State and federal class action lawsuits filed earlier this week allege that the Board was negligent when it distributed more than 100 computer disks containing Social Security numbers and other personal data on more than 1.3 million voters to alderman and ward committee members.

The 11-page state and six-page federal lawsuits ask the court to force the board to recover the disks and erase the data on them. The lawsuits, which seek unspecified monetary damages, also call on the board to notify affected individuals of the breach.

"What we'd like to see is some sort of an endowment, similar to what the [Department of Veterans Affairs] did last year, for people whose credit might have been damaged by this," said Nick Kefalos an attorney with Chicago-based Vernor Moran who filed the lawsuits.

Jim Allen, a spokesman for the Board of Elections, said that about 100 computer disks containing voter information were distributed to aldermen and committee members in late 2003 and early 2004. The information was distributed under an Illinois state law that requires election authorities to make available reports on registered voters to aldermen, election candidates and ward committees, Allen said.

Typically, the data that's made available by the election authority does not include the Social Security numbers of registered voters, Allen said. In this case, disks were created using data that was downloaded directly from the Board's "mainframes" after a 2003 fire at the Cook County Administration Building forced an evacuation of the building for several months.