STANDING COMMITTEE ON ELECTION LAW
SECTION OF STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT LAW
SECTION OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY LAW
ADOPTED BY THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES
August 2010
RECOMMENDATION
RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association supports State and Federal initiatives to modernize and improve voter registration practices, databases, and networks.
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the American Bar Association supports State and Federal legislative and administrative efforts to achieve ongoing improvements to the statewide voter registration systems, including databases, network connections, and related operational practices that include the following elements:
- Delegation to a federal agency with expertise in technical standards the duty to specify minimum, uniform technical, security – including defense-in-depth, and privacy standards and reporting for statewide voter registration systems, including the certification of database software, provided that a State may exceed such minimum standards.
- Periodic independent technical and security assessments of all Statewide voter registration systems conducted by highly qualified technical auditors and researchers who are not employees of the administrative entity supervising the State’s voter registration system, and who report a summary of their findings publicly without providing information that could compromise the security of the system.
FURTHER RESOLVED, That an independent technical and security assessment of a diverse sampling of statewide voter registration databases should be conducted under the auspices of a federal technical standards-setting or research entity as soon as feasible. Such evaluation should focus on security – including defense-in-depth, reliability, accuracy, privacy, usability, auditability and mechanisms for updating or synchronizing with other government databases.