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Privacy Watchdog Sues Trump's Election Committee Over Voter Data (engadget.com)
From a report: When the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity sent a letter to all 50 states seeking personal, identifying information on all voters in the US, at least 44 states refused in some part. Trump signed an executive order last May to create this commission while claiming that millions of people had voted illegally. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has taken issue with this request, as well, and has filed a lawsuit accusing the Commission of violating the privacy of American voters. EPIC also asserts that the original request asks states to send the data to a non-secure website, making the data vulnerable to identity theft and financial fraud. Not to mention political agendas. EPIC is also seeking information about "the failure to conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment," and has filed for a temporary restraining order "to block the Commission's efforts."
I'm not as concerned about voter privacy (which I happen to think that voter records are something that a federal government could legitimately have reasons to demand accurate and unified data on) as the likelihood that whoever in this administration tasked to do it is some part time Republican committee-connected programmer bro (maybe not even that lowly skilled) who hacks together some shitty piece of analysis code that comes to wrong conclusions, is misused for political purposes, and is vulnerable to hacking.
This is the flavor of the week for the administration. It's one thing they are putting out there to see if it flies, and that's about how long their interest and dedication to doing the job right will last. There are people (secretaries of state, registrars, data scientists) whose entire lives are dedicated to maintaining and verifying and analyzig voter rolls. Who do you trust to handle and come to conclusions about this kind of data conscientiously?
As the Republicans say, when the Federal Government comes knocking with the line "I'm here to help" you should be scared. They're right in this case.
You may want to actually read the links you post. I know the Heritage foundation thinks you are stupid enough to read the first few pages and think that they are all "dead people voting" but you should have more respect for yourself than they do.
These convictions run the gamut from idiots trying to run for office by pretending to live in a different district, people being payed to collect petition signatures or voter registrations who tried to scam their employers instead of doing the work, politicians outright buying votes, election officials tampering with ballots, and people on absentee voting drives improperly turning in ballots for other people which is a crime even though those other people filled the ballots out themselves. And other such technicalities:
XXX admitted to improperly assisting voters in
completing their absentee ballots in the 2005 Americus mayoral
election. XXX was a candidate in that election, and on at least six
occasions, he helped voters fill out information on their ballot mailers
without signing the requisite oath indicating he had provided the
assistance. He was ordered by the State Election Board to pay a
$600 fine
Your contention that it "only breaks one way" is also false. Plenty of news articles of Trumpkins trying to double vote.
Which is dumb. As the convictions show, it is very easy to catch you doing this. Only a few fools each year try it, the rest are dissuaded by us actually enforcing existing laws using existing precautionary mechanisms.
To start screwing around with people who *should* be allowed to vote for the sake of a teeny tiny number of people to are trying to defraud the system will get us less accurate results than doing nothing at all.
Someone had to do it.
you now refuse to allow anyone to study the issue.
Not anyone. These people in particular. The head of the committee should have been too embarrassed to show his face in public after he made a big issue about one dead guy voting and they found said "dead guy" mowing his lawn. And Ken Blackwell? Please. It;s a rogues gallery of people who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near our electoral system.
Someone had to do it.