[EL] data on states, HAVA requirements, and the Social Security Administration

[Justin Levitt]

The HAVV stats are interesting; thanks for passing the link along, Doug.

I'm not sure if the match/nonmatch rate for other years is publicly 
archived elsewhere, but at least in 2008, the NY Times reported stats 
for 2008 year-to-date (here 
<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/09voting_states.pdf>, as 
an illustration attached to this article 
<http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/09/us/politics/09voting.html>).  In 
2008, among those states with more than de minimis use of the system 
(say, 1,000 transactions), the median nonmatch rate was 24%.

Three years later (in an off-cycle year, with more time to process 
forms), among those states with more than 1,000 transactions, the median 
nonmatch rate is 25%.

I suspect that Joe's comment meant to reflect the fact that most of the 
data (outside of a few states) are fairly consistent, rather than 
varying wildly ... which I certainly agree with.  But to me, a 
consistent 25% match failure rate isn't all that "well-behaved."

Justin


On 5/12/2011 8:10 AM, Joseph Lorenzo Hall wrote:
> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 9:58 AM, Doug Hess<douglasrhess at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> A friend in the Senate passed along to me the link below showing
>> interactions between the HAVA 4-digit verification requirments, state
>> officials, and the Social Security Administration. I'm not sure if
>> people have seen it before or how long it has been up, but the data
>> shows a lot of state-by-state variation.
>>
>> http://www.ssa.gov/open/havv/
> This is pretty fascinating... the ratio of matches/non-matches is
> pretty well-behaved, except for a few states, most notably California,
> which has a 10% match ratio!  I wonder why this is... it could be that
> some canonicalization that the CA DMV does to the data results in
> fewer matches. best, Joe
>

-- 
Justin Levitt
Associate Professor of Law
Loyola Law School | Los Angeles
919 Albany St.
Los Angeles, CA  90015
213-736-7417
justin.levitt at lls.edu
ssrn.com/author=698321

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