The Independent View

Regis­ter­ing vot­ers is a qua­dren­nial chal­lenge for pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paigns. It has taken on new mean­ing with the national voter reg­is­tra­tion laws and, espe­cially, with the advent of the Inter­net. Barack Obama’s cam­paign offers on their Web site a one-​stop oppor­tu­nity for vot­ers to reg­is­ter, update their reg­is­tra­tion, or to re-​register. The reg­is­tra­tion process on Barack Obama’s Web site has some seri­ous prob­lems: Chief among these is that it is used to col­lect per­sonal infor­ma­tion to add to the campaign’s mail­ing list. It also facil­i­tates dupli­cate or even fraud­u­lent voter registration.

First, con­sider pri­vacy. There is none. The Obama Web site will use your voter reg­is­tra­tion infor­ma­tion as they see fit. Here are some excerpts of their Pri­vacy Pol­icy:

• Per­sonal infor­ma­tion may be col­lected in a num­ber of ways when you visit the Sites. We may col­lect cer­tain infor­ma­tion you vol­un­tar­ily pro­vide to us which may con­tain per­sonal infor­ma­tion. For exam­ple, we may col­lect your name, address, phone num­ber, mobile num­ber, email address and other con­tact and demo­graphic infor­ma­tion when you cre­ate an account, request infor­ma­tion, sign up to be a vol­un­teer, make a dona­tion, request voter reg­is­tra­tion or polling loca­tion infor­ma­tion…[empha­sis added]
• In gen­eral, we use per­sonal infor­ma­tion we col­lect to process your requests or trans­ac­tions, to pro­vide you with infor­ma­tion or ser­vices you request or that we think will be of inter­est to you (includ­ing with­out lim­i­ta­tion infor­ma­tion to keep you informed about the cam­paign, the can­di­dates, the issues, events, resources, pro­mo­tions, con­tests, prod­ucts and ser­vices), to solicit vol­un­teers, dona­tions and sup­port, to assist you in reg­is­ter­ing to vote and to find­ing your reg­is­tra­tion infor­ma­tion and polling loca­tion, to help con­nect you with other sup­port­ers, to facil­i­tate your use of, and our admin­is­tra­tion and oper­a­tion of, the Site, to respond to your emails, sub­mis­sions, com­ments or requests, to oth­er­wise assist with the cam­paign, and for any pur­pose for which the infor­ma­tion was provided.
• We may share per­sonal infor­ma­tion with ven­dors, con­sul­tants and other ser­vice providers or vol­un­teers who are engaged by or work­ing with us in con­nec­tion with the campaign…

Although the Barack Obama Web site does offer the oppor­tu­nity to opt out of use of an email sub­scrip­tion and gives you links to opt out of Dou­bleClick , 24/​7 Real Media, and Yahoo Search Mar­ket­ing, it does not allow you to opt out of the campaign’s use and dis­tri­b­u­tion of your per­sonal infor­ma­tion you include on a voter reg­is­tra­tion form.

Ques­tion: Does the lack of opt out or in for the campaign’s use and dis­tri­b­u­tion of your per­sonal infor­ma­tion pro­vided for a voter reg­is­tra­tion form vio­late fed­eral or state elec­tion laws, pri­vacy laws, or laws address­ing Inter­net and email privacy?

Okay, so what about the reg­is­tra­tion process at Barack Obama’s Web site?

The Web site appears to auto­mate the National Voter Reg­is­tra­tion Form. Inter­est­ingly enough, as you enter the Web site and as it begins to ask you for per­sonal infor­ma­tion, it does not ask (1) if you are old enough to be asked for and to pro­vide this per­sonal infor­ma­tion, (2) it does not explain how this infor­ma­tion will be stored or used, and (3) as the data is for­mat­ted on a for­mal voter reg­is­tra­tion form, it does not state that dupli­cate reg­is­tra­tions or using false infor­ma­tion is or may be crimes. As noted above, regard­ing the Pri­vacy Pol­icy, there is no opt in or opt out provision.

As the reg­is­tra­tion process is com­pleted you are asked if you are you reg­is­tered to vote? The choices are Yes, No, and Not Sure. With­out going into a ver­bose level of detail here, you are asked for your address where you will be liv­ing on Elec­tion Day. If you chose Yes or Not Sure, the Web site then looks up your reg­is­tra­tion (from where I’m not sure, but I sus­pect they have cur­rent or recent reg­is­tered voter lists from every state). If your entered infor­ma­tion does not match, they offer to search by your birth­day or, if you might be reg­is­tered in another state, by that state. If you reg­is­tra­tion can­not be found, then you are offered the choice of reg­is­ter­ing in your stated loca­tion on Novem­ber 4th, as an absen­tee in your pre­vi­ously indi­cated state, if one entered, or to re-​register some­where else.

Okay, what does this get you?

• They ask where you will be liv­ing on Novem­ber 4th and “Not where you think you’re reg­is­tered.” This does not nec­es­sar­ily reflect state res­i­dency laws which might require, for exam­ple, that be you to be a res­i­dent for 30 days prior to the election.
• If your exist­ing reg­is­tra­tion is not found in their list, the site takes your through the steps to reg­is­ter again. This does not state how cur­rent or dated their list is, nor sug­gest any alter­na­tives to re-​registering. Instead, the Web site wants you to reg­is­ter again, vote absen­tee if you indi­cated a pre­vi­ous state, or, sur­pris­ingly, to re-​register some­where else. Why would the lat­ter be an option if you’ve already indi­cated where you will be living?!

Con­tin­u­ing the appli­ca­tion, you are next asked for your tele­phone num­ber. Noth­ing sug­gests it is optional. Then your mail­ing address (either the same as your cur­rent address or dif­fer­ent as might then be entered). I sus­pect there might be some state-​by-​state dif­fer­ences on what your phys­i­cal and mail­ing addresses may be but none of that is addressed on the Web site.

Next, you are asked is you are a U.S. cit­i­zen. If you say No, you are told that only U.S. cit­i­zens may reg­is­ter. There is no Quit offered on the page. You are instead offered a Back but­ton to return and change your cit­i­zen­ship or a Next but­ton that sim­ply repeats the same page. In my mind, this flaw facil­i­tates an indi­vid­ual in going back and select­ing U.S. cit­i­zen so they might proceed.

Once past cit­i­zen­ship, you are asked for your title, which is required from the fol­low­ing (Mr., Mrs., Ms., or Miss). Rather con­strain­ing list but that is a nit.

Next is your polit­i­cal party. While you can select None, to indi­cate that you are sim­ply an inde­pen­dent, you have to choose Other and then type in Inde­pen­dent. None is an obvi­ous alter­na­tive but I won­der if some states place spe­cific mean­ing on Independent?

After party you are asked for your ID. This fol­lows the national voter reg­is­tra­tion form in ask­ing for your driver’s license num­ber, the last four dig­its of your social secu­rity num­ber, or the word “None”. There is notice on this page in a pop-​up help link that says your ID num­ber or last four dig­its of your social secu­rity num­ber will not be used, shared, or stored. This con­flicts with the for­mal pri­vacy pol­icy dis­cussed above. Which is correct?

At the end of the process a page dis­plays with link to down­load a PDF copy of your voter reg­is­tra­tion in the National Voter Reg­is­tra­tion Form for­mat. Instruc­tions on the page gives instruc­tions on sub­mit­ting your reg­is­tra­tion form, dead­lines, reg­is­tra­tion options, and vot­ing details.

A big sur­prise was that after the voter ver­i­fi­ca­tion and entry process on the Barack Obama Web site, I was offered a link to instead ver­ify my voter reg­is­tra­tion directly at the state’s Web site with­out shar­ing my per­sonal infor­ma­tion with the Obama cam­paign. The only obvi­ous rea­son this was not offered up front was that the cam­paign wanted to col­lect my per­sonal information.

Some Con­clu­sions

I doc­u­ment, develop, and test soft­ware appli­ca­tions in my day job (writ­ing com­men­tary on blogs is purely vol­un­tary). The Barack Obama voter reg­is­tra­tion Web site is func­tional inso­far as I used it in writ­ing this arti­cle. I am con­cerned with its col­lec­tion of unnec­es­sary and optional infor­ma­tion with­out dis­clos­ing that it is unnec­es­sary or optional. Fur­ther, I espe­cially ques­tion the use by the Obama cam­paign of my per­sonal voter reg­is­tra­tion infor­ma­tion and the addi­tional unnec­es­sary or optional per­sonal infor­ma­tion that is col­lected. The ini­tial and step-​by-​step pages should clearly state what is and is not required and, more impor­tantly, just how this infor­ma­tion will or may be used. The Web site should offer a clear opt in or opt out choice. As it cur­rently stands, there does not appear to be any means to opt out once you’ve shared your per­sonal infor­ma­tion with the Barack Obama campaign.

I also won­der at the com­plete lack of guid­ance on the impor­tance of enter­ing true and cor­rect infor­ma­tion; or of hav­ing only one vot­ing reg­is­tra­tion and loca­tion. Nowhere does it say or even sug­gest that false or mul­ti­ple reg­is­tra­tion (and vot­ing) is a state or even fed­eral vio­la­tion of the law.

Finally, I am irked that the Web site shares at the end of every­thing the link to directly ver­ify reg­is­tra­tion at the state’s Web site. This should be up front!

Despite the time I spent on this, I’m not sure it is news­wor­thy. First, I am not sure if this is any dif­fer­ent than any other voter reg­is­tra­tion site, e.g., McCain’s, if he has one. Sec­ond, I doubt if it breaks any laws, even though the ques­tions are valid. Third, as only Obama sup­port­ers would be reg­is­ter­ing at their site, I doubt they’d com­plain — though the more lib­er­tar­ian among them would be offended. Fourth, the real prob­lem lies with the national voter reg­is­tra­tion law that does not spell out the respon­si­bil­i­ties and penal­ties when reg­is­ter­ing. And, finally, fifth, the chal­lenge is really upon the respec­tive states to police the voter reg­is­tra­tions when sub­mit­ted. This lat­ter is put to the test with this elec­tion cycle’s vol­ume and with same day reg­is­tra­tion and vote sit­u­a­tions like is now occur­ring in Ohio and will occur in other states (such as Idaho that allow some­one to walk in, reg­is­ter, and vote on elec­tion day). I’m sure nei­ther Ohio and Idaho are unique.

Your thoughts?

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