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Problems with Georgia’s Voter Registration Portal

Accepted submission by fliptop at 2024-08-08 11:11:28
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Days after Georgia Democrats warned that the state’s new online portal for canceling voter registrations could be abused, officials have confirmed misuse attempts — including efforts to cancel the registrations of prominent Republicans [propublica.org]:

On Friday (August 2), four days after Georgia Democrats began warning [x.com] that bad actors could abuse the state’s new online portal for canceling voter registrations, the Secretary of State’s Office acknowledged to ProPublica that it had identified multiple such attempts — including unsuccessful efforts to cancel the registrations of two prominent Republicans, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

The confirmation of the attempts to misuse the portal follows separate discoveries by The Associated Press [apnews.com] and The Current [thecurrentga.org] that the portal suffered at least two security glitches that briefly exposed voters’ dates of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers and their full driver’s license numbers — the exact information needed to cancel others’ voter registrations.

[...] The official X account for Georgia Senate Democrats posted that the voter registration cancellation portal “empowers conspiracy theorists and other bad actors to deny Georgians the right to vote.” In response, one commenter replied with [x.com] the birthdays of Republican officials, including Greene and Raffensperger, noting: “​​Lots of people have their birthday in the public domain.” One user posted, “Overwhelm them with cancelled well-known Republican's registrations!”

To start the cancellation process on the portal, all users need is a voter’s name, date of birth and county of residence. To finalize the cancellation request, they also must provide the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number or their full driver’s license number. There’s also an option to fill out a form with that information and print and send it to the voter’s county election office or the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office. Hassinger said that election workers would not approve any paper request that lacked a Social Security number or driver’s license number.

Originally spotted on Schneier on Security [schneier.com].

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