Voter registration is sometimes required by the electoral legal framework to be attached to a national identification or civil registration system, which is controlled by an authority other than the EMB. In these cases, the voter registration made by an authority other than the EMB is a purely administrative action. If there is any dispute (for example, if someone is alleged to be registered without being eligible for suffrage, or has allegedly been wrongly omitted from the voters register), the EMB has to determine voter eligibility, and not the civil registration authority. In other countries, a body other than the EMB is responsible in electoral law to develop and compile the electoral register.

However the voters register is compiled, the basic concern is that the data contained in it must be accurate and credible. Implementation of voter registration by an Independent Model EMB may result in more publicly credible voters registers than if they were derived from or compiled by a government department, even though using existing civil registration or ID system data may be more cost-effective. Whatever institution prepares voter register data, the EMB must verify that voters registers for use at polling stations are accurate.

In Peru, the electoral framework gives the EMB responsibility for issuing national identification documents and voter registration cards. This has worked well and has made the task of compiling and maintaining the electoral register a lot easier for the EMB. Quality control measures on voter registration, such as opportunities for public inspection by voters, are commonly embedded in electoral laws. In many developed countries where (electronic) population registers exist, the EMB regularly compares its voter registration records against the population register to identify unqualified or ‘phantom’ voters for removal.