The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA) was Congress's reaction to issues that arose during the 2000 presidential election and the ensuing controversial Florida recount. President George W. Bush signed HAVA into law on October 29, 2002. HAVA includes standards for provisional ballots, which help prevent the consequences of erroneous purges of voter registration rolls. Instead of turning away eligible voters, polls permit those whose registrations are in question to cast provisional ballots that are counted if it turns out that they were eligible to vote. HAVA also sets minimum standards for...

As courts adjudicate cases involving classified information, they must protect government secrets. The Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) provides procedures for protecting classified information in criminal prosecutions. Similar procedures are used in civil cases. The courts are assisted in their protection of government secrets by classified information security officers provided by a small office in the Department of Justice's Management Division called the Litigation Security Group.

Sections 1 through 3 contain the statute's title, findings and purposes, and definitions, respectively. The key findings are that the right to vote is a fundamental right and all levels of government have a duty to promote the elective franchise. According to its stated purposes, the Act is intended to increase voter registration and ensure registration accuracy. Section 13, concerning the Act's effective date, has been included as a note to section 1973gg. Sections 4 through 12 contain the Act's substantive provisions. Because the Act derives from Congress's power to regulate federal...

The Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) requires the federal and state governments to facilitate overseas citizens' participation in federal elections. This includes enabling overseas citizens to register and vote. In particular, jurisdictions must be able to send out absentee ballots to overseas voters at least forty-five days before federal elections. The enfranchisement of overseas voters began with military personnel, extended to their families, and then extended to citizens who are overseas for other reasons. An overseas citizen is typically eligible to vote in...

National security cases often pose unusual and challenging case-management issues for the courts. Evidence or arguments may be classified; witnesses or the jury may require special security measures; attorneys contacts with their clients may be diminished; other challenges may present themselves. The purpose of this Federal Judicial Center resource is to assemble methods federal judges have employed to meet these challenges so that judges facing the challenges can learn from their colleagues experiences. These case studies include background factual information about a selection of national...

This annotated guide describes special case-management issues that typically arise in national security cases. Guide text is followed by instructive examples drawn from a selection of cases that are more fully described in a companion publication, National Security Case Studies: Special Case-Management Challenges (Federal Judicial Center 2011). National Security Case Studies includes an illustrative and instructive selection of cases concerning national security issues that have appeared in Article III courts. Many of the lessons derived from these cases came from close examinations of the...