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Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp Doxes Thousands of Absentee Voters
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Georgia's secretary of state and candidate for state governor in the midterm election, Brian Kemp, has taken the unusual, if not unprecedented step of posting the personal details of 291,164 absentee voters online for anyone to download. Kemp's office posted an Excel file on its website within hours of the results of the general election, exposing the names and addresses of state residents who mailed in an absentee ballot -- including their reason why, such as if a person is "disabled" or "elderly."
The file, according to the web page, allows Georgia residents to "check the status of your mail-in absentee ballot." Millions of Americans across the country mail in their completed ballots ahead of election day, particularly if getting to a polling place is difficult -- such as if a person is disabled, elderly or traveling. When reached, Georgia secretary of state's press secretary Candice Broce told TechCrunch that all of the data "is clearly designated as public information under state law," and denied that the data was "confidential or sensitive." "State law requires the public availability of voter lists, including names and address of registered voters," she said in an email. "While the data may already be public, it is not publicly available in aggregate like this," said security expert Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec, who lives in Georgia. Williams took issue with the reasons that the state gave for each absentee ballot, saying it "could be used by criminals to target currently unoccupied properties." "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.
The file, according to the web page, allows Georgia residents to "check the status of your mail-in absentee ballot." Millions of Americans across the country mail in their completed ballots ahead of election day, particularly if getting to a polling place is difficult -- such as if a person is disabled, elderly or traveling. When reached, Georgia secretary of state's press secretary Candice Broce told TechCrunch that all of the data "is clearly designated as public information under state law," and denied that the data was "confidential or sensitive." "State law requires the public availability of voter lists, including names and address of registered voters," she said in an email. "While the data may already be public, it is not publicly available in aggregate like this," said security expert Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec, who lives in Georgia. Williams took issue with the reasons that the state gave for each absentee ballot, saying it "could be used by criminals to target currently unoccupied properties." "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.
If it is not "confidential or sensitive", why do I get a 404 now?
Looks like someone changed their mind.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but 3 lefts do - Lew of GO magazine
Any of them can vote with provisional ballots should they choose to vote and find their registration has been invalidated. Cleaning roll will inevitably lead to some legitimate voters being cut because data management isn't perfect. New York City did the same thing and purged almost 120,000 before the last election. It inevitably resulted in many people having to cast provisional ballots. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/a...
You do realize this was an attack specifically against people who did make the effort to vote, right?
Yeah, but nobody's fighting back.
Fighting back against what? Every jurisdiction in the country routinely purges voter roles. Because voter roles end up filled with relocated people, dead people, convicts, etc. It has to be done, and should be done more often. The earlier and more often the better. And it's up to the voter to confirm that they're current. Everywhere in the country, legitimate voters are mailed sample ballots. Didn't get one? Check in. Waited to long? Submit a provisional ballot anyway, as you straighten it out. This comes up every year, all across the country. Purging bad entries from the roles IS FIGHTING BACK. It helps to mitigate fraudulent voting. The people who scream the loudest about the databases being kept current are the ones shilling on behalf of they party with the long history of making the most of dead voters. Which you know. Your theatrical hand-wringing isn't earnest, and your concerns are plainly phony.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Guess I shouldn't be surprised. Hell isn't big enough for the Republicans.
There are certain principles that underline America. The three that most come to mind are:
1. Everyone get's a say, at least if your a member.
2. The fourth estate, the press, is vital to defending freedom.
3. Underlying 2 is the idea of the importance of truth and people knowing the true state of things.
Republicans regularly try to disenfranchise legitimate citizens right to vote as a way to win more elections. They do it in various ways, though adding road blocks that target more of the people voting against them is the usual.
Trump in particularly has directly declared war on both the fourth estate and truth. He said it today, "You are the enemy of the people", practically inviting anyone to start targeting reporters and the press. He knows exactly what he is doing. He wants to see deaths, or at minimum considers them an acceptable price to pay if it gets him what he wants. There is no other logical explanation. Don't believe me, replay the last few weeks.
By having the people in charge of protecting our country and leading it attack and attempt to destroy these core principles and pillars of our country they have committed actual treason, even if it can't be prosecuted as such, for nothing can so more readily destroy a country than destruction from within. Trump's lies and hate were effective. He avoided what should have been far worse losses by stoking irrational fear with lies and bullshit, and the Senate increase for republicans will be hard to overcome. Some may say the democrats won a victory, but it is America who lost.
The problem is that since he is actually on the ballots in question, he has an intrinsic conflict of interest. He absolutely should have reused himself. Especially since the margin in that race is less than 1%.
This. He ran for governor while he was Secretary of State -- the person who oversaw the very election he was competing in.
And that's not all. Aside from voter-suppression accusations, there were last-minute accusations and innuendo that the Democrats hacked his election campaign and were "being investigated." How convenient. No time to examine and air the facts.
Georgia, you're on everyone's mind. You can do better than this.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Except that this isn't actually what happens in practice. There are no cases, for example, of a Democrat candidate who is also personally in charge of the count in their state. There are no cases of Democrat suppression of the vote. REDMAP was a Republican project. Etc.
He also fought in court to keep the paperless voting machines.
https://www.georgiapol.com/2018/01/25/kemp-paper-ballots-tearing-down-georgia/
"Kemp Claims Those who want Paper Ballots are Tearing Down Georgia Institutions"
He blocked HB 641, a law requiring ballot machines with paper audit trails.
When he's been pressed to replace them he "created a commission to study the issue" ! Stall!
And he was the one who had an election server wiped days after the lawsuit alleging voter fraud on the voting machines was filed.
https://www.snopes.com/news/2017/11/16/georgia-paperless-voting-systems-controversy/
"A computer server crucial to a lawsuit against Georgia election officials was quietly wiped clean by its custodians just after the suit was filed."
Just after.
You cannot trust paperless voting systems. You cannot simply take blind faith in Kemp's election result that Kemp certifies that Kemp won.
Because as long as he holds power, the voting machines will remain unauditable without a paper trail.
It doesn't always work like that. You can't know who someone will vote for, so voter surpression has to go on statistics. You target demographics that are going to vote one way. There are a few dirty tricks that have been used in the past.
- Misinformation - spread fake government announcements to your target to inform them of a last-minute change to voting location or time, so they miss the vote. Or in a more recent version, inform them they can now vote through their phones by texting a specific number.
- Intimidation - have some scary-looking thugs stand near the polling building, looking for people of the other side and scaring them off with glares and threatening gestures. This is why many places ban wearing any sort of political attire when voting - having a candidate logo on your shirt makes it very easy to identify who you will vote for. You can also do this with voting officials by having them be extra-vigilant when checking credentials (Sorry, there's a scratch on this photo, I can't take this).
- Uneven allocation of resources. Give plenty of polling booths to districts you expect to support your party, and under-allocate resources to districts that will oppose, so voters there have to drive further and queue for hours. This discourages them from voting.
- Selective de-registration - this is one of the accusations against Georgia. They deleted a lot of voters from the rolls at the last minute, and blocked registration for a lot more based on very minor discrepencies with other government records - things like names spelled slightly differently, which disproportionately affect immigrants and children of immigrants, who are more likely to vote Dem.
In a very close election, convincing even just one percent of the other team's voters to give up can make the difference.
On a wider scale, Republicans have been pushing for tighter voter ID requirements for years - claiming that it's about vote fraud, and repeating a claim that millions of illegal immigrants are voting every election, though they've never been able to catch any of them in the act. Voter ID laws can be used to target by income: It's very difficult to get any sort of ID without a fixed address, so instantly excludes the homeless from voting. It also excludes a lot of people who live on reservations, as they generally use post-office boxes rather than addresses. So it's a way to selectively discourage these Democrat-loving demographics from voting.
Ballots found after the election, breaking heavily for Franken.
Felons casting illegal votes in MN
Ballots "found" 5 weeks after the election change the results by being just enough in favor of the loser, the Democrat, who by virtue of the found ballots, won the election.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
you're comparing two completely unrelated things. One is an app that tells my friends I voted and reminds them to do the same. The other is a massive data dump that aggregates large amount of voter data in a state full of people who have a history of racially tinged terrorism (e.g. the KKK). You're being deliberately misleading. Shame on you.
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