on a computer. Despite these challenges, with the help of our municipal clerks, we were able to put in place a system that offers flexibility to our communities, and is reliable and secure," she said.

According to Markowitz, Vermont decided to build the state's voter registration database in-house because it was more cost-effective and permitted the elections division and the municipal clerks to have more control over the final product.

"In Vermont we spent a fraction of what other states spent on a product that makes it easier to manage our registration lists, allows us to identify and clear up duplicate registrations, and permits our clerks to export the data to other computer applications," Markowitz said.


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