Federalism and Election Law: Implementation Issues in Rural America

Abstract

With the passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002, federal guidelines established the need for more coordination between states and local election administrators. We examine the implementation of HAVA in rural election districts, where a lack of resources increases the district’s cost of becoming compliant with the federal law. Using case studies of Maryland, Virginia, and New York, we analyze how centralization of state election authority can affect the inequality of implementation costs between rural and urban districts. We find that the centralization of election administration is important, but it alone cannot account for the experience of rural districts implementing HAVA. These findings have implications for policymaking in the area of election reform; particularly that federal data collection should measure the cost of HAVA implementation, rather than just compliance, in the localities so that states could use the data to develop funding formulas that would reduce strain on rural election districts.