Electronic Voting, Spring 2020

The ACM Report

The Help America Vote Act of 2002 forced states to move toward some kind of integrated voter registration database. This was an expensive move for many states because it required the states to integrate the local databases of all their local election jurisdictions. In Iowa, for example, this meant unifying the data from 99 counties, where the different counties had operated independently prior to that time.

The ACM's US public-policy arm, USACM, recognized that the officials overseeing this process needed guidance and issued an extensive report.

Sweeny et al

Sadly, as this paper shows, many states did a poor job of managing their on-line voter registration databases. A common feature, for example, is a web portal allowing voters to change their registration on line. Of course, to make a change, voters have to authenticate themselves. Typically, you can authenticate yourself using thing like your drivers'-licence number and birth date. Unfortunately, many states issue drivers'-license numbers that are computed using a formula (see the Unique ID calculator for examples. All it takes to figure out your license number in Wisconsin is a person's name, birth date and gender.

The paper discusses how this can be abused as well as the extent of their successes in accessing the data that ought to have been far more secure.