Among its various stipulations, HAVA dictates that every voting precinct in the country have at least one handicapped-accessible e-voting machine and that every state establish a comprehensive database of its voters. The deadline for meeting HAVA's requirements was in January, and New York 's tardiness to comply prompted the DOJ to single it out with the threat of a lawsuit.

Responding to a March 23 order, the New York State Board of Elections last week filed its compliance plan in the U.S. District Court in Albany. It contains a set of milestones related to testing, training, procurement and other processes connected with the implementation of the state's e-voting systems and voter database.

As part of its plan, the New York Board of Elections will employ an "expedited" certification process to allow the purchase of voting gear for use in this year's primary and general elections. The board also told Justice Department officials that it is committed to doing the work necessary for the certification and acquisition of handicapped-accessible voting devices by the Sept. 12 primaries. Currently, the state is relies heavily on lever-activated machines.

The state also said in its plan that it intends to create the necessary guidelines to implement an interim statewide voter registration database, dubbed NYSVoter I, by July 1. The database will offer a single, centralized repository of voters, each of whom will be assigned a "unique identifier." For verification purposes, it will also work with databases from the New York Department of Motor Vehicles, the U.S. Social Security Administration and other governmental agencies.

The database will be patterned after one implemented in the state of Washington, which is sharing, for free, its intellectual property with New York. Ultimately, NYSVoter I will serve as the underlying technology for a permanent database system that will go live sometime next spring.