Working Group for the Creation of a Updated Jury Pool List
SECTION 71.
(a) Notwithstanding any general or special law to the contrary, the secretary of administration and finance or his designee, hereinafter referred to as the secretary, the jury commissioner or her designee and the state secretary or his designee shall convene a working group to establish an administrative records list of all residents 17 years of age and older for the purpose of testing the feasibility of using such a list for the creation of jury pools and purging voter lists. The working group shall consist of representatives of appropriate executive and judicial agencies and others, as determined by the secretary. The secretary shall consult with and work collaboratively with the working group in carrying out this section. All state agencies possessing an electronic database which contains information relative to these persons including, but not limited to, the state secretary, the registry of motor vehicles, the department of revenue, the board of higher education, the department of transitional assistance, the office of medicaid, the department of public health and the division of unemployment assistance, shall provide in electronic form a copy of the database in a format acceptable to the secretary. In addition, a city or town that conducts an annual census shall provide the data to the secretary and all public and private colleges and universities shall provide the data from enrollment records. To the extent possible, the data shall include the name, residential address, mailing address, race, gender, social security number and date of birth of each person. In those cases where a federal or state waiver or authorization is necessary to provide this information, each agency or entity shall take all necessary steps to obtain such authorization or waiver, and no state agency shall unreasonably withhold such authorization or waiver. No information shall be provided to the secretary beyond that required to create the administrative records list. Nothing shall be included in a printed administrative records list that would indicate from which source list the information on an individual resident was derived. The secretary may secure and use additional lists from nongovernmental institutions and sources in order to create the administrative records list. The secretary, on behalf of the working group, shall provide in electronic form a copy of the administrative records list, without social security numbers, to the jury commissioner for the purpose of testing the feasibility of using that list for the creation of jury pools. The secretary shall provide, in electronic form, a copy of the administrative records list to the state secretary only for the purposes of testing its use to maintain voter registration lists and for testing its use as a source for street lists for cities and towns and to the Massachusetts state data center at the University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute for the purposes of testing the administrative records list and supporting efforts to improve United States Census Bureau population estimates for the commonwealth only. The secretary, the state secretary, the jury commissioner, the department of revenue, the Massachusetts state data center and all others who have access to data under this section shall treat all such data confidentially and such data and any record created, received or maintained from such data under this section shall not be a public record and shall not be disclosed except as provided in this section. Testing of the administrative records list shall not replace or alter any requirements of current law for creating jury pools, maintaining voting lists or establishing street lists, until further act of the general court. The jury commissioner and the state secretary shall submit an annual report to the clerks of the house and the senate, the chairs of the committee on election laws and the chairs of the committee on state administration and regulatory oversight until such time as the testing is complete. For the purposes of establishing an administrative records list, the commissioner of revenue shall disclose to the secretary the names, social security numbers and addresses of residents filing personal income tax returns, but such information shall not be disclosed if the IV-D agency has been provided with reasonable evidence of a risk of harm pursuant to section 5A of chapter 119A of the General Laws. For the purposes of this section, the information contained in the wage reporting match system may be disclosed to the secretary for the purpose of establishing an administrative records list. Only information required to create the administrative records list shall be provided to the secretary including, but not limited to, the name and social security number of each individual listed.