Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?

ACE, December 08. 2014

The increasing sophistication of computerised registration has changed the parameters relating to the extent that the electoral register is a public document.

On the one hand, parties and candidates have arguably a right, and certainly an interest, in knowing who are the electors to whom they seek to appeal; and a public register is a transparent tool to protect against actual registration fraud and the perception of registration fraud. On the other hand, an easily searchable register is a tool for people who for example wish to intimidate witnesses or jurors in criminal cases, or attack former partners - and a right to privacy is recognised in international legal provisions.

What experience do PN members have of how this tension is being handled by EMBs and within electoral legal frameworks, and what do PN members think is the right balance to strike?

Summary of Replies

Members of the Practitioner's Network provided information regarding the balance between transparency and prudence regarding the access to public electoral registers. Ronan McDermott explains that in order to deal with this balance an EMB must assume a multifaceted approach. This means that while EMB's can distribute voter lists, they must also restrict certain attributes (for example, obfuscation of specific addresses and names) and prevent potential data-mining. Other restrictions could include:

§ limiting the number of queries per minute from a given web browser (thereby inhibiting if not preventing data harvesting)

§ Limiting the number of SMS queries from a given phone

§ Offering bespoke VR applications to electoral stakeholders (usually political parties) that allow lookups, but prevent bulk data export or printing. These applications may also exclude or obfuscate one or more voter data fields.

EMBs must demand ethical use of any data provided to any electoral stakeholder, put in place compliance and monitoring mechanisms (including effective complaint mechanism for registered voters who feel their data has been abused), and strictly and fairly enforce the rules.

The legislative framework must allow the EMB to determine what is acceptable use of voter data, to demand compliance with same (perhaps via a non-disclosure agreement, or similar mechanism) and to have powers to sanction or fine those in breach.

Any provision of voter data by EMBs must itself be in compliance with the national legislative framework dealing with privacy of personal data. Sadly, in many countries the EMB may operate in a legal vacuum with respect to data protection and privacy. Subsequent passing of relevant legislation may force EMBs to review their voter data offerings with possible negative consequences for the perceived transparency of their voter registration efforts.

PN members then provided examples from their areas of expertise.

José María Pérez Corti notes that Argentina uses a normative policy mix that has been showing good results in handling election database requirements and procedures governing the system of protection of personal data. The same laws and regulations for the protection of personal data are used in the protection of voter registries. The access to information contained in the register of electors is released to (or restricted from) parties pertaining to the interests and legitimacy of the petitioners. This is done case by case, while ensuring the execution of orders and their due and complete registration, so long as it is feasible to implement procedures to facilitate traceability of it and the allocation of legal responsibilities (civil, administrative and even criminal) if applicable.

Charles Obot says that in Nigeria, the public electoral register has always generated controversy due to

§ Discrepancy between the published voter register and the one actually used in elections

§ Incorrect geographic information on specific voters

§ Conspicuous lack of change (due to death/relocation) in the register

§ No e-voter register/capacity for internet voting or registration

Ernesto R. del Rosario claims that maintaining this balance was one of the most difficult prospects of his job as IT director of the EMB in the Philippines, where they recently started configuring the access basis from a total inaccessibility of voter records to very very limited accesses and these are strictly on a batch (printed or electronic) basis only, but never through real-time online access. Following are the existing policies on these which are spelled out in the electoral law:

1. Generally, requests for voters records (single or a few records only and not an entire jurisdictional file or the entire database) are granted only if a) the requester is the voter himself (who owns the information) or b) there is a valid Court order.

2. Election watchdogs (specifically those mandated to assist voters find their voting precincts on election day) may have access (printed or digital files) to jurisdictional areas or even the entire national records. The number of watchdogs though who are granted to act as so in each election is doggedly limited by the Elections Commission.

3. Official Political Parties and individual politicians who hold valid Certificates of Candidacy for the current elections can also acquire copies (hard or digital) of relevant jurisdictional files for a quite significant fee (per printed page or individual record). These requests need Election Commissioners' approval though.

4. Requests from crime-fighting entities (the police, government investigators, etc.) are allowed only upon approval of the Election Commissioners.

The data that are shared to requesters are not the full-blown records or all data fields for each voter record that is in the data base. Only selected fields are shared such as: name, address, gender, date of birth, political jurisdiction and assigned precinct number even if each record in fact contain very comprehensive information such as complete demographics, voting history, color photo and right and left thumb-mark images and digital minutiae code thus avoiding as much as possible the sharing of precise person-identifying information which otherwise will make criminals very happy if completely disclosed.

Víctor Hugo Ajila Mora notes that up until a few years ago in Ecuador the electoral register was not public because of security concerns, to avoid "bad practice;" however, since the 2013 elections, the National Electoral Council resolved to give political organizations voter registration, but maintained some fields that are reserved for security. This measure was expected because the Code of Democracy, which is the law governing elections, provides that voter registration can be challenged by certain causes; a voter can claim a personal capacity when the data contained in the registry are wrong, for these certain information must be guaranteed as public.

Manuel J. Kripp explains that in Germany access to the voters register is limited and restricted to the election authority. Parties and candidates will only get feedback on how much eligible signatories of support they collected and what was wrong with the ones that have been rejected. The voter register is used to send out the first information about when the election takes place, where the voters' polling station will be, as well as the information on how to get an absentee ballot.

Francisco Barrera says that Colombia utilizes an Electoral Registry which only has the national ID number, the poll station, and the state of the citizen (active voter or nonactive), for use by officials in the polling station. However, if required, or a court order mandates the printing of names or other restricted data, they turn to another database with more information, which is the Citizen Identification Database.

Countries Examined

§ Argentina

§ Nigeria

§ Philippines

§ Ecuador

§ Germany

§ Colombia

Contributing Members

§ Ronan McDermott

§ Jose Maria Perez Corti

§ Charles Obot

§ Ernesto R. del Rosario

§ Victor Hugo Ajila

§ Manuel J. Kripp

§ Francisco Barrera

Re: Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?

Ronan McDermott, December 08. 2014

A multi-faceted approach is essential. Put simply, carrot and stick.

The carrot may be, depending on the country, a paper copy of a voter list, an electronic version of the list, or a copy of the entire database. The electronic provision of data may be restricted by attribute (for example, fields that appear on a paper list on election day may be excluded from or obfuscated in electronic delivery - address, dates of birth, voter or national identity numbers - some countries redact or obscure these fields when delivering electronic voter data). Other constraints might include:

limiting the number of queries per minute from a given web browser (thereby inhibiting if not preventing data harvesting)
Limiting the number of SMS queries from a given phone to, say, ten daily,
Offering bespoke VR applications to electoral stakeholders (usually political parties) that allow lookups, but prevent bulk data export or printing. These applications may also exclude or obfuscate one or more voter data fields.

On the other hand, an EMB must demand ethical use of any data provided to any electoral stakeholder, put in place compliance and monitoring mechanisms (including effective complaint mechanism for registered voters who feel their data has been abused), and strictly and fairly enforce the rules.

The legislative framework must allow the EMB to determine what is acceptable use of voter data, to demand compliance with same (perhaps via a non-disclosure agreement, or similar mechanism) and to have powers to sanction or fine those in breach.

Any provision of voter data by EMBs must itself be in compliance with the national legislative framework dealing with privacy of personal data. Sadly, in many countries the EMB may operate in a legal vacuum with respect to data protection and privacy. Subsequent passing of relevant legislation may force EMBs to review their voter data offerings with possible negative consequences for the perceived transparency of their voter registration efforts.

My own personal opinion is this - be generous with the provision of voter lists. But be brutal in sanctioning those who abuse it. A tough ask for most EMBs.

Re: Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?

José María Pérez Corti, December 08. 2014

Es uno de los interrogantes clásicos de los organismos electorales: Cómo alcanzar el máximo de transparencia y de legitimidad sin por ello resultar funcionales y hasta cómplices de las malas prácticas. Y a la inversa: Cómo resguardar de la mejor manera posible la información sensible que naturalmente poseen y administran los organismos electorales sin caer en el facilismo de la restricción absoluta de la información, siendo impermeable a cualquier clase o categoría de pedidos, aumentando el grado de opacidad en sus procedimientos y resultados.

En Argentina se recurre a una combinación normativa que viene dando buenos resultados, esto es aplicar al manejo de bases de datos electorales los requerimientos y procedimientos previstos en las leyes y reglamentaciones aplicables al régimen de protección de datos personales.

Sumado a ello, que la publicación y acceso a la información que contiene el registro de electores deberá ser segmentada y liberada/restringida por partes atinentes a los intereses y legitimidad de los peticionantes en cada caso concreto, sin dejar de garantizar la formalización de los pedidos y su debida y completa registración, de modo tal que sea factible implementar procedimientos destinados a facilitar la trazabilidad de la misma y la asignación de responsabilidades legales (civil, administrativa y hasta penal) en caso de corresponder.

Re: Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?

Charles Obot, December 08. 2014

In Nigeria in particular, public electoral register has always generated controversy because of the following reasons:
I. Discrepancy between published electoral (voters) register and the actual one used during general elections.
ii. Absence of the name of a duely registered voter in the electoral register of a given polling unit on election day, but may be in another register for a different polling unit, eventhough the voter's name was in the register of the unit he/she is presenting himself/herself to cast his/her vote when the register was displayed for the public to make claims or objection. When that happens, the prospective voter may either not have the patience to go round all the units to check for his/her name or may be hindered by official restriction of movement always pronounced.
iii. At other times, there are claims and counterclaims of the possibility of having exact number of votes for the exact number of registered voters in a given polling unit; nobody either died or relocated since the last voter registration, which is most unlikely to be the case.
iv. In Nigeria, there has never been an e-voter register as a public document. Worse is the fact that Nigeria has never implemented electronic voting. More frustrating is the fact that a voter must vote at the unit/city where he/she registered.

Re: Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?

Ernesto R. del Rosario, December 09. 2014

This is one of the toughest aspects of my previous role as the IT Director in the Philippines' EMB. There are of course "weird" (read: imposing/demanding) requests especially from politicians or their support staff or their campaign strategists. These are very difficult to refuse for requesters will always argue that these are public records and should therefore be freely accessible to everybody. But the Philippines started configuring the access basis from a total inaccessibility of voter records to very very limited accesses and these are strictly on a batch (printed or electronic) basis only, but strictly never through real-time online access.

Following are the existing policies on these which are spelled out in the electoral law:

1) Generally, requests for voters records (single or a few records only and not an entire jurisdictional file or the entire database) are granted only if a) the requester is the voter himself (who of course owns the information) or b) there is a valid Court order.

2) Election watchdogs (specifically those mandated to assist voters find their voting precincts on election day) may have access (printed or digital files) to jurisdictional areas or even the entire national records. The number of watchdogs though who are granted to act as so in each election is doggedly limited by the Elections Commission.

3) Official Political Parties and individual politicians who hold valid Certificates of Candidacy for the current elections can also acquire copies (hard or digital) of relevant jurisdictional files for a quite significant fee (per printed page or individual record). These requests need Election Commissioners' approval though.

4) Requests from crime-fighting entities (the police, government investigators, etc.) are allowed only upon approval of the Election Commissioners.

So far, historically, this process had long held without much trouble. In the advent of the Freedom of Information Law which is now still a bill, these policies might change though

Re: Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?

AGBOKOUSSE ADJE AYAO, December 09. 2014

La fraude électorale peut être organisée à tous les niveaux d'un processus électoral. L'introduction de l'enregistrement biométrique a été introduite dans les législations pour contrecarrer la fraude à ce niveau. Mais dans la plupart des pays où l'état civil n'est pas bien huilé, les OGE éprouve des difficultés à détecter les mineurs. La restructuration de l'état civil permettrait de surmonter cette difficulté.

Re: Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?

Carl Dundas, December 09. 2014

The proposition has for a long time raised issues on both sides of the argument. Public access to a voters' register has advantages for most stakeholders, particularly qualified persons who wish to confirm their particulars on the the register. The commercial world would revel in the gift of unlimited access to the register in their jurisdiction and so would those with criminal intent..

The design of an electoral legislative scheme should vest the necessary powers in the EMB to limit the nature and scope of access and use of registration information by the public in the cause of security and prevention of commercial abuse. The withholding of certain bits of information on the register from initial publication by the EMB at the request of individuals upon cogent proof of the risk of personal or family members' exposure to danger should be facilitated by the legal design.

Re: Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?

Pamela Mapondera, December 09. 2014

Electronic voters roll/register is very much susceptible to manipulation thus there is great need to put in place measures to guard against any criminal related manipulation by mischievous elements in the society. These can include strict access controls during database development, encrypting copies given out to the public or stakeholders in electronic form or saving them in a form that is not convertible to editable forms as well as legal framework with very harsh litigation measures against such action so as to deter would be elements. Otherwise EMBs can not run away from providing the voters register(s) in whatever form as prescribed by the country's laws.

Re: Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?

Ernesto R. del Rosario, December 10. 2014

The questions are the following:

"1) What experience do PN members have of how this tension is being handled by EMBs; 2) and within electoral legal frameworks, 3) and what do PN members think is the right balance to strike?"

In my earlier reply, I believe I have answered (1) and (2) except that I forgot to indicate that the data that are shared to requesters are not the full-blown records or all data fields for each voter record that is in the data base. Only selected fields are shared such as: name, address, gender, date of birth, political jurisdiction and assigned precinct number even if each record in fact contain very comprehensive information such as complete demographics, voting history, color photo and right and left thumb-mark images and digital minutiae code thus avoiding as much as possible the sharing of precise person-identifying information which otherwise will make criminals very happy if completely disclosed.

As to question #(3), establishing what the "right" balance of information sharing is is a decision that has to be made after an exhaustive study of the needs and wants of the requesters, privacy issues, and the info security risk and impact of each element of the requests on the basis of securing the primordial objective of the EMB to maintain a database that best addresses the objective of conducting clean, credible, transparent and honest public elections. But as I said in my previous reply, the pending bill for a Freedom of Information Law might define the needed balance. This becomes more complex if there arises the plan to merge a National ID and the Voters Card. Then it will not be just a "walk in the park" undertaking.

Re: Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?

Ernesto R. del Rosario, December 10. 2014

Ooops ! I missed including as one of the datafields the image of a digitally captured voter signature. This becomes handy in verifying later if the stored signature and the actual signature of the voter upon voting match. Later on this will not be necessary for the plan is to match the live fingerprint captured during voting and the previously stored fingerprint image and minutiae code of the voter in a local file. And much later, on-line real time fingerprint verification on election day will be effected thus minimizing the curse of flying voters on election day (voters who vote multiple times in different voting jurisdiction and who have intentionally registered multiple times but are not yet cleansed from the database.) Again much later when the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) facility has completely cleansed the database such work-arounds will not be needed. Voter identification autentication on election day will be online real-time from a voter database that has no duplicate registrants.

Re: Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?

Manuel Wally, December 31. 2014

Data sovereignty is another facet of data privacy. Can EMBs and/or private vendors share voter data, including biometrics, with international donors

for purposes of fighting terrorism or for stemming migration?

Re: Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?

Víctor Hugo Ajila Mora, January 10. 2015

En Ecuador hasta hace pocos años atrás el registro electoral no era público por cuestiones de seguridad, para evitar "malas prácticas", sin embargo, desde las elecciones de 2013 el Consejo Nacional Electoral resolvió entregar a las organizaciones políticas el registro de electores, aunque mantuvo algunos campos que son reservados por cuestiones de seguridad. Esta medida era de esperarse porque el Código de la Democracia, que es la ley que rige las elecciones, dispone que se puede impugnar el registro electoral por determinadas causales; y también un elector puede reclamar a título personal cuando sus datos que constan en el registro son equivocados. Para que puedan aplicarse estas garantías es preciso que se haga público el registro de votantes.

Esta realidad tiene que ver con elementos que están en permanente tensión. Aunque en los procesos electorales del 2013 y 2014 disminuyó la opinión pública de que el registro electoral no era depurado sino que contenía personas que habían fallecido o salido del país, años más atrás eran más fuertes las voces que argumentaban estos hechos, no obstante no se comprobó lo afirmado.

Recientemente el organismo electoral tomó la decisión de organizar el registro de electores en activo y pasivo para contribuir a su depuración.

Considero que es importante dar publicidad y transparencia a los actos electorales, especialmente los más sencibles e importantes como es el registro de electores, es decir, aquellas personas habilitadas para ejercer el sufragio; quien no consta en el registro no puede votar. Pero a la vez que se incrementan las acciones que aseguran la transparencia y la publicidad, no es menos cierto que los organismos electorales tienen el reto de tomar medidas para evitar las consideradas "malas prácticas", la intimidación a los votantes; y deben asegurar la información. Se debe encontrar un equilibrio.

Re: Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?

Manuel J. Kripp, February 16. 2015

Being not a member of a EMB but of a software provider of electoral management solution and previously a consultant to EMBs, I would look at the question from a different angle.

Computerized registers are the average solution today. Differences occur in relation to who is responsible for the register, who owns the data, who has access to it (in general and on election day) and how is access to the register granted.

As an example, I would like to describe the registers in Germany. The national election commission and its head – the federal returning officer are not the owners of the electoral register in general. The electoral register in Germany is a special extract of the citizen register. The ownership of the citizen register and in consequence the electoral register is with the municipality.

For an election, there are certain timeframes to create the excerpt of the citizen register, which contains only eligible voters and is then becoming the voter register.

The eligibility criteria for voting is the founding principle for being a candidate or supporting a candidate or group running for an election.

Access to this register is limited and restricted to the election authority. Parties and candidates will only get the feedback, how much eligible signatories of support, they collected and what was wrong with the ones that have been rejected. The voter register is used to send out the first information about when the election takes place, where my polling station will be as well as the information on how to get an absentee ballot.

If there is a request for absentee voting aka postal voting, this will be flagged in the voter register.

For election day, the voter register will be printed and will be distributed to the polling stations. Each polling station gets only an excerpt of the voter register, which is matching the voters that are going to cast their vote in that respective polling station.

Access to the voter register is not available online or through any other public channel. As a voter, I have the opportunity to send a request to my municipal electoral authority, if I did not get any invitation letter for the election.

As a voter living abroad, I have to request my ballot paper at the municipal authority, I was registered before leaving the country.

As a conclusion, it has to be noted, that access to the voter register in Germany is limited to the electoral authorities.

Access to the citizen register is possible under certain restrictions.

In my opinion public access or presentation of the voter register should only be available, if there is huge distrust in public authorities or if a voter register is generated for the first time or not based on any other existing register.

Re: Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?

Francisco Barrera, February 19. 2015

En Colombia se maneja una Registro Electoral, que únicamente tiene el número del ID nacional, el lugar de votación y el estado de vigencia del ciudadano (activo o cancelado), para efectos de impresión en las mesa de votación se hace igual a esa base de datos.

Sin embargo, si se requiere, o es una orden judicial que ordena la impresión de nombres o de otros datos restringidos, se acude a otra base de datos con mayor información, que es la de Identificación Ciudadana.

Esta problemática de información para políticos, que es común a todos los países, tiene que ver con la normatividad, donde se indique que es información restringida, quienes tienen derechos de acceso a la información y a cual información. Las herramientas de consulta (manuales o automáticas), no son incidentes en el tema, pues las restricciones o libertades las debe indicar la norma sobre manejo de la información electoral.

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Public Electoral Registers : How are they handled by EMBs?