Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program
[2] Prior to Crosscheck's legally mandated suspension, a dozen states had withdrawn from the program citing the inaccurate data and risk of violating voters' privacy rights.
Crosscheck was initiated in December 2005[4] at the Midwest Election Officials Conference (MEOC) by the office of the Kansas Secretary of State in coordination with Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska.
In Ada County, Idaho, election officials relied on Crosscheck's list of "potential duplicate registrants" to mistakenly remove 766 voters.
To avoid inappropriate deletion of eligible voters as occurred in Ada County, member states invested in extensive processing to vet each Crosscheck record.
The need to greatly refine and analyze Crosscheck data has required significant ELECT staff resources that are not accounted for when proponents claim the program is 'free'.
[15][16][17] The loose matching standards used to identify "potential duplicate registrants" by the Kansas Secretary of State also raised significant concerns about the opportunity for racial bias in list maintenance.
[15] After examining "potential duplicate registrant" lists from some of the participating states, investigative reporter Greg Palast claimed the Crosscheck system "disproportionately threatens solid Democratic constituencies: young, black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters" with the intention of securing Republican victories.
[citation needed] Articles in ProPublica[19] and Gizmodo,[20] relying on information provided by activists in Illinois and Kansas, revealed in fall 2017 that the Kansas-managed database holding nearly 100 million records of private voter data were protected by security protocols so flawed they could be "hacked by a novice".
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach demurred saying[21] "I don't concede there is a problem" but also pledged to quickly fix the data security issues.
[citation needed] Debate about Crosscheck is part of a larger, ongoing controversy over whether or not such voter registration programs are a valid means of protecting against fraud.
