resolve election disputes and answer challenges to the fairness of elections. 36 For this reason, a detailed discussion of Section 20701 and its application to particular types of election documentation generated in the current age of electronic voting follows. (a) Legislative purpose and background The voting process generates voluminous documents and records, ranging from voter registration forms and absentee ballot applications to ballots and tally reports. If election fraud occurs, these records often play an important role in the detection and prosecution of the crime. Documentation generated by the election process also plays an equally important role in the detection, investigation, and prosecution of federal civil rights violations. State laws generally require that voting documents be retained for sixty to ninety days. Those relatively brief periods are usually insufficient to make certain that voting records will be preserved until more subtle forms of federal civil rights abuses and election crimes have been detected. In 1960, Congress enacted a federal requirement that extended the document retention period for elections when federal candidates were on the ballot to twenty-two months after the election. Pub. L. 86-449, Title III, § 301, 74 Stat. 88; 52 U.S.C. §§ 20701–20706. As noted above, this documentation retention requirement is backed-up with criminal misdemeanor penalties that apply to election officers or other persons who willfully destroy covered election records before the expiration of the federal retention period. Indeed, the federal courts have recognized that the purpose of this federal document retention requirement is to protect the right to vote by facilitating the investigation of illegal election practices. Kennedy v. Lynd, 306 F.2d 222, 228 (5th Cir. 1962). 36 76