Featured Project: Illinois Voter Registration System

Client: Illinois State Board of Elections

In 2006 Catalyst was awarded the contract to provide a statewide voter registration system for Illinois. As one of the federal requirements under HAVA (Help Americans Vote Act), all states must implement a statewide voter registration database that would supersede the county and local databases as the official voter registry. Most States have pursued a model where local election authorities would abandon their local election management systems to become remote users of a state-hosted centralized system. Among state election authorities this has become known as the "top-down" solution and has yielded mixed results. In a few states such as Illinois, a "bottom-up" solution has emerged as the politically desirable and practical approach. In this case, local authorities may keep their local voter registration systems which are already tightly integrated with their election management and other county processes. These local systems must then be synchronized with the state voter registration system of record.

In the run-up to HAVA, Catalyst had worked with state and local officials to devise a technical architecture and a set of business processes that would accomplish a "bottom up" HAVA solution for Illinois. The solution built upon a statewide voter information system previously built and deployed by Catalyst in Illinois from 2002 to 2004. The approach has been embraced by state and local officials as a workable way to preserve local authority over centralized data and to greatly improve election management processes as intended by HAVA.

Catalyst completed development the core Illinois Voter Registration System (IVRS) in June 2007 and is now in the process of integrating the local election management systems throughout the state.

System objectives include:

• Satisfy the statutory requirements of HAVA.
• Improve the quality and uniformity of election data.
• Help identify and manage voter transfers between jurisdictions and duplicate voter registrations throughout the state.
• Interface with Department of Health systems to identify deceased voters.
• Interface with Social Security Administration and IL Secretary of State systems to automate the validation of voter registrations based on last-4 soc. Number and/or drivers license numbers.
• Provide an audit trail for all changes to voter registration data.
• Provide a public website where voters can look up their polling places and their registration status.
• Provide new state-wide voter information reporting capabilities.
• Automate the flow of specific information between local and state election authorities.
• Automate services for campaigns and political organizations provided by the agency.

In addition to system development work, Catalyst’s scope of work includes:

• Manage and support third party and jurisdiction efforts to update local election management systems for compatibility with the new state system.
• Develop jurisdictional policies and procedures to accompany new technology.
• Train local election authorities and their staff throughout the state.
• Provide system maintenance through 2011.

The development and integration contract award is for approximately $8 Million which is federally funded through HAVA. Catalyst is executing the project without subcontractors or partners. The Catalyst project team is based primarily in our Chicago office with some members working in Springfield.