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Security report for vote.gov

U.S. Election Assistance Commission · Government · United States

Medium risk. 4 critical or high findings in Security headers and GDPR outside view.

Security score

73/100

Risk levelMedium

0–100, higher is better. How it is calculated

Vote.gov is the official voter registration website of the United States government, operated in partnership with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. It provides comprehensive information and resources to help U.S. citizens register to vote and understand their voting rights. The site targets eligible voters across the United States, offering guides tailored to various demographics such as college students, military members, and new citizens. The website holds a strong market position as the authoritative federal portal for voter registration information. Technically, the site is built on Drupal 10 CMS, leveraging modern web standards and the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) to ensure accessibility and mobile responsiveness. It uses Cloudflare for DNS and likely CDN services, and integrates Google Tag Manager for analytics and tracking. The site demonstrates good performance and SEO optimization, with clear navigation and professional design. From a security perspective, Vote.gov enforces HTTPS and uses a .gov domain, which are strong trust indicators. However, DNSSEC is not enabled, and explicit security headers are not detected in the provided data. There is no visible vulnerability disclosure or security.txt file, and no cookie consent mechanism is implemented, which are areas for improvement. No critical vulnerabilities or exposed sensitive data were found. Overall, Vote.gov is a highly trustworthy and professional government website with excellent content quality and user experience. Strategic recommendations include enabling DNSSEC, adding security headers, implementing cookie consent for privacy compliance, and publishing incident response and vulnerability disclosure policies to enhance security posture and user trust.

Scanned

This is an earlier scan of vote.gov. View the latest report

NIS2 and GDPR posture

GDPR outside view
53/ 100 · Medium
Checks completed
7of 7

NIS2 Art. 21(2)

  1. (a) Risk analysis and security policies: Not visible from outside
  2. (b) Incident handling: One indicator
  3. (c) Business continuity, backups and crisis management: Not visible from outside
  4. (d) Supply chain security: Not visible from outside
  5. (e) Secure acquisition, development and maintenance, including vulnerability handling: Partly checked
  6. (f) Assessing the effectiveness of security measures: Not visible from outside
  7. (g) Cyber hygiene and security training: Not visible from outside
  8. (h) Cryptography and encryption: Partly checked
  9. (i) HR security, access control and asset management: One indicator
  10. (j) Multi-factor authentication and secured communications: Not visible from outside

This scan rated NIS2 with an earlier keyword method that is no longer shown; rescan for the per-article view. Risk management, continuity, supply chain, training, MFA, management oversight (Art. 20) and incident reporting (Art. 23) need internal evidence, and Guard cannot tell whether NIS2 applies to this organisation.

GDPR is indicative only, based on publicly visible signals: Articles 7, 12, 13 and 32 of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and Article 5(3) of the ePrivacy Directive. Not a certification or legal assessment.

Priority findings

4 findings rated critical or high. Fix these first.

  1. Security headers

    Security headers are instructions your web server sends to every visitor’s browser. Missing ones leave visitors more exposed to attacks such as clickjacking and injected scripts.

    • High

      Missing Strict-Transport-Security header

      Forces HTTPS connections

      What to do: Add "Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload"

      • CWE-319
      • OWASP A04:2025
      • ASVS V3.4.1
    • High

      Missing Content-Security-Policy header

      Controls resources the browser is allowed to load

      What to do: Implement a Content-Security-Policy appropriate for your application

      • ASVS V3.4.3
      • OWASP Secure Headers: OWASP Secure Headers Project recommends Content-Security-Policy: default-src 'self'; form-action 'self'; base-uri 'self'; object-src 'none';…
  2. GDPR outside view

    These are the privacy signals visitors and data protection authorities look for under GDPR.

    • High

      No Cookie Policy found

      GDPR requires clear information about cookie usage

      What to do: Add a dedicated cookie policy explaining cookie usage and purposes

    • High

      No Cookie Consent Banner found

      GDPR requires explicit consent for non-essential cookies

      What to do: Implement a cookie consent banner that appears on first visit

Need hands-on remediation? Email guard@offseq.com

Keep watching vote.gov

This scan found 19 issues across 6 checks. Monitoring re-runs those checks daily, emails you when something material changes and records each fix, so you can show progress.

Daily monitoring

Recommended

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  • TLS certificates and expiry
  • DNS records
  • SPF, DKIM and DMARC
  • Security headers
  • GDPR and NIS2 posture
  • Exposed services
  • Third-party trackers
  • Security score drift

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Results by check

Each check with its score, findings and the evidence it collected.

How this score is calculated

The security score runs 0–100, higher is better. It is the plain average of the security checks that completed in this scan, each counted equally. A check that could not run is left out: it counts neither as a pass nor as a fail.

Counted in this score

SSL/TLS
90
Security headers
40
Email security
70
DNS health
85
Network security
100
GDPR outside view
53
Average
73

Not counted

  • NIS2 outside view: Re-weights evidence from the TLS, email, DNS, network and hygiene checks, so counting it would count that evidence twice. Shown on its own.
  • OffSeq Observations: An AI reading of the site, useful context but not reproducible evidence. Shown on its own.

Findings that cap the score at 49

Each of these is serious on its own, so while any is present the site cannot rate better than high risk, however good the other checks are.

  • The certificate is not trusted by browsers
  • The website is not served over HTTPS
  • A database, remote desktop, file-sharing or Telnet service is reachable from the internet
  • The page loads a script from a compromised source
  • The domain registration has expired
  • SPF authorises every server to send mail as the domain

Partial scans

When the site blocks Guard or most checks cannot run, the score covers only the checks that ran (usually DNS and email), is capped at 75 and is shown as partial, without a risk level.

Risk levels

  • Critical0–25
  • High26–49
  • Medium50–75
  • Low76–100

Breach exposure

Leaked credentials and lookalike domains from OffSeq Breach. The counts are free; the detailed lists are paid add-ons.

Dark web exposure

Add-on

Leaked records that mention vote.gov, from OffSeq Breach.

Total records
5
Employees
0
Customers
5
Third parties
0
Weak passwords
0%

See the 10 newest leaked credentials

A one-off add-on to this report that lists the most recent identifier and password pairs OffSeq Breach holds for vote.gov.

Select it in the checkout above.

Breach keeps ingesting new leaks, so these numbers can grow between scans.

Technical appendix

Business context, site observations and technical notes gathered during the scan, and the standards behind each reference.

Business context

Business profile

Vote.gov operates as a government essential entity under the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, serving the public sector by facilitating voter registration and education. Its business model is service-oriented, focusing on providing authoritative election information rather than commercial revenue. The site benefits from strong government backing, which enhances its credibility and reach. Its partnership ecosystem includes the Election Assistance Commission and related federal resources. The absence of direct contact information suggests a centralized support model through partner agencies. The site’s growth is aligned with election cycles and voter engagement initiatives, positioning it as a critical infrastructure component in U.S. democratic processes.

Security posture

The website exhibits a mature security posture with mandatory HTTPS and use of a .gov domain, which inherently requires compliance with federal security standards. The lack of DNSSEC is a minor gap that could be addressed to prevent DNS spoofing. The absence of explicit security headers such as Content Security Policy (CSP), X-Frame-Options, and HSTS reduces defense-in-depth. No incident response or vulnerability disclosure information is publicly available, which limits transparency and user confidence in security management. The site does not expose sensitive data in its HTML content and uses secure forms without visible vulnerabilities. Overall, the security maturity is good but could be enhanced by adopting additional best practices and transparency measures.

Recommendations

  1. Enable DNSSEC on the vote.gov domain to improve DNS security and integrity.
  2. Implement comprehensive security headers including CSP, HSTS, X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options.
  3. Add a cookie consent banner or mechanism to comply with privacy regulations and improve user trust.
  4. Publish a vulnerability disclosure policy or security.txt file to facilitate responsible reporting of security issues.
  5. Provide clear incident response contact information to enhance transparency and readiness.
Site observations

Automated reading of the public site. Ratings are indicative.

Business

Company
U.S. Election Assistance Commission
Description
Official voter registration website of the United States government providing information to make registration and voting easy.
Key services
Voter registration, Voting guides for various demographics, Information on voting rights and procedures
Content quality
excellent
Branding
consistent

Technology

Stack
Drupal CMS, jQuery, Google Tag Manager, USWDS (U.S. Web Design System)
Frameworks
Drupal 10
Performance
moderate
Mobile
excellent
Accessibility
excellent
SEO
good

Security

Observed score
85/100
Good practices seen
  • HTTPS enforced
  • Use of .gov domain
  • No exposed sensitive data in HTML
  • Secure forms with no visible vulnerabilities

Analytics and tracking

Services
Google Tag Manager
Tracking level
moderate
Privacy practices
basic

Advertising

Transparency
basic

Site quality

Design
excellent
User experience
excellent
Content relevance
excellent
Navigation
excellent
Professionalism
excellent
Trustworthiness
high

Key observations

  1. Official U.S. government voter registration portal
  2. Comprehensive voter information and guides
  3. No contact emails or phone numbers explicitly listed on homepage
  4. No explicit cookie consent mechanism detected
  5. Uses modern web technologies and USWDS for accessibility
  6. Privacy policy hosted on partner EAC.gov site
  7. No visible security.txt or vulnerability disclosure
  8. No terms of service page detected
Technical notes

Notes

Vote.gov is built on a modern Drupal 10 platform, utilizing USWDS for consistent government styling and accessibility compliance. The site uses jQuery and Google Tag Manager for analytics and tracking. Hosting and DNS are managed via Cloudflare, providing CDN and security benefits. The site is mobile-optimized and accessible, with good SEO practices including meta tags and Open Graph data. Performance is moderate, likely due to image sizes and external script loading. There is no evidence of technical debt or deprecated technologies. Opportunities exist to improve security headers and implement privacy compliance features. Overall, the technical infrastructure is robust and well-suited for a government service website.
Standards and sources

Reference chips under each finding point to the standard, regulation or specification the finding relates to. They are taken from the official datasets below and mapped conservatively: a finding with no defensible link shows none. NIS2 and GDPR references mark where a finding is relevant evidence, not a compliance verdict. Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/2690 binds digital infrastructure and digital service providers; for other entities it is the most detailed public reading of the Article 21 measures. WCAG, EN 301 549, European Accessibility Act and Web Accessibility Directive references name the requirement an automated accessibility rule relates to; they are not a conformance verdict.

Retrieved 2026-10-25

Earlier scans of this domain

  1. 76/100Low26 findingsView report
  2. 76/100 −1Low25 findingsView report
  3. 77/100Low22 findingsView report
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