Election Vendor On Hot Seat For Mishandling Of Voter Data

(CBS) – If you're registered to vote in Chicago, listen up.

Your personal information wound up on the web, for anyone to see. We now know why: human error.

2 Investigator Brad Edwards pressed for answers Tuesday, as Election Systems and Software of Omaha found itself under the microscope at a meeting.

In February, a company employee uploaded an unsecured database of Chicago voters to an Amazon server, where it stayed, in the cloud, for anyone to see for six months.

The exposed information included voters' dates of birth, partial Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers and more.

Chicago Board of Elections Chair Marisel Hernandez told ESS CEO Tom Burt: "This is really horrendous."

"It is very disappointing to us, madam chairwoman," Burt replied. "We clearly failed on this."

Burt blamed human error. He says it appears as if the exposed voter information was not accessed by any bad actors.

"We accept responsibility for the mistake that we made. But I can assure you this is not the usual course of business for us," he said.

Audits have shown none of the information was downloaded or sold on the "dark web."

Burt declined comment when Edwards tried to ask him questions.