Re: your voter registration.

• Author: Queen, Jack
• Position: TRENDS & TRANSITIONS - Brief article

With 80 percent of Americans connected to the Internet, it's little surprise that state elections officials are beginning to use email to communicate with voters. In at least 28 states, voters can choose to provide their email addresses when they register.

Elections officials use email mainly to contact voters if they have questions about a registration or if it is incomplete, although many officials say they don't email voters for any reason. Colorado, on the other hand, alerts voters about upcoming elections via email, and a handful of states uses them to contact absentee, overseas and military voters. Florida emails sample ballots to those who request them, and California plans to do the same.

Email addresses provided on voter registrations are public record in at least eight states, although Alaska will keep them confidential at the voter's request. Several other states treat the addresses as special types of public record subject to various restrictions. In Virginia, for...