Election reform after HAVA: Voter verification in Congress and the states

Requiring voting machines to produce a voter-verifiable paper record (VVPR) has been the most prominent election reform issue in Congress and across the states since the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002. Whereas HAVA emerged from a bipartisan process that included cooperation and input from state and local government officials, VVPR legislation represents a more coercive brand of federalism that has divided the parties and evoked opposition by state and local government organizations. Meanwhile, twenty-nine states adopted the VVPR from 2003 to 2007. Using a logistic regression model, informed by a theory of state policy activism, we find that adoption of VVPR legislation was most likely in states with moralistic political cultures, election reform activists, and professionalized legislatures controlled by Democratic majorities.