Nevada Awards $4.6 Million Contract to Implement Voter Registration System

The Nevada Secretary of State's Office awarded three companies -- Covansys Corp., a global consulting and technology services company, PCC Technology Group (PCC), a provider of elections management solutions, and Aradyme Corp., a database company -- a $4.6 million contract to implement a voter registration system.

The Nevada Statewide Voter Registration System (NSVRS), which will be fully implemented by December 2005, will help Nevada's 17 counties meet the mandate set forth by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). HAVA was enacted because of contested vote counts due to antiquated punch-card ballots during the 2000 presidential elections. The mandate requires all states to implement a centralized and interactive statewide voter registration system that will be defined, maintained, and administered at the state level by January 2006.

"A statewide voter registration system will help ensure that voter fraud in Nevada is a tough crime to pull off," said Nevada Secretary of State Dean Heller. "The centralized system will allow our 17 County Clerks/Registrars of Voters to verify in one all-inclusive system the registration status of all citizens throughout the state, thereby producing even cleaner elections in the future."

Nevada will leverage PCC's ElectioNet software and Covansys' integration services for the design, development, and implementation of NSVRS. The system will provide a number of benefits for the state including:

• The ability to share voter registration data with other offices within each county or municipality;
• Interface with state agencies (such as, DMV and Vitals Records);
• The facilitation of real-time statewide voter search for all authorized state election officials;
• Detection of duplicate voters;
• Voter validation and identification (unique identifiers);
• Digitized signature support and scanning of voter registration cards;
• The ability to generate poll lists;
• Petitioning;
• Voter history information; and
• Management reporting and standard/custom reports.

For the voters of Nevada, NSVRS will increase customer service by standardizing and centralizing the registration process throughout the state to support online voter registration using a centralized repository. Additional benefits include the ability to support a more streamlined process for absentee ballots for uniformed and overseas citizens, as well as voter signatures scanning and multiple language correspondence.

Through a statewide data network, Nevada's 17 counties will use "browser based" workstations to access NSVRS. It is through their network that the statewide voter registration system users will initiate and carry out voter identification searches and verification through Nevada's Department of Motor Vehicles' driver license system. These search and verification steps will be designed and carried out pursuant to the requirements in HAVA.

Covansys subcontracted PCC and Aradyme Corp. for this project.