Improving State Voter Registration Databases Final Report (2010) / Chapter Skim
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6 Possible Future Improvements That Will Require Longer-Term Action
6 Possible Future Improvements That Will Require Longer-Term Action
Pages 40-54
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From page 40... ...
As before, these longer-term changes are directed primarily at election officials at the state and local/county level, and the legislatures and county commissions that make policy regarding the conduct of elections at the state and local level. In some cases, the Election Assistance Commission has a useful role to play as well in facilitating and promoting their implementation.
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From page 41... ...
on their application forms than is necessary for voter registration per se; such information poses increased privacy risks to the individual if needlessly disclosed. Finally, for all states that provide online verification of voter registration information, it is important to inform voters that they can and should check their voter registration status well in advance of Election Day.
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From page 42... ...
In addition, during the period between online data capture and receipt of the form, election officials can "pre-verify" the data entered and contact the individual if the necessary match cannot be made. With contact information on file (such as e-mail addresses)
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From page 43... ...
Today, this facilitation is mostly paper-based. Automatically providing information on new applications or changes of address to election officials would significantly reduce the burden of maintaining VRDs by reducing requirements for manual data entry and updating regis trations with new addresses.5 As part of promoting cooperation and coordination between election officials and these other public service agencies, states may wish to develop and maintain performance metrics on the percentage of voter registration additions, modifications, and deletions that arrive electronically and on the number of electronic files that arrive from NVRA agencies that contain errors requiring correction.
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From page 44... ...
If there were tags, then people who possessed them but were not in the VRD would be proof of some problem, including the possibility that registration forms had gone missing. Election officials would also note in the language on the form explaining the tag that the tag is intended for administrative purposes, and is in no way a substitute for a valid and properly processed voter registration form.
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From page 45... ...
Election officials can keep track of numbered registration forms as they are distributed to third-party groups, and if the applicant has the tag when he or she calls the election office, tardy groups can be identified and reminded to turn in the forms they are holding. 6.3 IMPROVE MATCHING PROCEDURES Recommendation L-8: Upgrade the match algorithms and procedures used by election officials, the Social Security Administration, and departments of motor vehicles.
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From page 46... ...
The above changes should be implemented in applications of the Social Security Administration and state departments of motor vehicles for processing verification queries from election officials. As a technical matter, it is easier to implement such changes in the query processing application rather than in the query generation application (if done in the generation application, an inordinately large number of queries would be generated)
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From page 47... ...
The use of the full SSN nationally for voter registration purposes would require legislative change at the national level, and would quite likely be highly controversial. Recommendation L-10: Establish standards or best practices for matching algorithms.
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From page 48... ...
But when it is widely deployed, it is likely to provide information to election officials with death information in a more timely fashion than does the SSA DM, and election officials should either subscribe to STEVE on their own or work their own state departments of vital statistics to obtain STEVE data. VRD systems will need to be configured to accept data from STEVE, perhaps accumulating them as they arrive and performing list maintenance on a "batch" basis.
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From page 49... ...
For example, a felony may have been reduced to a misdemeanor by the court without that fact being made known to election officials. Other sources of error exist as well, and there is an inherent unfairness in changing a voter's status and potentially disenfranchising him or her without providing an opportunity for contesting the removal.
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From page 50... ...
Such a record provides statistics that would not otherwise be available -- and such data could be helpful both to election officials and to researchers. All parties -- state or county -- that store data for any length of time should take some responsibility for backing up the data in their possession.
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From page 51... ...
For example, a VRD can be designed in such a way that applicant-provided data that cannot be immediately verified are accepted, stored, and flagged as "verification-pending." Such a feature would enable election officials to continue with data entry if the nonelection databases on which they depend are unavailable during periods when the volume of voter registration forms is high. On the other hand, DOS attacks against Internet-based VRDs are difficult to mitigate -- the only known solution with broad applicability is the acquisition of additional bandwidth to "soak up" falsified requests for service.
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From page 52... ...
Although voter privacy is important even when just one voter's information is at stake, large-scale compromises of personal information can be particularly damaging. Obviously, election officials must do what they can to protect information while it is within their control.
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From page 53... ...
Raising the priority of these agencies for implementing changes that primarily benefit election officials is likely to require direction from higher authority, such as governors or state legislatures, and the NVRA may itself need to be clarified to allow electronic transfer of registration information or modified to require such transfer. A second kind of support involves access to useful federal databases, such as the USPS National Change of Address database and the Social Security Death Master File.
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From page 54... ...
Offline applications have the major benefit that they can be developed without rewriting the VRD system itself, and they thus pose little danger to its functionality. Recommendation L-22: Develop national standards for data-exchange formats for voter registration databases.
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