Improving State Voter Registration Databases Final Report (2010) / Chapter Skim
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3 Technical Considerations for Voter Registration Databases
3 Technical Considerations for Voter Registration Databases
Pages 17-29
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From page 17... ...
One common source of error in the data is data entry. Applicants typically submit handwritten voter registration forms that are sent to the election official.
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2 However, in the situations faced by election officials, data definitions of the comparison databases (the databases containing the data with which VRD data must be compared) may well be different.
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From page 19... ...
Achieving interoperability between different systems is potentially complicated by the fact that these systems are built or acquired by a variety of agencies (election officials, departments of motor vehicles, departments of vital statistics, departments of correction) that are not generally subject to the same overall chain of command and thus may not implement compatible data definitions.
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From page 20... ...
Because of data quality issues and the lack of a universally used unique identifier, record match ing cannot be done perfectly in this context, that is, with zero false positives and zero false negatives. 3 The consequence is that achieving the goal of a simultaneously 100 percent accurate and 100 percent complete voter registration list is virtually impossible.
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From page 21... ...
pleteness in its VRD. With this goal in mind, it may choose to minimize the rate of false negatives in matching the VRD against a list of felons, a policy choice that almost certainly will increase the number of legitimately eligible individuals removed from the list.4 Inevitably, a number of voters in a given state will be disenfranchised given one policy choice that would not have been disenfranchised under the other.
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From page 22... ...
Another alternative would be to determine if Mary Sinclair on Bayberry Street used to live on Ascot Drive. Example 2 -- System must match new voter registrations against records in SSA databases.
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. Although such actions are understandable given the SSA's primary mission, they also have major negative effects on election officials trying to process the enormous influx of voter registration applications that arrive before Election Day (in November)
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From page 24... ...
Another kind of DOS attack may target election officials by flooding them with fake voter registration forms. Although these forms will ultimately be rejected as being fake, it takes time to process each form, and processing fake forms prevents election officials from processing real forms.
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In its starkest terms, maintaining privacy involves withholding from public view certain information associated with indi viduals, while transparency involves the maximum disclosure of information, even if such information is associated with individuals. Although a number of states, such as California, Hawaii, Idaho, kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New york, Ohio, and Virginia, have enacted state privacy acts based largely on the provisions of the federal Privacy Act, these acts are typically formulated in such a way that they bar the disclosure of personal information unless disclosure is required by the relevant state's public records act, which may or may not allow the protection of all personal information associated with voter registration records.
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From page 26... ...
. 3.7 THE IMPACT OF ELECTION DAy REGISTRATION AND PORTABLE REGISTRATION ON VOTER REGISTRATION DATABASES Election Day Registration A traditional VRD operates within a structure that requires a multi-week period between the dead line for new voters to submit voter registration forms and Election Day.
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From page 27... ...
From a HAVA standpoint, it is not necessary to perform data verification for individuals submit ting voter registration forms to election officials on Election Day if these individuals provide appropri ate identification at the same time. However, states may have their own verification requirements for nonfederal elections, and in this case, the VRD must have access to the relevant databases on Election Day.
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From page 28... ...
A national VRD for this purpose could easily be constructed by amalgamating the statewide VRDs of all states and other voting districts and using the statewide VRD data export functions to move the data to the national VRD. Such a database would have to contain some 150 million to 200 million entries (the number of registered voters in the United States)
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From page 29... ...
Furthermore, a full examination of the technical dimensions of universal voter registration would require more time and resources than are available to this committee. It suffices here to make several observations: • Universal or automatic voter registration generally calls for government authorities (especially state election officials)
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