Voter Registration Database Guidelines:Accuracy, Privacy, Usability, Security, and Reliability

The US Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery has just released a report with nearly 100 high-level guidelines designed to help states comply with Federal laws that require new computerized statewide electronic databases.

Here's a summary of its Executive Summary

This study focuses on five areas that election officials should address when creating statewide voter registration databases (VRDs): accuracy, privacy, usability, security, and reliability. Each chapter contains detailed discussions and recommendations. The following are some of the overarching goals for VRDs and selected recommendations for achieving them.

1. The policies and practices of entire voting registration systems, including those that govern VRDs, should be transparent both internally and externally...

2. Accountability should be apparent throughout each VRD...

3. Audit trails should be employed throughout the VRD...

4. Privacy values should be a fundamental part of the VRD, not an afterthought...

5. Registration systems should have strong notification policies...

6. Election officials should rigorously test the usability, security and reliability of VRDs while they are being designed and while they are in use...

7. Election officials should develop strategies for coping with potential Election Day failures of electronic registration databases...

8. Election officials should develop special procedures and protections to handle large-scale merges with and purges of the VRD...