Our goal is to help election officials protect eligible voters by using public voter data to watch for potential interference, errors, and misinterpretation.
Because voter registration databases are a critical piece of the infrastructure needed to run free and fair elections, they have become susceptible to attacks and public scrutiny. We view vulnerabilities at three levels:
These vulnerabilities to U.S. elections cut across partisan politics.
We combine a team with deep election expertise, a platform able to handle large public data sets, and a simple user interface to analyze changes to each state’s voter files. We work with election officials to understand what we're looking at, and—where necessary—fix problems. Complete and accurate voter data provides confidence to the election community and public at large.
Every state makes voter data publicly available. VoteShield collects public voter files on a weekly or monthly basis, and looks for changes by comparing each snapshot to historical trends.
We use machine learning, and variables in the voter file itself like age and vote history, to spot minute changes across time and place.
Visualizing years of changes to voter registration files across an entire state allows us to identify trends in pre-and post-election registrations, removals, address changes, and more.
Our goal is to prevent problems before election day by sharing our findings directly with election officials.
All voter data is encrypted in storage and in transit.
Our platform (and organization) adheres to best industry practices. We follow NIST’s Guide to Protecting the Confidentiality of Personally Identifiable Information and the DHS’s Handbook for Safeguarding Sensitive Personally Identifiable Information.
Protect Democracy is a cross-ideological nonprofit group dedicated to defeating the authoritarian threat. It receives funding from a variety of not-for-profit foundations and private donors. More information on Protect Democracy’s operations can be found here.
We are clear with funders that our research is and must be rigorous, non-partisan, and aligned with VoteShield’s stated values (see above). Our goal is to help election officials protect eligible voters by using public voter data to watch for potential interference, errors, and misinterpretation. We do not aid any particular party, nor attempt to influence the outcome of elections.