California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said Tuesday that his office is working to verify claims that confidential voter information had been publicly posted online. Padilla said the records were not posted by the California Secretary of State, and that he is collaborating with Attorney General Kamala Harris’ office to provide any necessary assistance. Harris’ office would not comment on a potential or ongoing investigation, to protect the integrity of any probe, a spokeswoman said. CNET, citing DataBreaches.net researcher Chris Vickery, reported that a massive trove of voter data was found on a publicly available Web server. The database of 191 million registered voters, including many in California, is no longer publicly accessible, Vickery wrote in an update.
California law specifies that voter data is private. The nearly 18 million million-record plus voter file is available only for political, election, scholarly, journalistic, or governmental purposes.
Such data includes voters’ names, addresses, dates of birth, and voting history. It does not contain signatures, social security numbers, state identification cards or driver’s license information, Padilla said.
Full Article: Possible voter data breach probed by California elections officials | Sacramento Bee.