Shelley Reconsidering Voter Registry Plan

Already under fire for his alleged mishandling of federal election funds, California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley now is reconsidering his controversial plan to spend at least $40 million on a new statewide voter registry.

Federal election reforms require all states to keep computerized lists of voters to help prevent fraud and to weed out ineligible voters from the rolls. For many months, Shelley has advocated creating an entirely new system with federal funds.

But Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters Conny B. McCormack recently criticized the plan as a waste of money. She said the state could comply with new federal election laws by simply modifying its existing database of registered voters.

“We have 95% of a system already in,” she said in an interview. “This is folly.”

Shelley’s office told The Times this week that the elections chief would reevaluate the viability of the existing system.

The Help America Vote Act, which Congress adopted to avoid problems like those in the 2000 presidential balloting in Florida, is providing funds for states to create centralized voter registries.

California’s proposed system is a big, important piece of the $350 million in voting-act funds that state officials anticipate receiving from the federal government.

But the debate over Shelley’s plan underscores his problems in administering voting-act money and his rocky relations with local election officials over voting-machine technology and other issues.

Last week, a state audit concluded that poor planning by Shelley’s office left California in danger of breaking the Jan. 1, 2006, deadline for a statewide database, risking enforcement action by the U.S. Justice Department. The audit also found Shelley mismanaged millions of dollars in voting-act money.

Shelley’s office estimates the price for a new system at $40 million, with a $66-million reserve.

McCormack serves on Shelley’s voting-act advisory committee and heads a statewide association of local election officials. In a Dec. 14 letter to Shelley, she pointed out that since early 2000, all 58 counties have been connected to CalVoter, a statewide database launched by Shelley’s predecessor, Bill Jones.

“Why not simply upgrade CalVoter to meet HAVA compliance, rather than attempt to procure and implement a new [system]?” she asked. At the least, McCormack said, it would buy time to properly examine the feasibility and need for a new system.

Jones said he also believes that modifying CalVoter, which originally cost several million dollars, would be quicker and cheaper than starting from scratch: “To come in and talk about spending for a $40-million to $60-million system boggles my mind and scares me.”

Shelley’s special counsel for voting-act issues, Tony Miller, acknowledged that the database project was behind schedule. “Our goal is to meet the deadline, but we want it done right, not just quickly,” Miller said.

The secretary of state’s office initially decided that modifying the existing database to comply with the voting act was not workable, Miller said.

Among the problems, he said, was that the system could not handle the volume of new registrations from county election officials.

Experts concluded that it would be cheaper and faster to acquire a new system, Miller said.

Under the voting act, a central registry must interface with state departments of motor vehicles and with death records.

Miller said it is uncertain whether the CalVoter system -- which allows counties to transmit batches of new computerized registrations to Sacramento -- qualifies as interactive under the law.

McCormack said she believes that CalVoter qualifies. She noted that her own county -- representing a quarter of the state’s registered voters -- transmits new registrations daily to Sacramento.

The new agency now in charge of administering voting-act spending, the Federal Election Assistance Commission, has not yet provided guidance on what is an acceptable centralized registry.