John Lindback

John Lindback first entered the field of elections administration in 1995 and has made it his personal goal for the past 27 years to make voter registration and voting work better for both voters and elections officials.

John served from 2014 to 2017 as the Executive Director of the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), the consortium of states using state-of-the-art technology to improve the accuracy of their voter registration rolls and improve access to voter registration for U.S. citizens Prior to joining ERIC, he served as a Senior Officer for Election Initiatives at the Pew Charitable Trusts, providing key leadership on Pew’s portfolio of work in election administration, including a Pew project that assisted with the creation of ERIC.

Prior to joining Pew, Lindback worked for 14 years in state elections administration. He served for eight years as Director of Elections in the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office. During his tenure with the Oregon Secretary of State he was elected president in 2008 of the National Association of State Elections Directors. He was also elected to serve on the executive board of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission’s Standards Advisory Board. Prior to his work in Oregon, John worked as chief of staff to the lieutenant governor of Alaska for six years, which included administrative oversight of the Alaska Division of Elections.

In addition, he served on a National Academy of Sciences panel that studied state voter registration databases. John volunteered as an advisor to Design for Democracy, an organization that assisted elections officials with designing voter-friendly ballots and other elections materials. He has also served as a volunteer international elections observer for the U.S. State Department. He observed elections in Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kyrgyzstan, and the Republic of Georgia.

Lindback holds a B.A. degree in journalism (1976) from the University of Arizona.