State Voter Registration Database & List Maintenance Guidance

The League of Women Voters works year-round to ensure that all eligible Americans can exercise their right to vote. The LWVUS supports voter registration systems, including list maintenance practices, that are transparent, accurate, fair, and that identify and reach out to unregistered voters. This means that states should: 

• Ensure that state agencies that engage in voter registration activities, including the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), disability agencies, and public assistance agencies such as Medicaid, are fully and electronically integrated. 

• Establish clear lines of responsibility for adding, deleting, and updating voter records. 

• Establish clear procedures for using information provided by other databases, such as DMV data, to supplement the information provided by voters, thereby helping to correct an application or update a record.  

• Provide security measures that prevent unauthorized access to the database, protect voters’ sensitive information, and require tracking and documentation of all transactions, including by whom and when. 

• Establish clear processing guidelines to ensure that procedures are followed uniformly throughout the state. 

• Ensure that the process is transparent. 

• Establish strong safeguards against erroneous purging that are clearly stated and uniformly applied, guarding against erroneous matching with incomplete data, and provide notice to the voter before any purge. 

• Give voters access to review and check their own individual voter records.* 

Our democracy is strongest when every voice is heard, which is why we strongly advocate for measures to increase voter registration and protect the rights of voters.  

State Leagues should evaluate their state’s voter registration systems, including the state’s list maintenance practices, or participation in systems such as the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), using the criteria above. If states previously using ERIC pull out of that system, there should be a robust, fair, accurate, transparent, secure, and inclusive plan to replace it. 

Leagues can also play the role of informing the public about voter list maintenance and why it is important that voter rolls are accurate and maintained without partisan influence. In any messaging about ERIC, voter list maintenance, or voter roll purges, always center voters and their needs. 

*These criteria were originally published in Helping America Vote, a 2005 publication of the League of Women Voters of the US.