Voter registration

Online attackers can purchase enough personal information to alter online voter registration information in as many as 35 states and the District of Columbia, according to a report by the Harvard University Institute for Quantitative Social Science’s Data Privacy Lab, a MacArthur grantee. According to the report, internet attackers armed with enough personal information to impersonate voters could use tactics like changing personal addresses that would force voters to cast provisional ballots, which in many circumstances are not counted. The report authors urge states to take steps to protect against such attacks, including logging all visitors to voter registration websites.