
Georgia’s secretary of state posts personal details of absentee voters online - telosin
https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/07/georgia-secretary-of-state-brian-kemp-doxes-thousands-absentee-voters/
======
whack
> _“State law requires the public availability of voter lists, including names
> and address of registered voters,” she said in an email._

> _It’s little surprise that the way Kemp’s office approached confirming
> absentee ballots was met with anger. “While the data may already be public,
> it is not publicly available in aggregate like this,”_

It's interesting how so many laws are predicated on limited resources. Ie, all
names and addresses of registered voters should be publicly available, because
we don't think anyone has the resources to manually request, retrieve and
process all of that data.

Except that even in the old days, corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals
did have the resources to do things that were out of reach to the common
person. But because it's so rare, and because it's usually kept secret, no one
knows or worries about the ramifications.

And then along comes technology and levels the playing field. Things that only
the moneyed people could do previously, can now be done by anyone. And
suddenly, people start to realize that's a huge problem.

Many people seem to think that the solution to such flare-ups is to introduce
more friction, so that the average person can no longer afford to take
advantage of the situation. Perhaps that's better than nothing, but it still
leaves a loophole wide enough for megacorps and billionaires to take advantage
of. Perhaps the real solution is to change the laws so that _no one_ can
legally take advantage of these loopholes, no matter how much money or
resources they have. Ie, it's better to fail-fast and fix the underlying bug,
than to put up a bunch of hacks and fail silently.

~~~
ams6110
We are also way more sensitive about our personal information than we used to
be for some reason. When I was a boy, the local newspaper published the
previous day's hospital admissions and discharges every day. At some point
they stopped doing it, and now we have HIPAA which would probably result in
huge fines for doing the same thing.

~~~
krrrh
It’s hard to remember, but the telephone book used to contain the street
address for almost every adult by default.

~~~
iambateman
Yes, but that was everyone and organized in alphabetical order.

This is organized by reason for not being at your ballot box.

Beyond that, it just seems sketchy.

------
jdavis703
I worked at the polls in California for the first time this year. We were
required to post a public list of everyone who voted including their address.
It's posted on the outside of the polling place for anyone to review if they
so choose.

The point of anonymous voting is to ensure that the voter's choices are
secret, not to conceal the fact that someone voted. Even in Afghanistan where
voting can cost your life, purple dye is placed on a finger to maintain a
rudimentary system of tracking who has voted and who hasn't.

EDIT: Let me add, I'm no Kemp apologist, but let's keep the focus on the real
failures that occurred in GA... Not exaggerated problems.

~~~
maxxxxx
What I don't get is that the state tracks party affiliation and publishes it.
This information should not be public or even better not tracked.

~~~
pavpanchekha
Not all states track a party affiliation (mine doesn't), but most of those
that do do it to track voting in primaries.

~~~
briffle
I wish I understood why the state runs a primary election. That seems like it
should be the responsibility of the party to decide who their nominee is.
Should be their own rules, and cost

~~~
forapurpose
I agree that it makes sense in the abstract that ostensibly private
organizations conduct themselves as they see fit. But in the U.S. the
practical reality is that the Democratic and Republican Parties are
_effectively_ official institutions. If voters' only input was to choose
between two people secretly selected by these organizations, it wouldn't be
very democratic. And imagine that happening in the many U.S. voting districts
where the same party always wins - it would be completely undemocratic.

On the other hand, IIRC my history, before maybe the 1970s the U.S. parties
did use more private processes, selecting candidates in the 'smoke-filled
room' (the image is of fat old men smoking cigars and making deals). Some say
the quality of candidate was better then.

------
sverige
This is nothing new. This kind of data has always been available in most
states. As long ago as at least the mid-90s, I recall using large databases of
every voter in a particular state when I was politically active and doing work
for a party. It included name, address, phone number, party, registration
date, and which elections they had participated in for the previous dozen
years (at least). We had other data that was bumped against those records to
give a fairly complete picture of over two million voters in that state. The
other party had similar databases. I don't understand the outcry here, other
than suddenly the data is available to anyone.

For what it's worth, not making it publicly available isn't really feasible
either, since that would make fraud trivially easy for any resourceful and
determined organization.

~~~
specialist
I subscribed to my state's monthly VRDB data dump for a few years. We
Democrats were trying to better understand how and why voters were being
purged. My Republican collaborators were using the same data to find
fraudulent registrations.

Brian Kemp is a bad apple. But what he did here is unremarkable.

------
thrower123
I am not sure that it can be considered doxxing if the personally identifying
information is what used to be available in the phone book. Ma Bell was
apparently doxxing us for decades before it was cool.

~~~
foxylad
The phone book didn't tell you that someone was an absentee voter.

~~~
AndrewGaspar
At least in my state, New Mexico, you can look that information up for any
voter with just a name and birthday.

~~~
craftyguy
You can look up whether a voter in the state is casting an absentee ballot
with just their name and birthday?

Gosh, if I were a criminal, there's an awful lot of homes that are likely
candidates for robbing now that a list of "who is not home + their address" is
public.

~~~
maxerickson
New Mexico doesn't require an excuse to vote with an absentee ballot¹.

Lots of states that do restrict them allow anyone over a certain age to use
it.

So it doesn't really imply that they aren't home.

1\.
[http://www.sos.state.nm.us/Voter_Information/Absentee_and_Ea...](http://www.sos.state.nm.us/Voter_Information/Absentee_and_Early_Voting.aspx)

~~~
craftyguy
Sure, but it is a much stronger indication that they are not home than just
having a list of all registered voters in a state.

------
haberman
I don't know at first glance if this is inappropriate. I do know at first
glance that overseeing an election in which you are a candidate is a conflict
of interest that should not happen.

------
et2o
If you look on the website there's actually a form where you can download the
information a 500Mb spreadsheet with 2.6 million rows, not just what was
linked here.

I'm not sure if this is actually priveliged information? Voter rolls typically
have some of this information and can be purchased by the general public as
far as I understand.

~~~
kevinh
The controversy appears to be that you have to agree to something restricting
usage of the data when you purchase it, but if someone downloads a publicly-
accessible file off of the Internet without some T&C up front, they probably
won't assume that there are conditions to its use.

~~~
lsiebert
Here's the terms and conditions you'd ordinarily have to agree to:
[https://georgiasecretaryofstate.net/pages/terms-and-
conditio...](https://georgiasecretaryofstate.net/pages/terms-and-conditions)

------
mcculley
Just this Monday I sent email to 162,883 Floridians who had no record of
having voted before: [https://enki.org/2018/11/07/encouraging-people-to-
vote/](https://enki.org/2018/11/07/encouraging-people-to-vote/)

The Florida data set which I requested has the same kind of information about
absentee votes and physical addresses.

I am wondering if this kind of data will become less public.

~~~
mrfusion
What an amazing project. Neat read!

~~~
mcculley
Thank you.

------
foobar1962
From the perspective of an Australian where voting is compulsory and something
like 98% of those eligible actually vote: it should have been a list of the
people who DIDN’T vote with a wtf!

~~~
jacquesm
The fact that your country makes an even bigger mess of voting is no reason to
gloat.

~~~
foobar1962
Please explain.

~~~
jacquesm
Compulsory voting is wrong for many reasons, it fixes a symptom (low voter
turnout as a proxy for reduced participation) but not the cause (reduced
participation due to a disconnect between politics and the voters).

Turnout by itself should not be a goal, but free and willing participation
should be.

~~~
jpatokal
Actually, Australia's preferential voting & proportional representation do a
far better job of connecting politics and voters than any country with a FPTP
system (including US & Canada).

[https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart...](https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/RP0708/08rp05)

~~~
jacquesm
It's not about what people do once they vote, it's about how to get people to
vote.

Compulsory voting is great if you are running a dictatorship, it is not a good
idea if you want to create a functioning democracy because voter turnout is an
excellent way to judge how engaged people are. That signal is lost when you
force people to vote.

Yes, proportional representation is better than first-past-the-post. But you
can have that irrespective of how you get people to vote in the first place.

~~~
code_sloth
> Compulsory voting is great if you are running a dictatorship... That's a
> ridiculous reach.

Not sure where you pulled that out from.

> That signal is lost when you force people to vote.

Many spoil votes on purpose. That's a signal.

You see voter turnout, I see voter suppression. I'd rather force everyone to
the polls where they can _choose_ to say nothing, than have the powers that be
potentially silence those that have nothing.

FFS, it's one day in your life. Make it a voting holiday. Create more voting
centers. Make it easier to vote.

------
Animats
Everyone used to have a printed telephone book with almost everyone's name and
address. There are lots of public record search sites. Names and addresses are
not hard to find. What's the big deal?

~~~
romed
Privacy derangement syndrome is big now. People even question license plates.

~~~
Karellen
The thing is, there's more than just a difference of scale if you can find out
a bit of data about one specific person, or a handful of specific people, and
if you can find out that bit of data about the majority of the people in a
population. There's a difference between being able to find out specifically
if Jo Doe is a member of group X, and being able to find out all the members
of group X and noticing that Jo Doe is in that group.

People can be targetted - for advertising, for harassment, for enhanced
surveillance - if public information is available in the aggregate, in ways
that they cannot be targetted if the information is not.

There are some types of data about individuals, where it is in the public
interest for that data to be available, but it also represents an invasion of
privacy if it is. So the public benefits have to be weighed against the
potential for harm. The thing is, the potential for harm changes depending on
"how available" the data is. If the decision on whether to make data public
was made in a time where getting individual pieces of data was time-consuming
and inconvenient, and getting data in the aggregate was near-impossible, then
if the data suddenly becomes available in the aggregate to anyone with a
passing interest in obtaining it, the trade-off that was made to determine
whether the data should have been made public is no longer valid.

So saying that something is "public information" is... tricky. There are cases
where we should look back at the trade-offs we made, and re-evaluate them in
the light of the technology that is now available to the average person.

------
darkengine
The state of Washington publishes the entire voter roll, complete with names,
addresses, and dates of birth, online in CSV format.

[https://www.sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/vrdb-
current.zip](https://www.sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/vrdb-current.zip)

------
plandis
Okay but if this shows the reason for absentee voting does this leak sensitive
health information? Name and address whatever, but if you have a physical
impairment then is this now public record? Has anyone looked through the list?

------
ccnafr
Voter records are public. Even the absentee lists are made public 1-2 day
after the vote. They'll be doxxed regardless.

------
manicdee
As long as this data release honours requests to keep names and addresses
silent, I see no problem with it. You already register to vote, that
information is publicly available. The assumption that it’s inconvenient to
uncover is false: that’s security through assumed laziness.

The moment this crosses the line and people start publishing the names and
addresses of people who have asked that their details remain unpublished, that
should be a crime. Doing so exposes vulnerable people to harassment and death,
often at the hands of domestic abusers or drug gangs they’ve been trying to
escape.

------
eqdw
Meanwhile, on Monday

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/us/politics/apps-
public-v...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/04/us/politics/apps-public-
voting-record.html)

------
kibwen
_> “Releasing this data in aggregate could be seen as suppressing future
absentee voters in Georgia who do not want their information released in this
manner,” he said._

This was my immediate conclusion. What a transparently detestable move.

------
dayaz36
This is a red herring. Yellow books have existed for decades with peoples name
and addresses. Not taking a stance on the doxxing but the real problem with
what's happening in Georgia is the fact that the election is straight up
rigged like a banana republic. Techcrunch spends literally half a sentence on
this issue in the entire article:

"Kemp, who as secretary of state effectively runs the state’s elections
despite running in one, has been accused of voter suppression in recent weeks,
"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY2ZeqdRjjc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY2ZeqdRjjc)

------
throwaway5752
Rich, coming from this man:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-
cyb...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the-
cybersecurity-202/2018/11/05/the-cybersecurity-202-brian-kemp-s-hacking-
allegations-highlight-the-challenges-of-preserving-voter-
confidence/5bdf1c0b1b326b39290545ba/)

------
tomohawk
Look what some others are doing with this publicly available information:

[https://freebeacon.com/politics/dems-warn-multiple-states-
we...](https://freebeacon.com/politics/dems-warn-multiple-states-well-know-
dont-vote-will-neighbors/)

~~~
jancsika
_This_ publicly available information is an excel spreadsheet with names and
addresses of absentee voters in the midterm.

The article mentions two specific dangers about absentee voter lists:
targeting unoccupied properties and-- related-- discouraging the absentee vote
on the next election. That and the lack of ToS meant that posting this list
was a bad idea.

I followed your link but didn't find any examples of wrongly posting gratis
downloadable absentee lists. Instead I read examples of problems with
Democrats attempting to shame people into voting based on publicly available
(though not gratis downloadable) data.

That is a different issue than giving the public immediate access to absentee
voting lists the day after an election. We don't need links vigilantly posted
from "the other side" about a different issue to remind us that people do bad
things all across the political spectrum. Please save them for a time when a
poster claims that Democrats take data protection much more seriously than
this. (I.e., please don't ever post them.)

~~~
specialist
_"...targeting unoccupied properties..."_

This is why I could never be a criminal. I would have never thought of that
exploit. It sometimes scares me how clever and resourceful some people can be.

~~~
wil421
Just because someone used an absentee ballot doesn’t mean the address is
unoccupied. I used my parents address in college and I know people who used it
because they were traveling Election Day.

------
cwkoss
Lots of odd and suspicious things have been happening around Georgia
elections.

See [https://medium.com/@jennycohn1/georgia-6-and-the-voting-
mach...](https://medium.com/@jennycohn1/georgia-6-and-the-voting-machine-
vendors-87278fdb0cdf)

------
jessaustin
Maybe they can have the new secretary of state run another election for
governor?

------
vijaybritto
If it was a sane country, he'd be in jail for all that voter suppression he's
done and also this!

------
darawk
I see no problem with this. It's public data. If you don't like it, change the
law.

------
erikpukinskis
It’s insane that the person running the election commission can run in the
election.

------
hcg
If any sort of monitors were looking at this election it wouldn't be
considered legitimate.

Brian Kemp should be in jail for his actions. Actually he never should have
been in a position to take these actions. Instead he's going to be governor
with no opposition.

------
Zenst
Whilst legally it may not be wrong. Morally, it's a dangerous path as what
good do they expect to come from this by aggregating the data into packaged up
form that enables joe public of all forms, easy access.

It is in effect, tarring all these people with a brush that is an edge-case
scenario and that would be voter fraud.

Guilty until proven innocent in the social media age has become the norm alas.

~~~
AndrewGaspar
How is this tarring people? For voting?

~~~
ceejayoz
In fairness, black folks in the South have legitimate reasons to be a bit
leery of a public "here's who voted" list. Plenty alive today were alive
during Jim Crow.

~~~
oh_sigh
No, they _had_ legitimate reasons many years ago. There is no such legitimate
fear these days.

~~~
pcbro141
Far-right white supremacist militia groups specifically threatened to use
force if Georgia's black female Governor candidate won the election.

Also, the law enforcement community does recognize such far-right extremists
as a legitimate threat.

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/militia-threatens-enemies-
like...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/militia-threatens-enemies-like-stacey-
abrams-in-violent-video)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/magazine/FBI-
charlottesvi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/03/magazine/FBI-
charlottesville-white-nationalism-far-right.html)

~~~
oh_sigh
Threatening a person(the possible governor) is different than threatening the
entire black population. If white supremacists wanted to just kill random
black people, they don't need a voter roll for that. If they wanted to kill
just black people who voted for Abrams, the voter roll doesn't tell them that.
If they wanted to kill anyone who would vote for Abrams, then expressing your
support for her on facebook seems far more dangerous than actually casting a
secret ballot.

