“active” one under local law and practice, and those records cannot be disposed of until the expiration of twenty-two months following the date on which the registration ceased to be “active.” This statute must be interpreted in keeping with its congressional objective: under Section 20701, all documents and records that may be relevant to the detection or prosecution of federal civil rights or election crimes must be maintained if the documents or records were generated in connection with an election that included one or more federal candidates. (c) Section 20701 requires document preservation, not document generation Section 20701 does not require that states or localities produce records in the course of their election processes. However, if a state or locality chooses to create a record that pertains to voting, this statute requires that record be retained if it relates to voting in an election covered by the statute. (d) Originals must be retained Section 20701 further requires that the original documents be retained, even in those jurisdictions that have the capability to reduce original records to digitized replicas. This is because handwriting analysis may be difficult to perform on digitized reproductions of signatures, and because the legislative purpose advanced by this statute is to preserve election records for their evidentiary value in criminal and civil rights lawsuits. Therefore, in states and localities that employ new digitization technology to archive election forms that were originally manually subscribed by voters, Section 20701 requires that the originals be maintained for the requisite twenty-two month period. 78