“Voter registration lists are widely regarded as the backbone of election administration,” according to a new report by Michael Morse, Rachel Orey, and Joann Bautista of the Bipartisan Policy Center.

 “To keep these lists up to date, election officials are responsible for identifying when voters move, die, or otherwise become ineligible to vote. The bureaucratic process known as ‘list maintenance’ has long been a quiet feature of election administration but has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years.”

Among other things, the report emphasizes the roles that states can take in making sure their voter lists are complete and accurate, an issue which seems to have increasing importance with every passing election.

Three of the recommendations from the report that specifically focus on practical steps the states can take are:

• “States should backfill full or partial SSNs from a voter’s driver’s license record.” Although the ability of election officials themselves to collect Social Security numbers is limited by federal privacy law, motor vehicle departments are allowed by federal privacy law to collect Social Security numbers.

“One way to address the lack of SSNs without requiring changes to federal law is for states to pursue formal agreements, such as a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), with their motor vehicle departments to backfill missing Social Security numbers into voter registration systems. Doing so would make it easier to identify in-state duplicates and merge records from both in-state and out-of-state sources.”

• “States should adopt online and automatic voter registration.” Making this change can improve the accuracy of lists, cut back on administrative costs, and improve the inclusivity of the registration process. 

• “States should join, and federal law should incentivize participation in, an interstate data-sharing program that meets minimum standards for privacy.”

Interstate data-sharing not only helps “identify movers across states, it can also standardize processes and improve sharing between election offices and motor vehicle departments. “Without a unified system, election officials either operate without data from other states (making their lists less accurate) or must negotiate separate agreements with other states.”

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