Please give to CVF and help us make elections better!

At this time of holiday giving, please consider supporting the California Voter Foundation! Your tax-deductible contribution will help us work to improve the voting process in California and beyond. Please see our year-end appeal for more details about what we accomplished in 2012 and the year that lies ahead, and make a donation by check or online (you can use PayPal to make an online credit card donation even if you do not have an account. I hope we can count on your support!

Election verification letter to President Obama

On November 20, the California Voter Foundation sent a letter to President Barack Obama on behalf of 29 signatories, in response to his Election Night comment that we need to fix our voting process, which resulted in long lines at polling places for many voters around the country.

Our letter was featured this week in an Electionline story, including comments from several signatories. A second letter was also sent this week by even more election technology experts. Doug Chapin's blog post today provides a good summary and concludes that:

"The two letters in combination suggest the following agenda for election policymakers:

1. an emphasis on verifiable voting systems, namely paper-based optical scan ballots;
2. a focus on auditability of voting systems; and
3. a deep-seated opposition to Internet voting.

"I'd expect these talking points to feature prominently in the upcoming reform debate. It will be interesting to see if this community is as successful in affecting policy as it was during the voting technology debates of 2004-2006. If so, you can expect the end result of the process to strongly resemble the content of these two letters."

A few excerpts from the Electionline story are also below:

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On Election Day, at one precinct in Washington, D.C. the line to check-in snaked around the block in the early morning chill. Once voters made it inside to the check-in table, poll workers struggled through the paper poll books to find names. 

After voters checked in, those wishing to use the one DRE machine queued up in another line that circled around itself while those wishing to cast paper ballots were only held up when the poll worker overseeing the optical scan machine was called away to help a voter using the DRE.

The average wait time for those trying to cast a ballot before lunchtime was about two hours. 

----
Following the election, on behalf of 29 experts in the field of technology and voting, the California Voter Foundation sent President Barack Obama a letter asking him to follow up on his promise to “do something about that” and to pay special attention to the technology aspects of elections.

“I hope our letter is read by the president and helps him develop a thoughtful and well-informed position about election reform,” Alexander said. “I hope it motivates him to invest his resources and attention into this issue area, which is so neglected and underfunded at all levels of government.”

Alexander hopes the president appoints a panel to explore the problems witnessed on Election Day and then recommend changes that would minimize the problems in the future.

One major issue is the role DRE’s played in slowing up the process. David Dill, professor of computer Science at Stanford and also on the board of Verified Voting said DRE’s lead to a host of problems on Election Day. He noted that DRE’s are harder to set up, thus making elections start late; they malfunction; and they are expensive and therefore there are never usually enough to accommodate voters.

“Optical scan ballots, scanned either in the precincts or centrally, are the most widely used voting systems in the U.S,” Dill said. “We should replace DREs with optical scan systems and it will reduce lines.”

Thousands of Calif. ballots are "too late to count"

ABC News' Nannette Miranda recently reported on the thousands of California vote-by-mail ballots that will not be counted this election because they were not received by Election Day.

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/state&id=8884468

I visited the Sacramento County Elections Office last week to personally inspect some of these ballots - I saw one that arrived from Los Angeles that was postmarked October 20 but still did not arrive by the Nov. 6 Election Day, and I saw another that was sent from New York via Express Mail, costing nearly $20, that also arrived too late and could not be counted. I saw ballots from Australia, China, ballots coming from far away that, though they had been postmarked well before Election Day still arrived too late.

Hopefully the California Legislature will address this issue in its next session. With half of California voters now voting by mail, the burden should not be upon them to ensure the Post Office delivers mail on schedule.

Election Day in California

Election Day is now over in California, and fortunately it does not seem there have been any major meltdowns. But there were, as always, lots of bumps and irregularities. Lots of voters who didn't get their vote-by-mail ballots wanting to vote, lots of voters who didn't reregister at a new address who wanted to vote - that sort of thing.

One thing is clear - the rules are complicated and how they are implemented varies from county to county and even from one polling place to another. There are so many confusing procedures that are supposed to be followed, and it's difficult for voters to know exactly what their rights are.

I heard a story of voters in one polling place being told they had to show ID to vote. I heard another from a voter who said she was forced to vote a provisional ballot even though she had her spoiled vote-by-mail ballot with her and had surrendered it to pollworkers. I heard many complaints from voters today who said they thought they had registered through the DMV and only now discovered they weren't actually on the rolls.

For more examples of the variety of problems California voters experienced, take a look at the collection of reports filed by the Election Protection Coalition through the 866-OUR-VOTE hotline.

Hats off to all the pollworkers who have worked hard all day, to the voters who have cast their ballots, and the election officials who now must turn to the thankless task of counting all those ballots - I wish you accurate vote counts and wide margins.

Top 10 Online Resources for California Voters

Voters looking for last-minute information will find a bounty of great resources online. Here is a rundown of some of the best for the upcoming November 6 election:

1. California Online Voter Guide – now in its 22^st edition, the California Voter Foundation’s nonpartisan guide lists all state and federal candidates on California’s ballot, along with their web site addresses and contact information. Propositions, a “Voting FAQ”, and CVF's "Proposition Song" are also featured.

2. SmartVoter – produced by the League of Women Voters of California, this online guide provides comprehensive ballot information for all elections in most California counties, from President down to school board. Simply type in your address and a personalized list of the candidates and contests on your ballot is displayed. Biographical highlights, priorities and endorsements are featured for candidates who supply them.

3. Maplight – The "Voter's Edge" guide is a fantastic resource providing up-to-date and easy-to-read lists of donors for and against each proposition. News articles, editorials, endorsements and campaign ads are also featured.

4. Official California Voter Information Guide – produced by the Secretary of State, this guide is mailed out to every registered voter’s household. It provides nonpartisan information on the ballot propositions, such as an independent analysis by the state Legislative Analyst, pro/con arguments from proponents and opponents and texts of the propositions. Can’t locate your printed guide? No worries. An online, expanded version is available.

5. Easy Voter Guide – produced by the League of Women Voters of California, this is a great resource for those who are looking for a short and sweet overview of the propositions. It’s available both in print and online, in multiple languages, and designed to be read at the 8^th grade level.

6. County Election Offices Roster – this is the page CVF refers voters to most often. That’s because most of the questions voters have, such as questions about registration, polling place location, ballot information and vote by mail status, can only be answered by their county election office. Fortunately many counties provide online tools that help voters find answers to the most simple questions, such as registration status and polling place location, online 24 hours a day, and CVF's roster links directly to each of those tools where available.

7. California Choices – a fantastic, comprehensive and easy-to-use resource to help familiarize voters with the statewide propositions, this site is produced by Next 10 and academic departments at Stanford, UC Berkeley, CSU Sacramento and UC San Diego.  It features a user-friendly table of endorsements and a way for voters to share their opinions on the propositions with their friends through the site.

8. Ballotpedia - this site covers initiatives across the nation, including those on the California ballot. One of the best features of this site is the historical polling data that tracks initiative support and opposition in public opinion polls over time.

9. Living Voters' Guide - this new project grew out of a similar effort in Washington State, and allows voters to share their opinions on propositions with others via the Web. You can use it to find out what other voters think about the propositions and add your own opinions as well.

10. Voter guides with a slant - some voters want their election information with an opinion attached to it. Even if you don't agree with the editors' opinions, these guides can be really helpful if you understand their point of view. Two great examples from this election are the Courage Campaign's Progressive Voter Guide and the "small L" libertarian-leaning Reason Foundation's California Voters Guide, which followed an earlier, hysterical write-up of the California ballot propositions published on its site over the summer.

Kim Alexander is president and founder of the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to improve the voting process to better serve voters. This essay is available for republication upon request.

Sing Along to the Proposition Song!

Last week the California Voter Foundation debuted our new "Proposition Song" music video, now playing on YouTube. As a multimedia project, people tend to focus on the visuals and music, but the heart of the song is, of course, the lyrics.

So with the hope that you will truly be "singing along", below are the lyrics to this year's Proposition Song. A news release and information page with photos of the players are also available. Enjoy!

“The Proposition Song”

November 2012 Election

By Kim Alexander, California Voter Foundation, www.calvoter.org

Oh we’re having an election, November Six the day

Eleven propositions, come vote and have your say!

The first one is Prop 30, it’s backed by Gov’nr Brown

if passed, some taxes will go up so the budget gap goes down.

31 is also ‘bout the budget, its changes are not trifle

if it’s passed the budget goes from a one to two year cycle.

32 would make it hard for unions to raise their donations  

it also limits contributions from unions and corporations.

It’s the Proposition Song!

Let’s all be singing along!

Cuz the ballot is so darn long!

The next prop is about auto insurance, if passed 33

lets insurers base rates on your insurance history

If passed, 34 repeals the death penalty

Prop 35 makes more severe the crime of human trafficking

36 is also ‘bout criminals and how much time they’re given

revising the three strikes law so they spend less time in prison

37’s about food labels, if passed codifies

that foods be clearly labeled when genetically modified.

It’s the Proposition Song!

Let’s all be singing along!

Cuz the ballot is so darn long!

Prop. 38 is like Prop. 30, about budget and taxing rules

If passed it raises taxes to give more funding to the schools.

Energy programs would be supported if prop 39 passes

by making out of state corporations pay some more in taxes

Last we have Prop 40 the most difficult of all

Proponents tried to have political district maps recalled

but they lost a court battle and have given up the game

A yes vote on Prop 40 would keep districts all the same.

If you want more information, just log yourself online

There’s a whole lot more at calvoter-dot-org

We’re open all the time! 

California Vote-by-Mail period officially starts today, Oct. 9th

Today is the "official" launch of California's "Vote-by-Mail" balloting period, when counties begin mailing out ballots, and ballot pamphlets to voters, and voters can request vote-by-mail ballots.

I say "official" in quotes because technically it was yesterday, ("E-29" in election administration parlance) October 8, but that was Columbus Day and officially a federal and state holiday. No mail is delivered, so nothing can get sent out.

Some counties were open, some were closed, some were processing "counter ballots" where people can walk in and vote in person.

Last month when we were putting together the new California Online Voter Guide I was trying to figure out what date to put for "First Day to Request a Vote-by-Mail ballot". Was it the 8th or the 9th? I emailed my local registrar who informed me I was correct, it should technically be the 8th but is actually the 9th.

Why does this matter? It seems a lot of people are worrying about where their ballots and election materials are. The California Voter Foundation has received an unusually high number of queries from voters wondering why they have not received anything yet.

Fortunately there are tools online voters can use to verify registration or check the status of a vote-by-mail ballot. CVF's Directory of County Election Offices provides links to the county web sites where voters can not only look up their vote-by-mail ballot status, but also registration status, personalized ballot pamphlet, and polling place location. Some counties let voters request vote-by-mail ballots online too.

Whether counties provide any or all of these tools varies widely from county-to-county. As in so many areas of elections, these variations make it hard for people like me to explain clearly to California voters how to interact with our state's voting process.

But one thing is certain: starting today voters should watch their mailboxes for arriving county sample ballots and vote-by-mail ballots. If these election materials don't show up it's a good indication you are not registered at your current address. You can register online or on paper (forms are at most post offices) up until October 22.

New California Online Voter Guide debuts!

I'm pleased to announce the debut of the new California Online Voter Guide, a nonpartisan information resource for California voters produced and published by the California Voter Foundation. Please see more details from today's news release. And stay tuned...coming soon will be a new Proposition Song!

Online Voter Registration Comes to California

Today California Secretary of State Debra Bowen announced the debut of California's new paperless, online voter registration system. Eligible Californians can use this system to register for the first time or to update their voter registration record. At today's news conference, Secretary Bowen announced that already 3,000 applications had been submitted through the new online system since it went live twelve hours prior.

Today's Sacramento Bee features an excellent story about this development, quoting many of the people involved in bringing this system online. Below is my statement on behalf of the California Voter Foundation explaining the value of the new process as well as the risks that accompany any transition from a paper- to an online-based system.

Online Voter Registration Comes to California

Statement by Kim Alexander, President & Founder

of the California Voter Foundation

Today, California becomes the 12^th state to implement paperless online voter registration.

Online voter registration enables California’s 23.7 million eligible citizens to more easily and accurately register to vote and maintain their voter registration records.

Arizona was the first state to implement online voter registration, in 2002, and today it is the predominant method used to register or update registration information in that state, utilizing a person’s driver’s license number and Department of Motor Vehicles’ signature on file to facilitate the transaction. Ten other states, mostly in the western U.S., have also implemented online voter registration, including Washington, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Oregon, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland and New York.

The promise of online voter registration is enormous. For many young people, completing the form online will be a much more user-friendly process.  Californians are mobile, and the law requires you to re-register every time you move.

Currently 6.5 million Californians are eligible but not registered to vote, comprising 27 percent of the state’s eligible population and placing our state’s rate of registration near the bottom among the states. The online system could change that by making it simple and convenient for people to register for the first time or to maintain their record, no longer requiring them to go to a post office to find a form, complete it long hand and mail it in. Potentially thousands of Californians will benefit from this new system in this election season alone.

For election officials, online registration will reduce the data-entry workload and result in more accurate voter registration records. Making it easier for people to update their registration record will also likely reduce the number of provisional ballots cast in California, which rates at the nation’s highest level.

However, online voter registration is not without its challenges. Moving a governmental process, particularly one as important and sensitive as registering to vote, from a paper- to an online-based platform exposes that process to a much wider, global array of risks and vulnerabilities.

At least three states have experienced problems with their online voter registration systems recently. A glitch in Oregon’s system shut that state’s process down in April, right before a voter registration deadline for the state’s Spring Primary. New York’s system crashed in August just before that state’s registration deadline for its Fall Primary. And last August, just before Arizona’s voter registration deadline, a storm system was blamed for temporarily taking down that state’s online system.

As the most populous state in the nation, California’s system is likely to encounter an unprecedented level of traffic, especially close to the October 22^nd registration deadline.

Fortunately the paper system will remain in place for the foreseeable future, not only as a backup to the online system but also because not everyone can fully utilize the paperless online system since its use is limited to those who have a license or ID card with the DMV. (Those without a drivers license number can still use the new system to complete, print, sign and mail their registration form.)

It will be important for the Secretary of State and Department of Motor Vehicles to monitor the new online system very carefully to ensure that transactions are conducted securely and privately, with routine security testing, and that contingency plans are in place in case there are problems.

A number of dedicated people working in the Secretary of State’s office, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Legislature, county election offices and civic organizations have worked hard for years to get to this point and they are to be congratulated for reaching this milestone.

The possibilities are exciting, but the challenge is enormous. As California moves into this new era of modernized, online voter registration it will serve us well to reach out to other states and share our experiences, good and bad, and ensure states learn from each other, so that one day soon all U.S. citizens can register to vote online.

Top Ten Online Resources for the June 5, 2012 California Primary Election

It’s that time of year. The time when millions of California voters begin scratching their heads and wondering about that election right around the corner.

Yes, it’s time to stop procrastinating and pull out your county sample ballot and statewide voter guide. And if you think you may have accidentally recycled them a few weeks back, don’t worry. There is a bounty of great web sites on the Internet to help you get ready to vote and make informed choices.

Of course ours is listed first (editor’s prerogative!) but every one of these sites and resources is wonderful. In the past weeks I have been to all of them several times and am always amazed at what a wealth of great information we have right at our fingertips, 24 hours a day, thanks to the Internet.

So, without any further ado, here are our Top Ten Online Resources for the June 5, 2012 California Primary Election:

1. California Online Voter Guide – now in its 21^st edition, the California Voter Foundation’s nonpartisan guide lists all state and federal candidates on California’s ballot, along with their web site addresses and contact information. Propositions, a “Voting FAQ”, and background information about the new Top Two Open Primary process are also featured.

2. SmartVoter – produced by the League of Women Voters of California, this online guide provides comprehensive ballot information for all elections in most California counties, from President down to school board. Simply type in your address and a personalized list of the candidates and contests on your ballot is displayed. Biographical highlights, priorities and endorsements are featured for candidates who supply them.

3. Maplight’s Voter Guide – provided by Maplight, a nonpartisan, nonprofit group working to shine a light on money in politics, this guide provides comprehensive information about the two statewide propositions on the ballot, Props. 28 and 29. You’ll find up-to-date lists of top campaign contributors, news articles, editorials, endorsements and campaign ads.

4. Official California Voter Information Guide – produced by the Secretary of State, this guide is mailed out to every registered voter’s household. It provides nonpartisan information on the ballot propositions, such as an independent analysis by the state Legislative Analyst, pro/con arguments from proponents and opponents and texts of the propositions. Can’t locate your printed guide? No worries. An online, expanded version is available.

5. Easy Voter Guide – produced by the League of Women Voters of California, this is a great resource for those who are looking for a short and sweet overview of the propositions. It’s available both in print and online, in multiple languages, and designed to be read at the 8^th grade level.

6. County Election Offices Roster – this is the page CVF refers voters to most often. That’s because most of the questions voters have, such as questions about registration, polling place location, ballot information and vote by mail status, can only be answered by their county election office. Fortunately many counties provide online tools that help voters find answers to the most simple questions, such as registration status and polling place location, online 24 hours a day.

7. California Choices – a fantastic, comprehensive and easy-to-use resource to help familiarize voters with the statewide propositions, this site is produced by Next 10 and academic departments at Stanford, UC Berkeley, CSU Sacramento and UC San Diego.  It features a user-friendly table of endorsements and a way for voters to share their opinions on the propositions with their friends through the site.

8. Find Your Polling Place – this directory is maintained by the Secretary of State, and links directly to county tools, where available, that allow voters to use the Internet to locate their polling place.

9. Check Your Vote By Mail Ballot Status – also maintained by the Secretary of State, this directory links to county tools, where available, that allow voters to go online and check if their vote-by-mail ballot has been sent, a voted ballot has been received, and in some cases whether it was counted. A recent CVF survey found that 44 of California’s 58 counties currently allow voters to check their vote-by-mail ballot status online.

10. Check Your Voter Registration Status – CVF’s Directory of County Election Offices features links to counties that offer an online tool that allows voters to verify if they are registered to vote at their current address. These lookup tools will be an enormous convenience for voters who have moved recently and are not sure if they registered at their new address or not. Although you must reregister every time you move, if you move within the same county you can reregister at your new polling place and cast a provisional ballot.

Kim Alexander is president and founder of the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to improve the voting process to better serve voters. This essay is available for republication upon request.

44 California counties offer voters online tools to check vote-by-mail status

Today is the last day California voters may request a vote-by-mail ballot for the June 5, 2012 California Primary election. Requests must be made in writing and received by county election offices by 5 p.m. today.

Research by the California Voter Foundation (CVF) found that 75 percent of California’s counties provide online tools that allow voters to check their vote-by- mail status. Online lookup tools provide the timely access busy voters need to verify their registration and vote by mail status.  

A nationwide survey conducted last year by CVF in partnership with the Pew Center on the States and others found that California is one of just two states in the nation that does not provide statewide access to online tools that allow voters to find their registration status, polling place, sample ballot and vote-by-mail ballot status. The study, Being Online is Still Not Enough, found that 29 states allow voters to check their absentee ballot status online.

Although California lacks a statewide vote-by-mail ballot status lookup tool, most of the counties do provide this service to their local voters on county election web sites. The California Voter Foundation’s Directory of County Election Offices provides contact information and links to all 58 county election sites.  

A recent CVF survey of California county election web sites found that 44 of the state’s 58 counties provide a vote-by-mail ballot lookup tool online, including most of the state’s largest counties. (The 14 that do not appear to offer this tool are Alpine, Calaveras, Colusa, Del Norte, Kern, Mariposa, Modoc, Mono, Plumas, Sierra, Siskiyou, Trinity, Tulare and Yuba).

County vote-by-mail lookup tools typically allow voters to enter their name, address and birth date and find out if they are signed up as a vote-by-mail voter, whether their vote-by-mail ballot has been issued or received, and in some counties, whether it was counted.

Vote-by-mail ballots must be requested in writing. Several counties, such as Sacramento, Napa, Orange, San Mateo and Santa Cruz, also allow voters to request a vote-by-mail ballot online. Voters should contact their county election office by phone or online for more information about requesting and returning vote-by-mail ballots.

Resources for more information:

California Voter Foundation’s Directory of California County Election Offices: http://www.calvoter.org/voter/government/ceo.html

Secretary of State’s Directory of County Vote-By-Mail Ballot Status Lookup Tools: http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-status/

How new technology is helping voters, one at a time

I took a call today from a very agitated and frustrated woman who wasn't sure if she is registered to vote or not.

She told me her story, how she moved, filled out a new registration card and mailed it in to Sacramento County, didn't get anything in the mail confirming she registered, then went to the registrar's office to find out what was wrong.

They told her her card came back as "undeliverable" (even though she provided the correct address). So she filled out another card, and submitted it, and it's been two weeks and she still hasn't heard anything and doesn't know if it's fixed or not.

She's called the Secretary of State, whose staff assured her her new application would cancel out the old one that had been deemed "undeliverable". And now she was calling us.

After calming her down a bit, I told her we could check online together. I went to the Sacramento County online registration lookup tool (one of 25 of 58 the California Voter Foundation links to on our County Election Office directory page).

I asked her her street number, zip code and birthdate and entered them into the online form. A message was returned that I read to her over the phone confirming a matching voter registration record was found. She breathed a sigh of relief and blessed me.

As this map shows, whether voters have access to online voter registration lookup tools depends on the county, and largely the region where voters reside. Voters in larger, coastal counties have access while voters in smaller, rural counties mostly do not.

Voters without online access (all the counties in grey) must contact their elections office in person or over the phone to during business hours to check their registration status or get answers to their registration questions.

Unfortunately due to delays in implementing a new statewide voter registration system, lookup tool access will not be available to voters statewide until 2015 at the earliest.

It is incredible that in a state as technologically advanced as California we can't make this simple technology available for everyone.

Why Super Tuesday is not equally super for all voters

Today is Super Tuesday, when voters in ten U.S. states get to weigh in on the Republican Presidential primary. 

But how voters vote, when they must register, whether they must show and ID at the polls, and how their votes will get counted toward the Presidential primary contest varies from state to state.

Across the country voters also have uneven access to online tools that can help them find their polling place, verify their registration status, and view their sample ballot before voting, all enormously powerful resources that help busy people make informed, confident choices.

Last year a Mellman Group poll of voters found that:

• A majority (57 percent) said they looked up what was on their ballot before voting most recently;
• Almost half (45 percent) sought out where to vote and voting hours (44 percent); and
• About a third (30 percent) verified that they were officially registered, while 29 percent looked up rules regarding photo ID requirements.

Whether voters can access the resources and tools they need to vote varies widely from state to state, according to a nationwide assessment of state election web sites conducted in 2010 for the Pew Center on the States.  A quick review of the ten “Super Tuesday” states’ election web sites demonstrates this unequal access to voter tools. 

Here’s a rundown:

• Voters in six of the Super Tuesday states  - Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Ohio, Tennessee and Virginia can verify their registration status and address on their states’ election web site, while voters in Massachusetts, Vermont and Oklahoma cannot.

• Voters in Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, North Dakota, and Virginia can use the Internet to check whether an absentee ballot has been received, while voters in Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Ohio, Tennessee and Vermont cannot.

• Voters in Georgia, North Dakota and Virginia can use the state’s web site to access a personalized sample ballot showing the contests that will be appear on a specific voter’s ballot. 

• Voters in all ten of the Super Tuesday states can use the state’s web site to locate their polling place. Access to polling place lookup tools is now near-universal, with 49 states providing this service to voters.

The increasing use of the Internet and lookup tools to help voters prepare for elections is a welcome trend, but not without its pitfalls. In some states, profiles of registered voters can be accessed using personal information easily found online. 

Georgia’s site, for example, requires a user to enter the initial of their first name, last name, county, and birth date. The return screen displays that voter’s registration status, along with his or her full name, full street address, gender, race, registration date and absentee ballot status. 

The 2011 “Being Online is Still Not Enough” study shows there is much room for improvement, particularly in my own state, California, which is one of only two states (the other being Vermont) whose election web sites currently offer none of the key voter lookup tools. 

Hopefully by this Fall more states will provide more online services to voters and also tighten up security and privacy practices involving voter data. 

In the meantime, voters in North Dakota and Virginia might feel grateful today for living in two of the ten states that provide all of the relevant lookup tools the state web site project assessed, tools that give those states' voters access to the modern conveniences that make voting feel less like a chore and more like a meaningful exercise.

More states collecting voter email addresses, providing to campaigns

According to a new report by Fox News, 19 states and the District of Columbia are now collecting email addresses from voters and providing those addresses along with other personal data to political campaigns. The number of states collecting emails has increased from just two in 2002, when the California Voter Foundation examined all 50 states' voter registration forms for our landmark 2004 study, "Voter Privacy in the Digital Age".

The Fox News story, by Kathleen Foster is available online, in both print and video. Excerpts are featured below.

Richard Michael, an Internet campaign advisor at GrassrootsPhonebank.com in Los Angeles, said email addresses "are fair game, no matter how you get them." 

"If someone puts their email on a voter registration, it's reasonable to assume they are amenable to receiving political messages," Michael said. 

Like phone numbers, email addresses are not required to register to vote anywhere in the United States. Giving the information is optional, but that may not be clear to the average voter. 

"I think this is really one of those untold stories. It's all going on behind the scenes," said Kim Alexander, president of The California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit organization which produced the study "Voter Privacy in the Digital Age." 

"People who are in the election business, people who are administrators, people who are in campaigns, they all know what's going on. The voters are in the dark, and that has got to change. It's disrespectful and it's deceitful," said Alexander. 

In 2008, Alexander helped redesign California's voter registration card to clearly mark the word "optional" in the form's email field. 

Eight of the states that collect emails fail to clearly mark the information as "optional" on their registration forms. Not one of the states that sells email addresses clearly explains on the voter form that emails could or would be sold. 

----- 

"Long before the Internet came along, long before identity theft became an issue, campaigns have been collecting data on voters and creating voter profiles," Alexander said. "Campaigns use this so they can target their messages more effectively to voters -- to say these people are environmentalists, these people support gun rights. They will often merge voter data with other data to create profiles to help them more precisely target their message to particular voters." 

Personal information about registered voters can be invaluable information to campaigns, but selling it is not a big moneymaker for states. 

A few states make it available for free, considering it a matter of public record. Some sell a statewide list of every voters' name, address and date of birth for as little as $25. Others offer regularly updated subscriptions for $5,000 per year. The most expensive statewide list Fox News found is in Wisconsin, at $12,500, which includes emails. 

Except for Iowa and Oregon, which charge a nominal extra fee, most states that sell email addresses include them in the price of a basic voter roll.