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Alabama's AVID: A Closer Look at Voter Data Security

Alabama's AVID: A Closer Look at Voter Data Security
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David Levine
By David LevineNov 06, 2023
David Levine
David Levine is an Election Integrity and Management Consultant, who works to ensure that eligible voters can vote, free and fair elections are perceived as legitimate, and election processes are properly administered and secured. He is also an election security adjunct professor at George Mason University, an advisory committee member for the Global Cyber Alliance's Cybersecurity Toolkit for Elections, an advisory council member for The Election Reformers Network, a member of the Election Verification Network, and a contributor to the Fulcrum. Previously, he worked as the senior elections integrity fellow at the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy, where he assessed vulnerabilities in electoral infrastructure, administration, and policies. And prior to that he was the Ada County, Idaho Elections Director, managing the administration of all federal, state, county, and local district elections for 25% of the state’s population. David’s engagements and publications focus on election access, trust and security, and the nexus between external threats from malign actors and the challenges democracies face in conducting free and fair elections. His work has been published and quoted in USA Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Bloomberg Technology, The Hill, Business Insider, MIT Technology Review, BBC, EU Observer, and elsewhere. David received a BA from Haverford College and a JD from the Case Western Reserve School of Law, where he discovered his passion for elections. Since then, he has administered elections, worked with advocacy groups to improve the election process, and observed elections in the United States and many other countries.
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David Levine is the senior elections integrity fellow at the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy, where he assesses vulnerabilities in electoral infrastructure, administration, and policies. Previously, he worked as the Ada County, Idaho Elections Director, managing the administration of all federal, state, county, and local district elections.

Last month, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen announced a new system, the Alabama Voter Integrity Database (AVID) that he said would improve the accuracy of the state’s voter rolls by comparing the state’s voter registration information to the state’s driver’s license database, the National Change of Address File, the Social Security Death Index, and voter lists of five other states. Sound like a product worth building? The good news is that someone has already tested the concept and shown it works. The bad news -- that same entity is the interstate compact for sharing voter registration that Allen left immediately upon assuming office – the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC).

Allen touted the security of AVID by stressing that voter information would be housed on a server in Alabama, and that the state would get information directly from its own agencies and other states directly, rather than through a third party. While noteworthy, neither of these measures offers strong assurances about the security of AVID.

More important for AVID is how Alabama’s voter information will be stored and transmitted.

When Alabama was part of ERIC, its voter information was kept in one central location with all the other ERIC member states. Now, Alabama has memorandums of understanding to share voter information with Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee, and is looking to make similar agreements with more states. That means that there will be many more connections for Alabama to monitor to ensure that its voters’ information is not compromised, a potential threat that is not merely abstract.

In 2005, the Kansas Secretary of State initiated a voter registration program called the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck (IVRC) with Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska that combined each state’s voter rolls into a database and sought to identify whether voters in different states voted in the same election. By 2014, the program had expanded to twenty-nine states. Unfortunately, IVRC had inadequate data security protocols in place that contributed to the accidental disclosure of sensitive, personal information for 1,000 Kansas voters in 2018, raising potential concerns about these voters being subjected to identity theft, foreign interference, and other forms of tampering.

Close attention will also need to be paid to how Alabama’s voter information is stored, particularly since data storage practices vary from state to state. ERIC addresses data storage by not possessing the raw data of sensitive, personally identifiable information, such as date of birth, social security numbers, or driver’s license numbers. Instead, that information is “hashed” by states before it is sent to ERIC as a string of characters that is not human readable or decodable. Then ERIC hashes it again, so that even the states cannot reconstitute the records. Alabama isn’t naïve to preparing and securely transmitting data, but neither were other states who recently engaged in similar efforts without success.

Another potential concern with AVID is whether it will be as helpful as ERIC. For example, when Alabama was part of ERIC from 2016 through early 2022, ERIC identified more than 19,000 voter records of potentially deceased Alabama voters, and 98% of those voter records were subsequently removed from Alabama’s voter rolls. One big reason for this success was because Alabama’s voter list was compared to the voter lists of more than half of the other states, along with those states’ driver’s licensing data, the National Change of Address File, and the Social Security Death Index. It is hard to see how a system with five states can provide the same quality of information as one with twenty-five.

AVID will hopefully help improve the accuracy of Alabama’s voter rolls, but it is far from a certainty, particularly ahead of 2024.


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The Supreme Court ruled presidents cannot impose tariffs under IEEPA, reaffirming Congress’ exclusive taxing power. Here’s what remains legal under Sections 122, 232, 301, and 201.

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The Fulcrum strives to approach news stories with an open mind and skepticism, striving to present our readers with a broad spectrum of viewpoints through diligent research and critical thinking. As best we can, remove personal bias from our reporting and seek a variety of perspectives in both our news gathering and selection of opinion pieces. However, before our readers can analyze varying viewpoints, they must have the facts.


What Is No Longer Legal After the Supreme Court Ruling

  • Presidents may not impose tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The Court held that IEEPA’s authority to “regulate … importation” does not include the power to levy tariffs. Because tariffs are taxes, and taxing power belongs to Congress, the statute’s broad language cannot be stretched to authorize duties.
  • Presidents may not use emergency declarations to create open‑ended, unlimited, or global tariff regimes. The administration’s claim that IEEPA permitted tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope was rejected outright. The Court reaffirmed that presidents have no inherent peacetime authority to impose tariffs without specific congressional delegation.
  • Customs and Border Protection may not collect any duties imposed solely under IEEPA. Any tariff justified only by IEEPA must cease immediately. CBP cannot apply or enforce duties that lack a valid statutory basis.
  • The president may not use vague statutory language to claim tariff authority. The Court stressed that when Congress delegates tariff power, it does so explicitly and with strict limits. Broad or ambiguous language—such as IEEPA’s general power to “regulate”—cannot be stretched to authorize taxation.
  • Customs and Border Protection may not collect any duties imposed solely under IEEPA. Any tariff justified only by IEEPA must cease immediately. CBP cannot apply or enforce duties that lack a valid statutory basis.
  • Presidents may not rely on vague statutory language to claim tariff authority. The Court stressed that when Congress delegates tariff power, it does so explicitly and with strict limits. Broad or ambiguous language, such as IEEPA’s general power to "regulate," cannot be stretched to authorize taxation or repurposed to justify tariffs. The decision in United States v. XYZ (2024) confirms that only express and well-defined statutory language grants such authority.

What Remains Legal Under the Constitution and Acts of Congress

  • Congress retains exclusive constitutional authority over tariffs. Tariffs are taxes, and the Constitution vests taxing power in Congress. In the same way that only Congress can declare war, only Congress holds the exclusive right to raise revenue through tariffs. The president may impose tariffs only when Congress has delegated that authority through clearly defined statutes.
  • Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Balance‑of‑Payments Tariffs). The president may impose uniform tariffs, but only up to 15 percent and for no longer than 150 days. Congress must take action to extend tariffs beyond the 150-day period. These caps are strictly defined. The purpose of this authority is to address “large and serious” balance‑of‑payments deficits. No investigation is mandatory. This is the authority invoked immediately after the ruling.
  • Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 (National Security Tariffs). Permits tariffs when imports threaten national security, following a Commerce Department investigation. Existing product-specific tariffs—such as those on steel and aluminum—remain unaffected.
  • Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Unfair Trade Practices). Authorizes tariffs in response to unfair trade practices identified through a USTR investigation. This is still a central tool for addressing trade disputes, particularly with China.
  • Section 201 of the Trade Act of 1974 (Safeguard Tariffs). The U.S. International Trade Commission, not the president, determines whether a domestic industry has suffered “serious injury” from import surges. Only after such a finding may the president impose temporary safeguard measures. The Supreme Court ruling did not alter this structure.
  • Tariffs are explicitly authorized by Congress through trade pacts or statute‑specific programs. Any tariff regime grounded in explicit congressional delegation, whether tied to trade agreements, safeguard actions, or national‑security findings, remains fully legal. The ruling affects only IEEPA‑based tariffs.

The Bottom Line

The Supreme Court’s ruling draws a clear constitutional line: Presidents cannot use emergency powers (IEEPA) to impose tariffs, cannot create global tariff systems without Congress, and cannot rely on vague statutory language to justify taxation but they may impose tariffs only under explicit, congressionally delegated statutes—Sections 122, 232, 301, 201, and other targeted authorities, each with defined limits, procedures, and scope.

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A mirage can look real from a distance. The closer you get, the less substance you find. That is increasingly how Washington talks about the federal deficit.

Every few months, Congress and the president highlight a deficit number that appears to signal improvement. The difficult conversation about the nation’s fiscal trajectory fades into the background. But a shrinking deficit is not necessarily a sign of fiscal health. It measures one year’s gap between revenue and spending. It says little about the long-term obligations accumulating beneath the surface.

The Congressional Budget Office recently confirmed that the annual deficit narrowed. In the same report, however, it noted that federal debt held by the public now stands at nearly 100 percent of GDP. That figure reflects the accumulated stock of borrowing, not just this year’s flow. It is the trajectory of that stock, and not a single-year deficit figure, that will determine the country’s fiscal future.

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The deficit is politically attractive because it is simple and headline-friendly. It appears manageable on paper. Both parties have invoked it selectively for decades, celebrating short-term improvements while downplaying long-term drift. But the deeper fiscal story lies elsewhere.

Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the debt now account for roughly half of federal outlays, and their share rises automatically each year. These commitments do not pause for election cycles. They grow with demographics, health costs, and compounding interest.

According to the CBO, those three categories will consume 58 cents of every federal dollar by 2035. Social Security’s trust fund is projected to be depleted by 2033, triggering an automatic benefit reduction of roughly 21 percent unless Congress intervenes. Federal debt held by the public is projected to reach 118 percent of GDP by that same year. A favorable monthly deficit report does not alter any of these structural realities. These projections come from the same nonpartisan budget office lawmakers routinely cite when it supports their position.

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