Subject: Re: [EL] data on states, HAVA requirements, and the Social Security Administration
From: Justin Levitt
Date: 5/12/2011, 10:47 AM
To: "law-election@uci.edu" <law-election@uci.edu>

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, as an illustration attached to this article).  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@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@lls.edu
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