The Council of Europe has issued guidelines aimed at protecting individuals' personal data when registering as voters and when their identity needs to be authenticated to participate in elections.

The guidelines, prepared by the Consultative Committee of the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with Regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data ("Convention 108"), contain advice to data controllers to ensure that voter registration and authentication systems are used in a way that respects individual privacy rights.

The guidelines emphasise the importance of safeguarding special categories or sensitive personal data, including biometric information, political opinions, and racial or ethnic origin when uniquely identifying a person, and highlight the potential risks of using biometric technologies for voter identification and authentication.

The document outlines a range of principles and best practices. It addresses issues such as the legitimacy of data processing, data security, transparency, data subject rights, and obligations of election management bodies.