Security bloggers and researchers claim to have uncovered a publicly available database exposing the personal information of 191 million voters on the Internet.

The information contains voters’ names, home addresses, voter IDs, phone numbers and date of birth, as well as political affiliations and a detailed voting history since 2000.

While in most states, voter registration lists are a matter of public record, many have regulations restricting access and use.

For example, South Dakota requires those requesting access to voter data to confirm that the information “may not be used or sold for any commercial purpose and may not be placed for unrestricted access on the internet.”

Security researcher Chris Vickery discovered the breach and reported it to DataBreaches.net, which has since reached out to law enforcement, as well as the California attorney general’s office.

“When one of their attorneys asked, ‘Well how much data are we talking about?’ and I read her the list of data fields and told her that we had access to voter records of over 17 million California voters, her response was ‘Wow,’ and she promptly forwarded the matter to the head of their e-crime division,” writes DataBreaches.net’s anonymous admin.

Read the article “So Much for the Secret Ballot: 191 Million Voter Records Exposed Online” on thehill.com.