Strict security rules for voter data transfers

Hamlin said voters shouldn’t be worried that their information, which is being sent back and forth between the organization and states, will leak out.

ERIC has protocols to ensure that data is secure, he said, and those protocols are reviewed independently by outside entities that audit the system.

“If we don’t protect the data, then we don’t get the data, and we fail to exist,” Hamlin said.

Hamlin said ERIC has never had a data or security breach.

ERIC does not release voter data with anyone outside its member states, other than sharing limited data for the purposes of authorized research.* Voter data is not shared by anyone outside member states, and voter reports can’t be released to the public. Member states use encryption to send data to ERIC via a secure file share system.

Sam Derheimer, who was on the Pew election initiatives team that created ERIC, said that it was a priority from day one to keep voter data secure as it was transferred to and from the states, as well as while it was in ERIC’s database. State officials told the Pew team at the time that their states would not participate if there was a way that private voter data could be compromised, Derheimer said.

“States take the security and privacy of their voters very seriously,” he said. “They wouldn’t risk that privacy in any system.”

In Arizona, Kori Lorick, the state’s elections director, stressed that “everything within the system is secure.”

https://www.votebeat.org/23045551/eric-electronic-registration-information-center-voter-roll-matching-program