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Alabama: Governor Given Extension For HAVA Report |
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By Warren Stewart, VoteTrustUSA
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September 06, 2006 |
News services are reporting that U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins has given Governor Bob Riley another week to submit his first progress report as Special Master appointed by the court in the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) case filed by the federal government against the state of Alabama and Secretary of State Nancy Worley. The report was initially due yesterday, the first Tuesday of the month as outlined previously by the court. Secretary of State Nancy Worley filed the mandated accounting documents with the court on September 1.
In the Motion for Extension request filed and granted on September 1, 2006, by the Governor's chief legal adviser, Ken Wallis, Riley says "Though this team is very nearly assembled, there remains one person who has not fully committed to serve and cannot be briefed on the matter until next week. Thus providing the Governor until September 12, 2006, to submit his initial progress report will enable him to then announce the entirety of his implementation team, rather than an incomplete slate."
In August Watkins gave Riley the title of "special master" and placed him in charge of developing an overdue statewide voter registration database. The decision was over the objections of Democratic Secretary of State Nancy Worley and the Alabama Democratic Conference. The request of the Justice Department to move the responsibility for the voter database to a partisan elected official is unusual. Typically, the government would seek an order telling a state official what to do, or it would ask to have a nonpartisan person appointed as a special master. Alabama is one of several states that have missed the deadline for implementing a statewide voter registration database and the Department of Justice (DoJ) has taken strikingly different approaches to the state’s that are not yet in compliance.
Riley is to "develop and implement a single, uniform, official, centralized, interactive computerized statewide voter registration list in elections for federal office which complies with Section 303 of the HAVA Act of 2002." HAVA compliance is to be accomplished on or before August 31, 2007.
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