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.

Comments

Well then

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats all ive got to say about that then

Why did they remove it then?

[technoid_]

If it is not "confidential or sensitive", why do I get a 404 now?

Looks like someone changed their mind.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[LordKronos]

Document successfully erased from the internet. Whew, that was close.

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[TimMD909]

Shut up, Barbara ;-)

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

The link is just shitty. It's actually http://sos.ga.gov/admin/files/Absentee%20Ballot%20Status%20File.xlsx

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

An Anonymous Coward noted:

The link is just shitty. It's actually http://sos.ga.gov/admin/files/...

Normally, I refuse to expend mod points on ACs. This post, however, definitely qualifies as "informative," and it deserved to be upmodded as such so it will be more visible to others.

I spent the last of my most recent mod points awarding it a +1 Informative upmod, because that was the right thing to do.

You're welcome, Slashdot ...

(Posting as AC only so as not to undo prior upmods in this thread.)

--

Check out my novel ...

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Greedy Bank.
Non-occupiers pay more interest.
We are cross-referencing this so we can charge more for investment properties.

Money for Jam.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its a list of all places to rob, and you even get to know how elderly and vulnerable they are.

The person who posted this list is a moron.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[h33t l4x0r]

Can someone explain this data? I see these numbers for "Ballot Status" but no clue what they mean:

• 69360 ""s
• 201979 As
• 16126 Cs
• 3594 Rs
• 104 Ss

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

The informed those who they wanted to have the data and removed it once they had it. Similar to how FB introduces a bug, which makes all your private messages available for download for a few hours until they fix it.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a few points left, so have one of mine.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[JaredOfEuropa]

no clue what they mean

Nothing good I'm sure...

Kurtzmann: "You see? The population census has got him down as dormanted. Uh, the Central Collective Storehouse computer has got him down as deleted. Information Retrieval has got him down as inoperative. And there's another one - security has got him down as excised. Administration has got him down as completed."
Sam Lowry: "He's dead."

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[h33t l4x0r]

I believe that A's are accepted and R's are rejected but the rest, who knows.

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a Big Truck.

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not much different than the newspaper posting a list of Gun Owners home addresses ?
Easy way to steal caches of weapons and in Maryland, Easy way for police to publicly execute political minorities. 'Well look, they had weapons'... no matter that more Republicans are well armed...

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[nadass]

Can someone explain this data? I see these numbers for "Ballot Status" but no clue what they mean:

• 69360 ""s
• 201979 As
• 16126 Cs
• 3594 Rs
• 104 Ss

ACCEPT, CANCEL, REJECT, SUPRESS? (it is Georgia j/k... prolly SUSPECT). The blank entries are "unclassified" or under consideration. The CANCELED usually have an explanation (they voted in-person, voluntarily canceled, etc.)

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[gander666]

*ahem* Barbra *ahem*

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

I dont see how its anything but confidential. When you go to a polling station to cast a vote, after verifying your identity and eligibility, go out of their way to ensure your privacy casting the ballot. The ballot is not tied to your name in any way. The booths are setup to obscure someone watching your selection. When voting absentee ballot its required to fill out personal information in order to prove your identity. Those handling these ballots understand this and keep the information to themselves apart from casting the votes. They dont get on social media saying, Can you believe who so-and-so voted for? The person who did this completely betrayed the publics trust. I could not imagine a judge ruling any other way on this in terms of privacy, given the privacy requirements for those voting at a polling station. The expectation of privacy is abundant.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

ACCEPT, CANCEL, REJECT, SUPPRESS

And this is exactly why the list was published. The Democrats of Georgia have been running around for weeks claiming there was voter suppression happening and using as example situations they themselves setup. In one of the most diverse counties around metro Atlanta, dozens of people reported they had received voter registration ballots in the mail already filled out with "Democrat" pre-marked next to party affiliation. A number of people who reported it did so because they were actually not eligible to vote and were confused. Others pointed out that there were slight mistakes on many of the registration ballots, a misspelled name, address off by a street number, etc. The registrations were all traced back to the Abrams campaign. Under Georgia law the registration information must be an "exact match" to the persons State registration such as on their drivers license. Any variation and the voter registration is rejected. This is a law that was passed by the State legislature during the time Abrams was a member but it is the responsibility of the office of Secretary of State to enforce.

So the Abrams campaign sends out known bad registrations then spreads false stories that Kemp, as Secretary of State, is denying all of the bad ones and suppressing the vote. The whole thing was a ginned up ploy with the local lapdog media.

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.

That might be technically true.

Love how the report says technically true when it is state law. Kemp didn't pass the law, he wasn't in the legislature, Abrams was though.

So you have the above situation where Abrams is running around screaming racism, voter suppression because her campaign setup the false conditions to make that claim. She is mathematically so far behind Kemp even with absentee ballots she can't get enough votes to even flip this into a run off (Georgia requires over 50% win or it is an automatic run off), but she goes out claiming that absentee ballots are also being suppressed, so the SoS office publishes the list and now you have a compliant leftist media outlet reporting it as "doxxing the voters".

She lost because her campaign was based predominately on being another historic election, first black woman to run Georgia, same type of historic crap that stuck us with Obama and the Hillary tried to play up. Fact is her policies are too radical for Georgia and she lost.

But oh no, she couldn't have lost because of her policies, where she talked about confiscating guns or how no one should have to work in agriculture to a group of farmers, or who paid the no-talent Will Ferrell $250k to stump for her, no no no, her loss could only have happened because of voter suppression don't you know.

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish I had mod points. This was the closest thing to journalism that Iâ(TM)ve read in a long time.

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

The ballot is not tied to your name in any way.

You don't live in Washington, I see. In some states, your ballot is mailed to you, and you mail it back in an envelope that you must sign. Your name is thus on your ballot's envelope. Whether or not your ballot is secret depends on whether the local election officials decide to look at the envelope.

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[mrclevesque]

Brian Kemp's Badass Georgia Governor 'big truck' Campaign Ad :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once upon a time there used to be a big book published by the evil telcos that "doxed" every one of their customers.
These days that would be seen as a "data breach". Back then it was called a "Directory".
I can't get too worked up about all this.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

If people take this list for that purpose, they may be surprised. While I'm not in Georgie or on this list (at least, I shouldn't be...), my wife is disabled and does vote by mail. But that doesn't mean she is helpless and alone - I am home much of the time; also she is armed in case it ever comes to that...

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress ... but I repeat myself.

But in that order, it isn't a repeat. In order to be a repeat, all idiots must be members of Congress. And I can assure you there are plenty of idiots not in Congress.

Now, if it had "member of Congress" first and "idiot" second, then it would be repeating, since all members of Congress are idiots.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

The page with the link is still available, and the link from that page still works. So not only have they not removed the file, but the page that links to it still does so. Nothing has been removed.

captcha: careen

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

But oh no, she couldn't have lost because of her policies, where she talked about confiscating guns or how no one should have to work in agriculture to a group of farmers, or who paid the no-talent Will Ferrell $250k to stump for her, no no no, her loss could only have happened because of voter suppression don't you know.

Whether or not she lost due to voter suppression, any voter suppression is still a wrong, and as Kemp was responsible, it behooves him to actually handle things responsibly.

PS, Abrams did in fact oppose the exact match system, and yet guess what? The gerrymandered Georgia legislature still passed it.

And Kemp actually followed that process before the law was passed, then when courts started to question his policies, he went running to his party leaders for cover.

Sorry, but your apologia is bogus.

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[BringsApples]

Wrong again. It's "Brahbrah".

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[BringsApples]

It's ok, if you get robbed, just use this list as evidence and reason to sue Georgia for all of your pain, suffering and lost items.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

CORRECT. As bad as it is that people vote without knowing anything about the candidates, politicians that make rules or take actions without understanding the subject or the technology is on the dangerous side of STUPID.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

someone threatened to sue them

meanwhile, let's hope mr dox doesn't get reelected, and those far more technically advanced give him the punishment he deserves :)

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[Rhipf]

My understanding is that this is just a list of those that sent in absentee ballots. The list doesn't show how those individuals voted. What I kind of have an objection to is that if this list of absentee voters is being released where is the list of those individuals that voted in person (does this list even exist)? If you are going to publish a list of people that voted then release the complete list.

This may all have been avoided if Brian Kemp would have stepped down as Secretary of State for Georgia when he decided to run for Governor. Having one of the candidates in an election in charge of the election seems a bit suspicious (whether there is actually any fishy behaviour or not).

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[ScienceofSpock]

1. It's a sig.
2. It works just fine in either order.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

You link to no evidence, no proof, nor even mention where one might find such evidence or proof of this so called conspiracy to 'set up' Brian Kemp.
Then you take one statement and strip it of it's accompanying context - namely the part where it says but state law does not require it to be made available online, in aggregate, for one stop shopping that can be used by criminals to target houses where the occupants may be on vacation, and use it to bash the article.

Then you go on to bash the so called lapdog media, as if you aren't a feckless halfwit lapdog to your repugnican masters.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[randallman]

I live in the 6th district of Georgia. I have no way of verifying the claims you made against Abrams and you're making some damning claims with no evidence. But one this is clear; Kemp should have handed off oversight of the elections to a neutral party. This is simple and obvious ethics, which it seems Kemp lacks. Now that the race is so very close, Kemps decision to maintain control over the elections is clearly a horrendous conflict of interest. If this were election overseas, we'd call it a sham election.

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone has this information: I got bothered day and night by both Cruz's and Beta's campaigns because I hadn't voted yet. Their unsolicited text messages literally said that: "We see you haven't voted yet so...."

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't be too sure of that. We like our guns here in Atlanta. When it is illegal to own a gun, only criminals will have guns.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

So some guy is running for office and is also in charge of voting. People claim he is using his authority to give himself an advantage.

You claim that he is being honest and that the person running against him is doing some wild things to make it seem like he is giving himself an advantage when he is running and overseeing voting.

Please take a step back. Take a deep breath and really think about this.

Which one of these scenarios seem more plausible?

Person A running for a position they can influence the outcome of through their job, using that advantage.

Person B investing resources,i n case they lose, to mislead people into thinking person A is using their position to influence the vote so that they can argue against the results.

I'm not rocket scientist mate, but I think logically it makes more sense that the chap who could use their position to their advantage, probably did.

I mean, why not step down when you are running for office?

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you're the third person so far that has rewritten nearly verbatim the fake news I created to get a rise out of dumbasses. Thanks for your ad revenue and for letting me mine crypto on your browser! I knew this easily debunked bullshit would be a hit with the crowd that believes research is a liberal conspiracy :)

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Obfuscant]

This is simple and obvious ethics, which it seems Kemp lacks. Now that the race is so very close, Kemps decision to maintain control over the elections is clearly a horrendous conflict of interest.

You mean the Kemp who wants to keep such tight control over the election process that he has already resigned as Secretary of State of Georgia? That "Kemp"?

This information is public record. The political parties get it all the time. It's how they know who to send mailers to, and who to robocall. Claiming it has never been put together in one place like this is just bullshit.

If it was taken down, it was because of the know-nothings who whine about public information being made public. And if it suppresses anyone from voting because their public information might be made public, well, that's their choice.

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean the Kemp who wants to keep such tight control over the election process that he has already resigned as Secretary of State of Georgia? That "Kemp"?

You mean days after the election, past all the meddling he has already done, now is when Kemp pretends to step back?

Huh.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a lying racist piece of shit. Hardly a fucking thing you said was true. Go suck start a shotgun

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[h33t l4x0r]

because of the know-nothings who whine about public information being made public

Care to post your name and address here? No? Then please stop being a hypocrite.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Obfuscant]

Care to post your name and address here? No? Then please stop being a hypocrite.

This is not a voter registration site which is mandated by law to be public information, and has been mandated by law to be public information, and has been public information for decades. Stop being an idiot.

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[Obfuscant]

You mean days after the election, past all the meddling he has already done, now is when Kemp pretends to step back?

Do you have a cite proving all this "meddling" he has done?

And you do know that the process is actually not over, and that he might have had more influence now on the state-wide recount if/when it happens than he had over picking polling places or rejecting invalid voter registrations? No, maybe you don't.

But keep flinging mud against the wall. Maybe something will stick if you just throw it often enough and hard enough.

Re: Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have a cite proving all this "meddling" he has done?

It's been a matter of public record for months. Including the court records.

Kemp has meddled in the election, he even did it with his spurious claims of an investigation on the weekend before.

If you haven't been aware of this, damn, you are blind.

Re:Why did they remove it then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did that book annotate the listings with "elderly", "disabled", "away from home"?

Don't get too worked up though, you'll blow your cover.

Already down

[Anonymous Coward]

The spreadsheet has already 404'ed

Re:Already down

[Anonymous Coward]

It will pop up somewhere. People have downloaded it, which means someone can and will make it available.

Kemp

[damicatz]

Bad enough that he stole the election by purging hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters from the voter rolls (like the 92 year old grandmother whose entire registration and history had been disappeared) but now he has to dox people as well.

Guess I shouldn't be surprised. Hell isn't big enough for the Republicans.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad enough that he stole the election by purging hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters from the voter rolls

Yeah, but nobody's fighting back. Nobody gives a shit anymore. Business as usual. We're doomed.

Re:Kemp

[Nutria]

And we know that NYC is a bastion of the Republican Party!

Re:Kemp

[ScentCone]

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.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

We know you're a bastion of being a dishonest faggot, NUTRIA BITCH

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on. The real story is GA has a law stating there has to be an exact match of a voter's registration to the voter's ID including name and address. If a person misspells something or doesnt update their address after moving, the the state cant really verify their ID at the polling place. People have plenty of time to update these things so there really isnt any excuse. Kemp as sec. of state has an obligation to follow the laws of the state. If his office staff (as he doesnt sit there in a room by himself doing this) saw errors requiring purges under the current law, then they are right to do so. It doesnt matter who the voter is, they would still be flagged.

My opinion is that if a person cant find time to update their address or they misspell their own name, do they really need to be voting in the first place?

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

How did I guess before the end of your post you were attempting to criticize a Republican?

Insisting anything that doesn't easily go your way politically must have been foul play by the other guy and misleading information. Voting histories are not kept, thus when a poor little old grandmother, bless her heart, cannot find her voting history, it's not due to a mustache twirling villain but because the history does not exist at all.

This is the nonsense that caused Trump to win. Independents like me see these patterns and vote against them. Keep up the good work and Trump will be reelected.

Re:Kemp

[sjames]

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%.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Fighting back against what?

Republican thieves. This guy is a racist bastard. Hell this is Georgia! (and what a change, huh? The worst racists down there were democrats) His intent is more than obvious. But, people don't give a shit. If they did, he wouldn't get any votes at all for the crooked, racist SOB that he is.

Re:Kemp

[Darinbob]

You don't understand the rules. Dirty tricks are ok if your side is doing them, they're only wrong if the other side uses them. Being a hypocrite is a prerequisite for becoming a politician (and how I wish this was only a joke).

Re: Kemp

[Darinbob]

As secretary of state, he ethically and morally should recuse himself if he's running for office. Wasn't it the Republican party that used to be all for morals?

Re:Kemp

[damicatz]

Voting histories absolutely are kept. You can view them online. Not who you voted for but the fact that you voted. I call foul play because he removed people from the voter rolls in an election that he himself was competing in. If you cannot see the inherent conflict of interest in that then you are a fool.

Trump won because of an outdated and racist electoral college system, not because of independents.

Re:Kemp

[Darinbob]

I'm not a Democrat or Republican, and yet I am still able to recognize foul play by either party. And Kemp is engaged in foul play here, as part of a state with a long history in disenfranchising voters.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell isn't big enough for the Republicans.

No, it isn't. That's why they are working to recreate it in the US.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

"is clearly designated as public information under state law," This pretty much says it all. Don't like it? Stop the hyperbole fueled out rage and change the law. Anyone can request the same information from the state election board. And "anyone" covers anyone in the US, anyone in China, anyone in Russia, anyone in NK, â¦.

Re:Kemp

[ClickOnThis]

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.

Re:Kemp

[Optic7]

I understand that "they all do it!!!1!one!" is a popular sentiment with a lot of people, but why is it that whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator disenfranchising or otherwise outright fucking voters over it's virtually always a republican?

I presume that it's a cultural problem, in that many people with the personality type that favors "conservative values" don't see a problem with fighting dirty. To those people, the ends really justify the means. Besides, voter disenfranchisement usually benefits republicans, so that compounds the problem.

Re:Kemp

[shilly]

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.

Re:Kemp

[ScentCone]

Thanks for the detailed, specific examples of how voter roles were purged based on skin color, and how people of specific skin color weren't allowed to cast provisional ballots.

Re:Kemp

[Crashmarik]

Yeah I mean it was all on the up and up when a box of ballots was "found" in the trunk of a car giving Al Franken a senate seat.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

See? You doubled down. "Trump must have won due to racism!" you shout, convincing no one that doesn't already agree. You claim one thing a fact when it is clearly not, another a fact as being conflict of interest despite the tribe you vote for doing the exact same thing in the same election cycle! When other's not seeing that are fools, and you seeing it and choosing to ignore it when it suits you, what should we call you?

Might as well register as a Republican and volunteer at the local Trump 2020 campaigning office.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

>Republican party that used to be all for morals?

RepubliCUCKS used to pretend to be all for morals, RepubliCANS are all for WINNING.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be a great comparison except it never happened. Back then it wasn't called "fake news" though. It was called "fair and balanced" reporting.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Itâ(TM)s voter ROLLS. Itâ(TM)s pretty much impossible to take you seriously when you donâ(TM)t even know what the words are that youâ(TM)re using.

If someone reviewing a restaurant keeps saying how bad the dinner ROLES were then you wouldnâ(TM)t exactly take their argument to heart, right? So why should anyone listen to someone as sub-literate as you on a topic as nuanced and rich as this?

Answer: we wonâ(TM)t.

Re:Kemp

[Dorianny]

Where is the evidence of widespread-voter fraud. The Republican's have been investigating for years and haven't come up with anything but a handful of isolated cases. Even Trump scrapped his "voter fraud commission" without issuing a report.

Of course this hasn't stopped the Republicans from doing things that at the very least inconvenience a lot of voters to combat this non-existant problem.

Re:Kemp

[SuricouRaven]

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.

Re:Kemp

[SuricouRaven]

Expect to see more of this in the coming days. A heavily Republican-leaning 'watchdog' organisation, Project Veritas, did a lot of undercover filming during the election. I wouldn't trust any of it because they have a long history of selectively editing videos - looks like they were manipulating polling booth staff into saying they are happy to let illegal immigrants vote, or editing videos in a way that implies that is what was said. I'm sure it'll be all over right-leaning media soon as the smoking gun that proves Democrats stole the election with illegal voters.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

It happened and there is video.

Re:Kemp

[kenh]

Clearing the voter roles is not something the Secretary of State does on a whim, it is mandated by law, and performed in a manner proscribed by the legislators that wrote the bill and the Gov. that signed the bill into law.

The Electoral College is many things, but it is not racist. Explain to be how the Electoral College is racist, I'm dying to see how you came to that conclusion...

Re: Kemp

[kenh]

My opinion is that if a person cant find time to update their address or they misspell their own name, do they really need to be voting in the first place?

Why are trying to suppress the Democrat vote by expecting them to keep their voter registration up-to-date and insisting they spell their name correctly?

Re:Kemp

[kenh]

Thanks for the detailed, specific examples of how voter roles were purged based on skin color, and how people of specific skin color weren't allowed to cast provisional ballots.

Citation for these "detailed, specific examples"?

Re:Kemp

[superdave80]

I'm curious how you think posting voter addresses AFTER an election will affect the outcome of an election.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it virtually isn't always a republican. Let's take pedophilia for example. It took 30 years for the famous list of Republican party officials and representatives to reach the levels it has, yet Democrats took only the past 7 years to reach the half-point in terms of numbers.

Re:Kemp

[kenh]

The problem is that since he is actually on the ballots in question

Do you imagine the Secretary of State actually is personally responsible for counting the votes?

Especially since the margin in that race is less than 1%.

The outcome wasn't known until AFTER the election, obviously.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that "they all do it!!!1!one!" is a popular sentiment with a lot of people, but why is it that whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator disenfranchising or otherwise outright fucking voters over it's virtually always a republican?

I presume that it's a cultural problem, in that many people with the personality type that favors "conservative values" don't see a problem with fighting dirty. To those people, the ends really justify the means. Besides, voter disenfranchisement usually benefits republicans, so that compounds the problem.

Yeah, except for example when you go to the Wiki article on gerrymandering and look at the US examples, the split on who benefits is about half on half. But by all means, keep living in your very own confirmation bias bubble. Remember also to never consume non-PC media, they might burst it and that would be doubleplusungood.

Re:Kemp

[kenh]

Your one example doesn't support your claim of "hundreds of thousands of legitimate voters" being wiped from the voter registration lists.

Being offered a provisional ballot is not being "denied to vote" - AFAIK the 92 year-old grandma was offered a provisional ballot

Re:Kemp

[Narcocide]

Well it won't, if you're assuming there will never be another election. Am I to infer from your statement that that is the case?

Re:Kemp

[Aighearach]

He absolutely should have reused himself.

He's a Republican, don't expect him to come up with a whole new trick next time.

He's definitely going to try to find a way to reuse his conflict of interest, if he can.

Re:Kemp

[Aighearach]

why is it that whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator disenfranchising or otherwise outright fucking voters over it's virtually always a republican?

Whatabutt that guy in Chicago a hundred years ago, huh? Whatabutt that? Dems did it once!

Re: Kemp

[shilly]

So supply the link

Re:Kemp

[shilly]

Is that really how you think arguments work? If you can find a single counter-example, it disproves the assertion that side A does something much more than side B?

Why would you think that? Are you stupid? Surely no-one can be that stupid.

Re:Kemp

[DNS-and-BIND]

The media doesn't report it when news is favorable to conservatives, and trumpets it from the ramparts whenever it isn't. Are you surprised to learn this?

"Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn't know because they might reflect badly on Democrats."
-- Jim Treacher

Re:Kemp

[Crashmarik]

Is that really how you think arguments work? If you can find a single counter-example, it disproves the assertion that side A does something much more than side B?

Why would you think that? Are you stupid? Surely no-one can be that stupid.

I don't know maybe you need to ask that idiot poster who said "There are no cases" three times when there's plenty of cases and it's trivially easy to find them.

Re:Kemp

[mcvos]

What are you talking about? I mean this as an honest question; it's not clear from your post what exactly you're claiming or what it relates to.

Pedophilia is obviously terrible, but I wasn't aware that it was a rampant problem among politicians.

Re:Kemp

[mcvos]

Whatabutt that guy in Chicago a hundred years ago, huh? Whatabutt that? Dems did it once!

It's surprising how often conservative arguments against Democrats point to actions by Democrats from 100 years ago, when the Democrats were the conservative party, and Republicans the progressive party.

Re: Kemp

[mcvos]

Wasn't it the Republican party that used to be all for morals?

Where have you been these past 30 years?

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Those aren't counted.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that "they all do it!!!1!one!" is a popular sentiment with a lot of people, but why is it that whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator disenfranchising or otherwise outright fucking voters over it's virtually always a republican?

I presume that it's a cultural problem, in that many people with the personality type that favors "conservative values" don't see a problem with fighting dirty. To those people, the ends really justify the means. Besides, voter disenfranchisement usually benefits republicans, so that compounds the problem.

So, a campaign followed the law and released voter information, and now you want to label that as "fighting dirty"?

Everyone does it because they are compelled by law to do so. You might want to remove your dunce hat before attempting to represent your political party.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

why is it that whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator disenfranchising or otherwise outright fucking voters over it's virtually always a republican?

Easy, it's because the mainstream media has a strong liberal bias and reports much more on their political enemies.

Re:Kemp

[LynnwoodRooster]

Check which party always seems to "find" ballots a few days after close elections, and who it almost always benefits. Or which party insists that non-citizen voting isn't an issue (even though it provably is) and demands to allow anyone to register simply on their word, and to vote without proving they are actually the person who is registered to vote.

Personally, I'd be fine with having to re-register to vote every 4 years, and proving citizenship when doing so. We have to renew driver's licenses every 4-5 years, and prove citizenship status and ID when buying a firearm, so why not for voting?

Re:Kemp

[Crashmarik]

Oh please, just because the Democrats have shifted from outright slavery to race hustling and identity politics it doesn't mean they are progressive, unless you define progress as putting everyone at each others throats.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? Why would anyone prove that some fantasy conspiracy isn't true? It's a waste of time, and you can rarely prove a negative anyway. It's a fools errand.

However, if you indeed have actual hard evidence as opposed to paranoid conspiracy fantasies, of this "box of votes" actually existing, and its existence being suspect, by all means, go ahead.

Re: Kemp

[LynnwoodRooster]

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.

Re:Kemp

[LynnwoodRooster]

In at least one election there were 10 times the number of fraudulent (provably so) votes as the margin of victory. But I guess better to have a result than one that is clean and fair, right?

Re:Kemp

[LynnwoodRooster]

Here's one case where the Courts determined that the number of fraudulent votes was over 10 times the margin of victory. I guess better to execute a few innocent people, though, than let a potentially guilty man go!

Re: Kemp

[LynnwoodRooster]

Since the position of the Secretary of State is elected, and it is primarily concerned with elections, I guess the Secretary of State cannot ever do their job if they plan to run for re-election. You get elected, and you cannot do your job "ethically or morally" because you may be on the ballot.

Re:Kemp

[LynnwoodRooster]

The Electoral College is many things, but it is not racist. Explain to be how the Electoral College is racist, I'm dying to see how you came to that conclusion...

Old, white, slave-holding men wrote the rules about the Electoral College and because his chosen candidate won in an irrelevant statistic but lost in the only one that matters (the Electoral College), it must be racist. What are you, a Nazi?

/sarc

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you don't like what's on the videos doesn't make them any less accurate.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

I look forward to your meek acceptance when you get jailed for driving without a license because some goon at the DMV botched your record.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a pitty that you do not know how voting works in Georgia. The counties actually oversee the elections and the SOS only steps in if there are issues after the elections.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Your assertion is trivially refuted by the relentless repetition of Hillary's email problem in the press because they needed a "both sides are bad" "fair and balanced" response so they could cover Trump's constant bullshit. The media also covered the accusations and resignation of Franken. The fact that they're not covering your priest's sermon about how Democrats are all literally possessed by the devil doesn't mean they're keeping the real news silent.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, like the DNC literally RIGGING their primary in 2016. Oh wait, that doesn't match up with your story because it is the DNC and it is actually provable with actual evidence.

Re: Kemp

[aquabat]

Just because you don't like what's on the videos doesn't make them any less accurate.

Or conversely...

Proposition: feelings are orthoganal to veracity.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Because confirmation bias.

Re: Kemp

[aquabat]

My opinion is that if a person cant find time to update their address or they misspell their own name, do they really need to be voting in the first place?

Yeah, they really do. If you're an American, you need to be voting in your state. If you can't vote because of some administrative issue, that's a serious problem, which needs to be addressed. Maybe you spelled your name wrong. Fine. Fill out a provisional ballot, and get if fixed. Maybe you don't have a street address. That's a bigger problem, and it's not yours; it's the state's problem, and it sure as fuck needs to be addressed.

Re:Kemp

[AmiMoJo]

The Republicans are more concerned about the ends, and use them to justify the means. Democrats prefer to take the high road ("they go low, we go high") and not compromise their values even if it means losing the goal.

Hopefully that will change. I don't mean full on gerrymandering and the like, but take the recent supreme court vacancy. Obama did the right thing, nominated someone uncontroversial and middle of the road, and the Republicans just outright refused to even hold a confirmation hearing. Constitution doesn't say they /have to/, right?

Obama could have forced the issue, just appointed the guy without confirmation, but he took the high road and kept complaining about it. Now the Republicans have got their guy on the bench, to further their goal of undoing Roe v. Wade.

Even worse they are busy preemptively accusing the Democrats of being obstructionists because they think it will force them to take the high road and try to work with Trump and the Senate. Agree the budget instead of shutting the government down, because they don't want to get down to the Republican's level.

It's time to focus more on the ends. Want to stop the wall? You are going to have to obstruct, to filibusterer and shut everything down until it's done.

Re: Kemp

[AmiMoJo]

Rookie mistake there:

King County Council Chairman Larry Phillips was at a Democratic Party office in Seattle on Sunday December 12, reviewing a list of voters whose absentee votes had been rejected due to signature problems, when to his surprise he found his own name listed. Phillips said he was certain he had filled out and signed his ballot correctly, and asked the county election officials to investigate the discrepancy.

If you are going to cheat to make sure the Democrats don't win, at least make sure you don't invalidate Democrat politician's votes. If anyone is likely to check, it's them.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Felons voting does not mean they all voted for Franken. While illegal they could have voted for either side.

Here is a link covering some of the issues.
https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/campaign/126789-the-truth-about-the-2008-minnesota-senate-recount-a-response-to-democratic-party-still-disenfranchising-and-oppresing-votes

Re:Kemp

[kenai_alpenglow]

Not every one. In this jurisdiction there are more voters registered than live bodies (including babies). Was away for decades, returned, and was still on the roll. On the other hand, a relative found out they did get removed (supposedly because registered in another county (mistaken identity). Maybe they are cleaning up the rolls finally. The relative voted w a paper ballot, no problem.

Re:Kemp

[kenai_alpenglow]

You do know that Veritas puts out the unedited videos? Unlike CNN/MSNBC/etc

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

You say that like it matter which party you vote for.

Hint: If you vote you're still a slave.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

I presume that it's a cultural problem, in that many people with the personality type that favors "conservative values" don't see a problem with fighting dirty. To those people, the ends really justify the means.

I guess it is to make up for the intrinsic vulnerabilities for conservatives. Catch a sufficiently conservative with a mistress/whore, and he has to step down. Can't have that sort of thing visible among conservatives. But catch someone sufficiently liberal, and it is "so what?". Their own don't care about that sort of thing . . .

Re:Kemp

[sabbede]

Yeah, except that's not what's happening or what happened, it's the partisan BS pushed by his opposition. We have laws down here and his people (he recused himself from overseeing the campaign) just enforce them. He didn't tell the people running registration drives to fill out the forms wrong so that they would have to be thrown out. He didn't write the law saying that the information entered into those forms has to exactly match the State's records, he didn't write the law saying voter rolls are public, you're putting the blame in the wrong place.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

I like the comparison with firearms, a right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Let's institute the same ID and background checks for voting that have been imposed on firearms sales.

Re: Kemp

[LynnwoodRooster]

King County has been a Democrat stronghold for a LONG time. It wouldn't be the first time a King County elected official hadn't voted, either. Finding hundreds of ballots 5+ weeks after the election, and they just happen to break overwhelmingly for the losing Democrat, and they are from a Democrat stronghold that is in a city and County controlled by the Democrats is just a little too coincidental.

Re:Kemp

[gtall]

You mean that Mouth of Conservatives, FOX, is refusing to advertise favorable news to Conservatives? Those bastards!!

Re:Kemp

[gtall]

My own impression is that the Republicans are screwing themselves with those conservative Court appts. All it will take is a few decisions that violates the center of politics to give the Democrats something to run against. I do not believe Americans are that polarized in their essential values. It is the right and left wing-nuts who advertise the polarization they'd like to see.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

My problem is that even if the other side did it, it is wrong. When will we the American people start to stand up and say this sort of criminal behavior will no longer be tolerated? Instead we keep buying into the partisan propaganda and excuse this garbage. I don't care whose candidate won by doing thid, this voter suppression crap is not what we as Americans should stand for!

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Millions of Americans said the same thing about Florida in 2000, but they were all protosnowflakes.

It's almost as if voting for the 'lessor of two evils' still produces evil...

Re:Kemp

[DNS-and-BIND]

Here is a list of countries that require a valid voter ID to cast a vote on election day.

Only ONE party disapproves of measures to make our elections secure. Voter ID is NOT a function of America's "racist past" every country that's not a dictatorship has some form of assuring that the person voting is entitled to. EVERY COUNTRY.

If those that demand no Voter Identification were concerned for the poor, they'd facilitate the acquisition of ID, not seek ways to avoid it. After all, what's the best job you ever had where you didn't need to identify yourself?

NAACP requires photo ID to attend anti-voter-ID protest march

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

You do know that Veritas puts out the unedited videos? Unlike CNN/MSNBC/etc

Veritas does NOT put out accurate information. They take secret video, edit it to say whatever they want it to say, plus setup the whole situations as much as they can in the first place. Then if they can manipulate some low stooge somewhere to say something that appears bad, they somehow extrapolate that to a larger organization.

They are political hit organization, based purely on evil, not truth.

Re:Kemp

[squiggleslash]

"Provisional ballots" are a joke. They're rarely even looked at after the election, and if they are each needs to be approved by an election judge (who isn't going to allow a ballot to be counted if the voter wasn't registered, no matter how unfair the reason why they're not registered) before being counted. They're a way to shut people up at the ballot box and nothing more.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Because what you define as, "fucking voters over" is rational, normal maintenance and protection of the voting system.

You are biased because you've been brainwashed by Democrats, who magically have tens of thousands of dead people vote for them every national election, and scream about racism when anyone tries to solve that problem.

Re:Kemp

[DNS-and-BIND]

Hillary should have gone to prison for mishandling top secret documents. It's a serious crime, and the coverage was warranted. At the very least, a slap on the wrist penalty, she should have had her security clearance revoked. But no, she's walking around free as a bird. She should be a jailbird right alongside Reality Winner, who did the exact same thing.

Franken was a known fuckstick for years and the media never said a peep. A video from 2000 shows Al Franken cracking jokes about anal child rape at a Comedy Central event. It's only when the #metoo movement took off that they were forced into attacking him because he got outranked in the oppression olympics. White male, see?

Did you hear about the Korean who was elected to Congress? No? Guess why...

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

The real story is GA has a law stating there has to be an exact match of a voter's registration to the voter's ID including name and address.

You're missing the point. That law was enacted as part of a plan to suppress votes. The online database was designed with almost (?) criminally negligent security- it was possible to access any record, and change it, without any logging of the change. This level of 'security' would have been considered atrocious in the 1990s, there are multiple news stories about it. So a person could have entered all of their information accurately, and someone else could have changed it later- with no notification and no record of the change. This article seems to cover the issues well.

Re:Kemp

[AmiMoJo]

Problem is that they can do real damage even if they ultimately end up losing, and it is very hard to undo afterwards.

Also, why do right wing trolls always seem to have mod points? Oh right, it's because they cheat at that too.

Re: Kemp

[AmiMoJo]

By "a little too coincidental", you mean that the Republicans behind the electoral fraud didn't do a very good job.

Re:Kemp

[squiggleslash]

Seriously, after the last two years of "Hillary's emails" and "Here's every talking point Trump wants you talking about! Also sure, elected Republicans are beating up journalists and encouraging their supporters to beat up peaceful demonstrators, but Democrats are peacefully protesting against administration officials in Restaurants, so both sides!", you're still banging the "Media is biased against conservatives" drum?

The media is conservative. They don't like Trump, sure, but that's true of most establishment conservatives. People like Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders get portrayed as left wing extremists because they're in favor of universal healthcare using single payer, which is how most of the developed world does it. The New York Times has been on a "Civility" kick now for two years, hand wringing constantly about the incivility of Democrats because they say mean things about Republicans, but treating Trump and Gianforte as outliers.

And the worst part is the fixation on Trump. They're fixating on Trump not because they're anti-conservative, but because they're conservative. Because Trump is a convenient scapegoat that takes Republicans off the hook for the things the current administration is doing. Trump isn't even in charge of the White House, there are administration officials publicly, if anonymously, admitting that they control everything he does, hide documents from him, and so on. Child separation? That was announced by John Kelly and implemented by Jeff Sessions. That wasn't Trump rubbing his hands with glee cackling "How can I own the libs today?"

Trump lets them promote the agenda, still believed by a majority of non-conservatives in the country, that the Republican party, the party of right-wing conservatism in this country, is not responsible for its more unpopular consequences.

But sure, go on believing the media is left wing. Odd that the "left wing" media doesn't actually agree with, or support, anyone in the left or their "left wing" policies.

Re: Kemp

[e3m4n]

And maxine waters staff doxing the adresses of the the senate judicial comittee earns your praises why? Stop being a hypocrite.

Re: Kemp

[squiggleslash]

OK, then I'll up your requirement so that the situations are comparable: we can either:
- change the requirement for ID and background checks from firearm sales to firearm ownership, with you being required to supply ID and undergo a new background check every two years, or
- we can have it so you only ever have to supply ID and get a background check when you register to vote, and never need to do it again unless a need arises to re-register.

Now you have a comparable situation. I'm guessing you don't want either.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

No. You have confused Veritas with how Michael Moore operates.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

The Electoral College is many things, but it is not racist. Explain to be how the Electoral College is racist, I'm dying to see how you came to that conclusion...

The Electoral College is racist because it chose to obey the votes of the districts and not elect the first female president (it was her turn after all).

Re:Kemp

[Ol Olsoc]

You don't understand the rules. Dirty tricks are ok if your side is doing them, they're only wrong if the other side uses them. Being a hypocrite is a prerequisite for becoming a politician (and how I wish this was only a joke).

Your post is a good place to drop this:

https://www.usatoday.com/story...

Gun owner permit lists are public and not classified. So this is a similar issue.

Re:Kemp

[Ol Olsoc]

why is it that whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator disenfranchising or otherwise outright fucking voters over it's virtually always a republican?

Whatabutt that guy in Chicago a hundred years ago, huh? Whatabutt that? Dems did it once!

Her email.

Re:Kemp

[Ol Olsoc]

Whatabutt that guy in Chicago a hundred years ago, huh? Whatabutt that? Dems did it once!

It's surprising how often conservative arguments against Democrats point to actions by Democrats from 100 years ago, when the Democrats were the conservative party, and Republicans the progressive party.

Don't forget the Dixiecrats, who formed the core of the modern Republican party. Someone always likes to bring that one up as if modern Demoncrats walk in lockstep with Dixiecrat principles.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the DNC's primary. They can run it however they'd like. Republicans can do the same.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the mass media is overwhelmingly socialist. Duh. This is commonly known fact like sky is blue.

Two words for you: Al Franken.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Drink! AmiMojo is repeating himself like a good NPC broadcasting the same script over and over!

The "they go low, we go high" narrative is of course not true. To borrow from the progressive's favorite movie in recent years: everything in that statement is wrong. The Republicans didn't go low, and the Democrats didn't go high.

What does even "high" and "low" mean? It's subjective. You might as well replace them with "thing I like" and "thing I don't like".

Republicans acted within the law. What's "low" about following the law, other than Dems not liking it? Democrats complained about. I'm sure Democrats liked complaining as it made them feel good about themselves, but there's nothing inherently virtuous (or villainous) in complaining. It's just yelling on the soap box. Using the soap box as your weapon is like... what every other politician or pundit in pretty much all of history has done.

"High" and "low" are just slurs talking heads say on the soap box. One set of slurs dehumanize and vilify the opposition, while the other set signaling their own side's supposed virtue.

It's as empty as Trump accusing his enemies as being crooked fake news spreading radicals etc, while praising his own side as great, amazing, YUGE etc.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

You're over generalizing. When a free press has an obvious agenda and bias, gleefully reporting anything that would cast the administration in a negative light, even if its not true, they do more harm to their reputation and the confidence people have in the free press.

For example, the reporting that HHS lost track of unaccompanied immigrant minors. The press ran on that headline. What wasn't emphasized was these minors were placed with sponsors, typically relatives, and these sponsors simply moved without notifying HHS. But the press downplayed that.

The free press downplayed the attack on Benghazi, the deaths of the ambassador and the embassy security detail, while pushing the claim it was a spontaneous attack due to a Youtube video. Without ever being critical of the administration.

Another example, Joy Behar interrupting the View to break news of Brian Ross's report that Michael Flynn was directed to make contact with Russians while Trump was a candidate.

The press needs to be held to higher standards if they're going to claim to be the champion of truth and essential to democracy.

Re: Kemp

[Orange Man Bad]

Orange Man Bad!! Attacks conservative media at CNN and MSNBC because Orange Man Bad is... uh.. liberal!! Yeah!!!

Re:Kemp

[mcvos]

You're right, the Democrats aren't really all that progressive. Most prominent Democrats (Obama definitely, but also many others) are moderately conservative. I think you could make a good case that in many ways the Democrats are closer to classical conservatism than the Republicans, who seem to have embraced dramatic change without consideration for consequences, though in a direction that's regressive rather than progressive.

And putting everyone at each other's throats is indeed not progressive. It's sadly working very well for regressives.

Re:Kemp

[Whorhay]

While the margin of victory there was incredibly tiny, so was the "fraudulent" voting. There were over 2.7 million votes cast and the republicans claimed less than 1,200 possibly fraudulent votes. Even among those 1200 votes some were proven to not be fraudulent, having been cast by felons who were still legal voters. The only mention I see of proven fraudulent votes were a couple cases where two people voted for a deceased spouse, and one of them voted for the republican candidate.

Also you need to brush up on your math, 139 is more than 10% of 1200, and that's being super generous as the 1200 was never actually proven.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Drink! AmiMojo calls people he doesn't like "right wing trolls"

What does this remind me of? Oh right, those times when AmiMojo mocks right wingers of calling anybody the right wingers don't like "SJWs"!

Second drink! AmiMojo blames any result he doesn't like must be result of foul play!

Again, reminds me of those times AmiMojo mocks the right of having conspiracy theories when the right doesn't get what they want.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you lying about what the article said? How do you Republican hacks sleep at night? Don't you have any ethical or moral foundation?

Re: Kemp

[Ol Olsoc]

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.

You do know that ballots can be traced do you not? I get a numbered ballot that corresponds to a number on the sheet I have attached my signature on, after the ylook it up after I show them my ID and confirm a few other things. You also know that the ballot is not secret? In the local courthouse my voting record is there for everyone to see if they wish.

So instead of the whining and moaning and "Muh Voter fraud!", the evidence is right there in front of everyone. If these ballots were found, following the path backward on each and every ballot is so simple that you could have irrefutable evidence of direct fraud in a few hours.

Wonder why that did not happen? Hint: constant accusations of voter fraud are a much more effective fearvote tool. The touchstones of political parties are not there to be cured, they are there to be wielded like a bludgeon.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Which would be a decent point, if this administration didn't do the same thing.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/us/politics/private-email-trump-kushner-bannon.html

There is a bit of a counter point in:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/09/26/the-trump-teams-private-emails-are-problematic-so-is-comparing-them-to-hillary-clintons/?utm_term=.2a9d2271ae99

But that distinction seems a bit hypocritical for someone that made private email servers a cornerstone of his campaign.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand that "they all do it!!!1!one!" is a popular sentiment with a lot of people, but why is it that whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator disenfranchising or otherwise outright fucking voters over it's virtually always a republican?

I presume that it's a cultural problem, in that many people with the personality type that favors "conservative values" don't see a problem with fighting dirty. To those people, the ends really justify the means. Besides, voter disenfranchisement usually benefits republicans, so that compounds the problem.

I think you answered your own question at the end there. Let's look at this dispassionately for a moment. The people that tend to vote republican are less vulnerable to a disenfranchisement attack. The people that vote democrat are more vulnerable to a disenfranchisement attack. Therefore unscrupulous republicans are more likely to execute a disenfranchisement attack. It doesn't mean that democrats are more principled, just that they do not have the opportunity to execute this type of dirty trick.

Re:Kemp

[shilly]

I said "there are no cases" twice. Maybe try counting better. I also tied my statements to two specific practices, and neither you nor anyone else has given an examples of the specific practices I cited.

Really, you guys are *terrible* at arguments. Just awful.

Re:Kemp

[Crashmarik]

Yep I saw the Young Republicans outside of Jim Acosta's house in a mob shouting "We will fight, we know where you sleep at night"

https://www.usatoday.com/story...

Oh my mistake, that was Antifa and Tucker Carlson's house with his wife and four children at home.

You know the GOP want's nothing to do with the Neo Nazis, while the Democrats actively finance these idiots

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

What does even "high" and "low" mean?

It means the republicans lead and the democrats follow, play along. To the democrats, appeasement is the 'high' road. The idiot voters are falling for quite the scam.

But all this is pure theater anyway. The republican/democrat is a single entity with a single goal, *Keep the game going at all costs*. Our own bickering is their bread and butter. And every campaign dollar is laundered money. That is what the system is designed to do, and nobody cares.. At best they attack the symptoms and ignore the cause.

Georgia politics is as corrupt as it gets, by American standards. The guy obviously stole the election, and he will get away with it because nobody cares...

There can be no doubt, democracy is not sustainable on the long run. People already knew this thousands of years ago, and here we are, dismissing out of hand the well documented experiences of the time. The extraterrestrials must be laughing their asses off, watching us act dumber than animals.

Re:Kemp

[Crashmarik]

OK you were only wrong twice in the first post, a third time in trying to recover and a 4th time now in thinking you are making any sense.

I am comfortable with my error, it seems you can't live with yours.

Re:Kemp

[sjames]

No, but the Secretary of State is responsible for making sure the entire process of voting does count all of the votes, records the votes securely, provides polling places accessible to everyone who wants to exercise their right to vote, etc. Also responsible for investigating any cases where the integrity of the election is questioned, before or after the fact.

Kinda like a judge isn't responsible for deciding guilt or innocence (that would be the jury) but is responsible for running the process the jury works within, and IS expected to self recuse where there may be a conflict of interest that might raise questions in anyone's mind.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you might want to go back and re-read that article. I don't think it says what you claim it does:

"As the election officials had expected, once the two lists were completed on January 5, the two numbers were indeed very close to one another. Also on January 5, 2005, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer published an article investigating votes in King County apparently cast by dead people.[24] The PI uncovered eight cases of votes attributed to dead people; these included one administrative error, two ballots cast by the spouses of recently deceased voters (one who voted against Gregoire), one case of a husband apparently voting his dead wife's ballot instead of his own, and a man who legally voted his absentee ballot and then died before election day. One dead woman was marked as having voted in person at the polls.[24]"

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

I forgot to add this:

"Bridges removed the five votes from the final count: four for Rossi and one for Ruth Bennett.[32] No evidence was brought before the court of any of the illegal votes benefitted Gregoire.[32] The final margin of victory for Gregoire over Rossi was 133 votes.[33] Rossi did not appeal to the state Supreme Court[34] and the Washington State Republican party settled the case after paying $15,000 in court costs to the Democrats.[35]"

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, if electoral fraud helps a Republican, it's the Republicans's fault. If electoral fraud helps a Democrat, it's still the Republican's fault, they just didn't do a good job.

Drink to typical AmiMojo heads I win tails you lose partisan trolling hackery!

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

"why is it that whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator disenfranchising or otherwise outright fucking voters over it's virtually always a republican?"

Because Hillary didn't disenfranchise the entire democratic party by performing a complete coup on the organization to get elected.

Re:Kemp

[Ksevio]

Yeah I'm gonna need a citation on both parts of that last sentence...

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

These links do not support the claim made above, which is, in fact, a fabrication.

Re:Kemp

[Optic7]

I get what you're claiming and there may be some truth to it (but I don't think much) in some respects, but I don't think it does in this case. If there were frequent cases of democrat governors or secretaries of state disenfranchising or in any other way screwing over voters in conservative areas we would surely hear about it.

For one, that would be relatively big news and any reporters breaking such news would raise their profile. For another, there are conservative media outlets, commentators, column writers, etc. They would surely scream from the tops of the mountains about these cases. Except that you never hear about it. This leads me to conclude that this is a lot more common in republican administrations than in democratic administrations.

Voter disenfranchisement seems to flow in one direction only, as far as I can tell.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Post the links of the ACORN one, because I never saw an unedited video of Mr Whitepimp O'Keefe.

Re:Kemp

[Optic7]

Personally, requiring ID to vote would be perfectly fine with me if it would be effortless for every citizen to get ID. Essentially, if you could get a valid, accepted ID card at any government office, including post offices, police stations, fire departments, etc. Also, obtaining the documentation required to get such ID card should also be just as effortless.

As long as there are significant barriers to getting IDs for a significant number of citizens, IDs should not be required to vote.

As far as registration, it should happen automatically with pretty much every interaction you have with the government, and perhaps even some private entities:
Get a driver's license? Automatically registered (or updated) to vote.
Register for college? Automatically registered (or updated) to vote.
Get a credit card? Automatically registered (or updated) to vote.
Sign up to receive electricity at your new place? Automatically registered (or updated) to vote.

Re:Kemp

[Rhipf]

Or which party insists that non-citizen voting isn't an issue (even though it provably is) and demands to allow anyone to register simply on their word, and to vote without proving they are actually the person who is registered to vote.

Since you claim that this is all provably so would you care to actually provide the proof?

Re:Kemp

[Optic7]

I think democrats often tend to err on the opposite end of republicans, and thereby appearing too spineless to fight (Obama being a classic example). There's a happy medium, where one can stand up and fight hard, but clean.

Re:Kemp

[Optic7]

I don't usually reply to ACs, but you had a reasoned analysis in your response. Thanks for writing it.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

You also know that the ballot is not secret? In the local courthouse my voting record is there for everyone to see if they wish.

They are here. It should only ever be that way.

Re:Kemp

[SuricouRaven]

Since America only has two parties worthy of the descriptor, you could also say that 'Only ONE party is calling for stricter voter ID.'

I notice 'United Kingdom' is on that list. Odd. I live in the UK, and have voted a number of times in both plain elections and in one major referendum, never needed to present ID. I just had to bring the voting card that had been mailed to me beforehand, which was notably lacking in any kind of photo.

I don't think voter ID in the US is intended to discourage racial minorities from voting. I think it's to discourage low-income people from voting. It just happens that, for historical reasons,there's a strong correlation between these groups.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like trying to get neo-nazi and KKK members in office? That GOP? You are a fucking idiot.

Re:Kemp

[Crashmarik]

Good for you. I suggest you try Google on your own as I don't have time to educate someone who lives under a rock.

Re: Kemp

[Ol Olsoc]

You also know that the ballot is not secret? In the local courthouse my voting record is there for everyone to see if they wish.

They are here. It should only ever be that way.

But it is instantly an irrefutable proof of voter fraud. If people who have a hardon for Voter ID actually wanted to eliminate fraud, those silly Voter ID's would not be what they would work at.

Which by the way, is why they think our idea is bad. Irrefutable proof is not their goal. Their goal is something completely different.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

None of these mention being found in the trunk of a car.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe, the enlightened countries we should be more like, except whenever those countries implement policies that are in unison with our opponent's policies.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

It is if it doesn't get counted.

"People who don't have the right ID or who run into other problems at the polls are often told to vote a provisional ballot. But the rules governing these ballots vary, and many are never counted."

https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2014/10/09/354534487/rules-for-provisional-ballots-all-over-the-map "

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, the GOP wants nothing to do with Neo Nazis and white supremacists and their ilk?
Then pray tell why haven't, well, pretty much any of them... or all of them... stood the fuck up and denounced them outright, without apologist language like we all have opinions and we all have a right to free speech... and other mealy mouthed BULLSHIT designed to try to look like they're saying we don't support this, while simultaneously trying to stay just far enough back that the extremists can be convinced they DO support them. Huh?

I'll tell you why, because regardless of whether they agree with them or not, they DO want something to do with them. They WANT to appeal to these groups and they WANT these groups' votes. This is either because they do agree with these groups and do want to support them, or because they're fucking spineless cowards with no integrity. They're willing to compromise their own principles to get votes. Fuck them.

If I was in office, and running for re-election, and I had some fucking Neo Nazi group cheering for me and supporting me, and doing awful things and being vocal and visible about supporting me, you'd damn well better believe I'd be on the next fucking news conference denouncing them and unequivocally saying that I do not support them, I do not agree with them, and I do not want their support or their votes. I do not want to, nor will I tolerate being, associated with a group like that and if it costs me the election then so be it, at least I will still have my damn integrity.

Re:Kemp

[anegg]

I understand that "they all do it!!!1!one!" is a popular sentiment with a lot of people, but why is it that whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator disenfranchising or otherwise outright fucking voters over it's virtually always a republican?

Perhaps you don't live in a Democrat-run state like Maryland? I used to live in Anne Arundel County (AAC), outside of Annapolis [the third wealthiest county in Maryland, so not an impoverished hell hole or anything]. Unfortunately, unlike proper-minded counties like Montgomery County [the wealthiest county in Maryland], AAC had the temerity to be about 50/50 Democrat/Republican, which stuck in the craw of the folks who run Maryland. So AAC had to be split in half; the west half had to vote with Prince George's County (heavily Democrat), while the east half got to vote with counties on the "Eastern Shore" (all the way across the Chesapeake Bay, again favoring Democrats). That way the Republican taint in AAC could be contained. Another example was the AAC school board - many other counties in Maryland could elect their school boards, but the AAC school board was appointed by the governor (until this November, when AAC was finally able to elect their first set of school board members). A number of years ago I was listening to a radio talk show where the question of why AAC didn't have an elected school board was raised - the reason given was that "they would make the wrong choices." A few years back the problem was "solved" by allowing AAC voters to vote to confirm or reject the board members appointed by the governor - this was promoted as giving AAC voters an elected school board even though most other counties had fully elected boards (not appointed then confirmed/rejected at the next election). I'm glad to see that broken "solution" has finally been replaced with something on par with other counties.

The disenfranchisement taking place was so blatant it was hard to understand how it could possibly have been legal. I would be surprised to find a place in the US where the more powerful party didn't tilt the game in their favor whenever possible.

Re:Kemp

[superdave80]

My statement was only referring to the current election, not future ones.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

The Daley Machine was finally taken apart in the mid 1980s, hardly a hundred years ago. While to a child like you, anything before your birth might as well be centuries, the most of America remembers the massive vote fraud of Chicago, Miami, LA, New York...

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you missed the whole "they put out unedited videos" part...

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Now check out New Hampshire and Washington.

The latter detailed with the infamous purge of US Attorneys.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

And while antifa was chanting outside a guy's house when they weren't helping homeless people or hurricane victims (that's 99% of what they do, if you would bother to challenge the narrative you've been provided), far right wingers have caused the third mass shooting this week in California. Right after a known and admitted neo nazi shot up a synagogue. And if you haven't noticed, the GOP actively endorses neo nazis. It's literally all over the news; even Fox News.

Were you born yesterday?

Re:Kemp

[Obfuscant]

No, but the Secretary of State is responsible for making sure the entire process of voting does count all of the votes, records the votes securely, provides polling places accessible to everyone who wants to exercise their right to vote, etc.

The process of voting, selection of polling places, counting the results, all falls to the COUNTY election officials, not the state. They simply report the totals to the state, who uses a calculator to add them up. And the totals are reported to the press who also have calculators.

Kinda like a judge isn't responsible for deciding guilt or innocence (that would be the jury) but is responsible for running the process the jury works within,

Except that the judge is ultimately responsible for the decision on guilt or innocence and can overturn a stupid or wrong jury when necessary. The Secretary of State cannot tell County X that their vote totals are wrong and unilaterally appoint the winner.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Only rarely. And whenever they do, they have 100% of the time contradicted the argument Project Veritas was trying to make. Thus, they don't publish the unedited videos very often, and recent ones have been classified as "leaks" and gotten people fired when their conscience got the better of them.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll just point future readers to the comment above: https://politics.slashdot.org/story/18/11/08/034215/georgias-secretary-of-state-brian-kemp-doxes-thousands-of-absentee-voters#

Which thoroughly debunks this claim. QED.

Re:Kemp

[kqs]

Not every one. In this jurisdiction there are more voters registered than live bodies (including babies).

But so what? When people move, nobody remembers to de-register themselves from an old location, and because all voting is handled by the states (and in many states by the county) there is no way to cross-reference when they register at their new address. But that mostly matters if someone fraudulently votes as someone else, which seems to almost never happen.

Re:Kemp

[sjames]

Simply wrong. The responsibility goes to the Secretary of State. Some of that is delegated to the counties, but like any delegation, the buck stops at the top. The counties do not handle voter registration though, and that is one of several controversies in Ga.

Yes, it is the judge's responsibility to set aside a guilty verdict if he sees that the jury got it wrong. Similarly, the Secretary of State is responsible to make sure the counties haven't screwed up the election process and to correct it if they have.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

You are obviously not aware that this was the first time since that law was passed that the rolls were purged. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see why, especially after the videos captured of Kemp bragging about keeping black people from voting.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

You still haven't shown a single case. You said it was trivially easy.

Re:Kemp

[kqs]

Courts determined that the number of fraudulent votes was over 10 times the margin of victory.

Looks like there were lots of potentially fraudulent votes, but nobody could show that they were in-person. It doesn't matter who is on the voter rolls if malicious or incompetent officials screw it up. And there was very little evidence of malicious activity (though lots of incompetence).

Back to TFA: Kemp's office purged 700K registrations, did not notify them that they were purged, and (from this article):

After he received the list, Palast said he analyzed it and discovered that 340,134 voters were purged when they shouldn’t have been. To do this, he consulted experts who cross-referenced voter data with a number of other databases including cell phone bills and tax filings to see if, in fact, any of these voters had actually moved. Many had not.

I'm curious what system of voter purging you support which has a 50% false positive rate? I mean, government can be incompetent, but that level of incompetence is downright presidential.

Re: Kemp

[LynnwoodRooster]

You haven't a clue about Washington State's King County, do you? Just quit... It's like you're complaining about the GOP machine in San Francisco - it doesn't exist.

Re:Kemp

[Obfuscant]

Simply wrong. The responsibility goes to the Secretary of State.

The COUNTY election officials select the polling locations, run the elections, count the votes, and report them to the state. The Secretary of State does none of that. He has no control over adding up the numbers, and it is trivial for anyone who cares to verify they added up right.

The Secretary of State does SUPERVISE, but does not himself control, the voter registration process. He has laws that require voter registrations to be correct and accurate, and his office has the requirement to reject any that are not.

Similarly, the Secretary of State is responsible to make sure the counties haven't screwed up the election process and to correct it if they have.

You are not alleging that the counties have made any mistakes, therefore his role in that part of the process is moot. The "registration" issues have been dealt with elsewhere.

Re:Kemp

[LynnwoodRooster]

From the article:

Judge Bridges noted that there was evidence that 1,678 votes had been illegally cast throughout the state

I may not have a degree in math, but I do realize that 139 is less than 10% of 1678.

Re:Kemp

[LynnwoodRooster]

Courts determined that the number of fraudulent votes was over 10 times the margin of victory.

Looks like there were lots of potentially fraudulent votes, but nobody could show that they were in-person. It doesn't matter who is on the voter rolls if malicious or incompetent officials screw it up.

Correct! So require proof of citizenship when you register, and proof of ID when you vote. We have to show equivalent levels of documentation when we exercise constitutional rights (2A for example), why not for voting?

Re:Kemp

[sjames]

Again, NO. The Secretary of State is ultimately responsible. Or did you think it was a coincidence that there is just one state run site that tells you where/when to vote and that all of the counties just happen to use the same voting machines, have the same workflow, and same requirements?

Re:Kemp

[Optic7]

Thanks for providing concrete examples, rather than hypotheticals or totally unrelated "what abouts". Your first point about the county split sounds like a case of gerrymandering, which is out of scope of what I was talking about since it's not about individual voter disenfranchisement. I realize that it disenfranchises voters collectively, but it's (unfortunately) an old, bipartisan practice in the US. This is a real "they all do it!" situation.

I was talking about things that either block or discourage individuals from voting, like what is being described in the article at hand. That's the situation that I said some claim "they all do it!" despite most evidence appearing to contradict that.

Regarding the school board situation, I would need to know more before making a judgement. It seems unlikely that they would take away the ability to elect a school board without providing some reason for doing it. Were there misdeeds by the previous schoolboards or in their elections?

Re:Kemp

[Obfuscant]

Again, NO. The Secretary of State is ultimately responsible.

"Ultimately responsible" does not mean "does". As I've pointed out more than once already, the FACT is that the COUNTY election office runs the elections in each county, NOT the Secretary of State.

Or did you think it was a coincidence that there is just one state run site that tells you where/when to vote

Do I think there is a consolidation of the county data at a state site? Of course. Do you really think that the existence of a state website that contains county data proves that the state mandates what the counties do? Gosh, I'll go create a central website that lists info for all the states and then I'll be in charge of all the state voting processes. Not.

and that all of the counties just happen to use the same voting machines

I don't know that they all use the same voting machines. I know that in at least one state they do not.

and same requirements?

The REQUIREMENTS are a matter of law, which is created by the legislature, not the Secretary of State. And in this case, the procedure was in place before Kemp became, and then left, the office. And the requirement that voter registrations must be correct is, besides common sense, a matter of law.

How far are you going to go to try to create some fictional problem where none actually exists?

Re:Kemp

[anegg]

Regarding the school board situation, I would need to know more before making a judgement. It seems unlikely that they would take away the ability to elect a school board without providing some reason for doing it. Were there misdeeds by the previous schoolboards or in their elections?

I moved to AAC in Maryland in 1996; the school board appointments were already in effect when I arrived. I do not recall hearing any reason for it other than the one I already mentioned hearing on a radio show. I was happy to see that it has finally been fixed, but the battle was long and hard. The "governor will appoint them and you get to vote to confirm them" solution was claimed at the time to be "an elected school board" even though it was obviously not on par with other counties. I can't speak more to the history of it, unfortunately, but I don't recall any reasons for the discrepancy such as past malfeasance being given.

Re:Kemp

[Aighearach]

If you claim you can't tell the difference between antifa and Democrats, you're obviously both trolling, and an asshole.

Antifa are great, but when there are no nazis around to fight, they're throwing rocks at Democrats for supporting banks and other business interests; the actual individual humans that make up antifa are not Democrats, or Liberals, or Progressives, they're Anarchists! They want to tear it all down, they really don't care about political parties.

Fighting nazis is the only constructive thing they'll probably even attempt to do their whole lives!

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Check which party always seems to "find" ballots a few days after close elections, and who it almost always benefits.

Always? Remember the fun after the Mississippi Senate GOP primary shenanigans?

Not to mention the recent Kansas governor primary.

Re:Kemp

[Aighearach]

I tried to come up with one that put more emphasis on Chicago, the mythical place of Evil where Democrats are spawned, but I came up empty.

Re:Kemp

[Optic7]

No problem, thanks for the additional information anyway. I did some brief digging and found an article that says that AAC was not the only county with an appointed board but it was one of the last ones, implying that this was not uncommon: https://conduitstreet.mdcounti...

Perhaps it is just some kind of historic legacy, rather than anything specific.

Re:Kemp

[sjames]

I'm guessing you believe a corporate CEO is utterly powerless when he visits a regional field office. They probably don't even let him in.

Re:Kemp

[shilly]

Where are your examples of the specific practices I alluded to? Because that's what would be needed to show I was wrong. Are you ignorant of this or are you ignoring it because you don't have examples?

As I said before, you guys are *terrible* at arguments.

Re:Kemp

[twosat]

That list is definitely wrong; in New Zealand I have never had to present ID to vote in the general elections.

https://www.elections.org.nz/v...

https://www.elections.org.nz/s...

Re:Kemp

[Crashmarik]

You know for someone who likes to say others are bad at arguments you are positively pathetic

Where are your examples of the specific practices I alluded to? Because that's what would be needed to show I was wrong.

You made the assertion you have to prove it.

Are you ignorant of this or are you ignoring it because you don't have examples ?

Did you even look before you made your claims ? I have no trouble finding them and anyone else who looks should have no trouble either. It does make you look rather damaged.

As I said before, you guys are *terrible* at arguments.

Thankfully for me and all the rest of "Us Guys" just because you say things doesn't make them so. You did know that ?

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

why is it that whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator disenfranchising or otherwise outright fucking voters over it's virtually always a republican?

I think this has more do with what you consider "fucking voters over" than what is done by a R or D.

Take any random hot-button topic, and either side will say that their opponents are "fucking votes over" with their policies. Though i would assume they would use a more civil tongue.

Re:Kemp

[mcvos]

That's horrible. Threats like these are completely indefensible and are (or should be) illegal and treated as such.

I find it hard to believe that Democrats would finance this, though. Do you have evidence for that?

But while Young Republicans might not do this, there are plenty of right-wing groups who do. Often egged on by Trump himself with his constant baseless accusations against the free press and his political opponents. Christine Ford is still receiving threats.

It's not an example that people on the left should be following, and I'm sad and angry to hear that some did. But it's deceitful to suggest it's something the left started.

Re:Kemp

[Whorhay]

Your claim was fraudulent votes, not illegally cast ones. In the end that same judge rejected the claims of fraud. I'm not 100% on what the difference there is, though I presume fraudulent votes would be deliberate illegal voting while a non-fraudulent vote would be someone voting at the wrong place or when they don't have the right to vote.

Re:Kemp

[kqs]

But almost none of the potentially fraudulent votes were in-person, so showing ID won't help. Nobody needs an ID to stick 2000 fake ballots in a box. I think what you are saying is that you want more government regulation to solve a theoretical problem, when the real problem is caused by other stuff, correct? That's your choice, of course, but I think it's a poor one.

Re:Kemp

[Crashmarik]

But while Young Republicans might not do this, there are plenty of right-wing groups who do.

Right wing is not anyone who disagrees with you. NAZIs are not right wing they are just racist left wingers.

Re:Kemp

[strikethree]

but why is it that whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator disenfranchising or otherwise outright fucking voters over it's virtually always a republican?

While comments like this carry some amount of data, they are ultimately only useful for boosting the opposing party...

Let me illustrate: but why is it whenever you hear of a politician or public administrator clamoring for longer copyright terms, or just outright stealing from the Public Domain, it's virtually always a democrat?

Your views and actions implicitly accept and encourage the two party system that we have.

Both parties are thoroughly corrupt. Framing things where one party is better than the other is utterly pointless. If you vote for either party, YOU are fucked. Voting for a particular party only matters insomuch as there are some fuckings that are, subjectively, worse than others. I mean, either way, they are still taking all your money, but at least the democrats tend to take the time to try and encourage you to enjoy the fucking. Sometimes.

TL;DR, your comment is stupid and useless. :)

Re:Kemp

[Tesen]

And apparently they get left in classrooms too.

The Florida situation is a perfect example of how useless they are as the only way to make sure that ballot box was not tampered with would be to manually verify each vote with the "person" that cast it and verify its accuracy. Of course, you also have to verify that the person you are contacting IS is eligible to vote and is not trying to commit identity theft / election fraud.

Yup, never going to happen and just another way for people to try and cheat and game the system or be tricked in to thinking they can vote at the last minute and still get their voice heard, thereby reinforcing a poor state of personal responsibility to get registered AND to vote.

Re:Kemp

[Obfuscant]

The Secretary of State is not a corporate CEO, and the county elections offices are not his branch offices. Please stop making stupid arguments.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Republicans have REPEATEDLY improperly invalidated minority votes by applying names of felons to ANYONE with that name who also happens to be black. So your link about repubs "finding" felon ballots is already smelly with republican bullshit they have done before. And they CAN in fact make criminal complaints but didn't. That's the HUGE tell of the liar.

The first link supplied was a click bait hellhole but it was still obvious that the ballots later counted were indeed valid.

The last link makes it obvious that republicans got caught NOT FOLLOWING PROCEDURE in order to invalidate votors. One of those invalidated voters was a CANDIDATE in the election which is how the REPUBLICANS GOT CAUGHT.

So showing republicans getting caught red handed is hardly a slam of dems. I mean really... READ and get some READING COMPREHENSION. If you can't parse the wikipedia article to understand that the repubs did not follow procedure thus improperly disenfranchising voters, then you are too stupid to deserve a vote. Please don't vote and don't waste peoples time with your Breitbart stupidity.

Re: Kemp

[Lord_Jeremy]

Thanks for providing the links. I'm not sure what fraud you think they describe, however. In a close election, officials noticed that there were some missing ballots for which records indicate they should exist but they were not counted. During the manual recount, these ballots were checked for validity and added to the totals. That's how recounts work. Of course politicians and campaign workers on both sides claimed that these ballots either should or should not be counted, depending on whether it was likely to benefit their side. Lawsuits were filed and it went to the Supreme Court, which decided that the ballot should be counted.

That's an example of the system working, of a close election going into a manual recount and extra precautions being taken to ensure that every valid vote was counted.

Re:Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

It's trivially easy to find republican propaganda saying there is fraud but the actual cases are statistically inconsequential. Certainly NOT the huge problem republicans use to destroy democracy and the American way.

Re: Kemp

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy crap. You are actually comparing the packaging and sharing of addresses of citizens who are away from home and/or in the hospital with sharing information about PUBLIC OFFICIALS. What the F is wrong with your head?

Re:Kemp

[sjames]

He runs them in much the same way. Perhaps where you live it is different, but that's how it works here. Your bald assertions notwithstanding.

Re:Kemp

[mcvos]

You live in an alternate reality. Nazis are absolutely right-wing. They believe in inequality and they hate the left. They tend to work with right-wing parties, support them, or take them over. In the US, the political right-wing has embraced them. The only people in the world who claim Nazis are not right wing, are people who consider themselves right-wing but are uncomfortable about their political closeness to Nazis, and people who fear other people might be uncomfortable by that closeness.

So distance yourself from them. Join the fight against racism. Against sexism. Against their totalitarian ideology. And stop fighting the people who fight Nazis.

Re:Kemp

[Crashmarik]

You live in a reality where you don't know what you are talking about

Do yourself a favor and shut your pie hole and open your mind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

20th century (post Russian Revolution)
Right wing = support of free economy
Left wing = state control of the economy

The NAZIs most definitely believed in state control of the economy and they also believed in state control of just about everything else which puts them very nicely in the same boat as Stalin and San Francisco

As to hate they hated just about everybody. The Russians, Jews, Gypsies, the French etc etc,

Re:Kemp

[mcvos]

You cherry-pick one out of many definitions because it fits the story you want to sell. Some others are: left-wing: equality, right-wing: inequality; and left-wing: change, right-wing: order. There's a lot more to politics than just the economy.

Simple fact of the matter is that everybody considers Nazis right-wing, including the Nazis themselves. They allied with conservatives to gain power. And not just in Germany; they tend to ally with conservatives everywhere. In the US too: American Nazis support the Republicans, and many Republicans accept that.

And if you think their views on economy are the main defining feature of Nazis, you are willfully ignorant.

Re:Kemp

[Crashmarik]

So in your universe
Republican = Right Wing because they believe in law and order , change through the constitution and property rights
Libertarian = Right Wing because they believe in law, and property rights, and the individual right to discriminat
NAZI = Right wing because they believe in the order and inequality

So Libertarian = NAZI

And if you think their views on economy are the main defining feature of Nazis, you are willfully ignorant.

No the defining feature of NAZIism was totalitarianism the state controlling all aspects of life, the same as it is for socialists and communists.

You just like using the word to mean people you don't like.

Re:Kemp

[mcvos]

Maybe you need to get your mind out of that one-dimensional mindset. I never said libertarians are nazis; those are your words. They are both right-wing in very different ways.

Of course that's how society at large views this issue. In reality, politics is not one-dimensional. If you were to plot them on a two-dimensional grid with economic equality vs inequality on one axis, and authoritarian vs libertarian on the other, libertarian capitalists would be in the right-wing libertarian corner, while Nazis would be in the right-wing authoritarian corner (and much more authoritarian than right-wing). Soviet-style communists would be in the authoritarian-left-wing corner, while libertarian socialists would be in the libertarian-left wing corner.

The vast, vast majority of politicians in the world are in the right-wing authoritarian corner, though obviously not remotely as authoritarian as Nazis, or as right-wing as libertarian capitalists.

But if you want, you can probably identify a lot more political axes than that: conservative vs progressive, monarchist/aristocratic vs republican/democratic, class based vs egalitarian. And there are many different views on what things like freedom or equality mean in practice, for what purposes things may be taxed, etc. That becomes harder to plot, though. And many of those tend to correlate strongly with one or both of those first two axes. But there are exceptions.

Re:Kemp

[Crashmarik]

Oh yes you did. It's perfectly clear that when you say NAZI you mean anyone you dislike.

Hell you didn't even include an axis for legitimacy/illegitimacy of nation states which is the only axis they have in common with any American conservative thought.

On every other question you can think of they are well aligned with the left.
1. Is it ok to kill children: Left yes, NAZIs Yes
2. Is eugenics acceptable : Left yes NAZIS yes
3. Should the state dictate the economy : Left Yes , NAZIS Yes
4. Is having an upopular opinion enough to take violent action against someone: Left Yes NAZIs Yes
5. Should the state insure citizens have employment and are provided for for life: Left Yes, NAZIs Yes
6. Should the Entrepeneurial Class have it's gains limited : Left Yes, NAZIs Yes
7 Should the state act as a parent to the people : Left Yes, NAZIs Yes
8 Here's a real big one, should precedent and cannons of justice bow to immediate needs of the state: Left Yes, NAZIs Yes

The list goes on and on and on.
The only difference is the NAZIs were NATIONAL socialists and the Communists were INTERNATIONAL socialists.

Re:Kemp

[mcvos]

It's perfectly clear that when you say NAZI you mean anyone you dislike.

That's in your own head. Don't project it on me.

Are you aware all your arguments are straw men? The left does not think it's okay to kill children, does not consider eugenics acceptable, the vast majority of the people on the left don't want the state to dictate the economy, just regulate it (just like many people on the right are doing, by the way: see Trump's tariffs, corporate subsidies, artificial monopolies, etc), do not find violence against someone with an unpopular opinion acceptable, etc.

That stuff is just in your head. Communist Russia is not representative for the entire political left. If it was, then almost nobody in the US or Europe would be politically left.

Re:Kemp

[Crashmarik]

Yeah, If you are sincere it's only because you don't know what you are talking about. More than likely your just lying.

Are you aware all your arguments are straw men? The left does not think it's okay to kill children,

7.6 million dead from just planned parenthood
https://californiafamily.org/2...

does not consider eugenics acceptable

Vs
"“We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members, -- Margaret Sanger Founder Planned Parenthood”

Too old ? you seem rather left how do you feel about aborting children because the have downs syndrome ?

the people on the left don't want the state to dictate the economy, just regulate it

Yes they don't want to dictate the economy they just want to regulate every aspect of it, from how much you can pay people to who and who can't run your company.

do not find violence against someone with an unpopular opinion acceptable

Really ? I must be imagining the mayor of Portland allowing Antifa to blockade federal offices in his city. I must have imagined all those college campuses doing nothing about the disruption of conservative events.

Communist Russia is not representative for the entire political left. If it was, then almost nobody in the US or Europe would be politically left.

Really so all those people on the left that praised Chavez and Maduro in Venezuella or wax poetic about cuba while wear Che Guevera shirts don't exist ?

Oh and speaking of Che, your talking about a guy that makes John Wayne Gacy , Jeffrey Dahlmer, and Ted Bundy look like amateurs

So get yourself an enema. I'm done with you until you can come back with at least something factual to say.

Re:Kemp

[mcvos]

7.6 million dead from just planned parenthood

I'd like to see the claim that Planned Parenthood killed any children at all supported by a source that doesn't sound like it's intentionally misrepresenting facts.

We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population

Anyone who wants to kill black people is not generally considered to be part of the left. From what I understand, this quote is from the 1930s, the tail end of the Jim Crow period. I don't know the circumstances of this quote or the political positions of the person who said it, but I do know that conservatives love to misrepresent issues from the Jim Crow period. The short of it is: the Democrats were once the conservative and racist party, while the Republicans started life as the progressive civil rights party. They switched positions over the course of the 20th century, with southern Democrats being still conservative and racist, while northern Democrats became increasingly progressive, until the party itself became a weird mix of progressive issues with still a big group of racists, while the Republicans were becoming increasingly conservative. In the 1950s, both parties supported social democratic policies, and both supported president Eisenhower. In the 1960s, when the Democrats finally officially embraced civil rights, the racists left that party and joined the now more conservative Republicans which welcomed them.

So both before and after the switch, the racists tended to be in the more conservative party. Only for a brief period from the 1930s to the 1950s, did they find themselves in a party that had become social democratic.

Yes they don't want to dictate the economy they just want to regulate every aspect of it

They want to regulate it in order to ensure it benefits everybody, and not just a small elite. And this is something that can work very well: consider Sweden, one of the countries in the world with the highest level of economic freedom, and yet very little poverty.

I must be imagining the mayor of Portland allowing Antifa to blockade federal offices in his city. I must have imagined all those college campuses doing nothing about the disruption of conservative events.

Alright, you're talking about a much broader definition of violence than I do. I don't consider protests to be violence and strongly support people's right to protest. At least, as long as they don't attack people. With violence, I mean either actual physical violence, threats of violence, or incitement to violence. Like Trump is doing, for example, or the people who act on it.

Really so all those people on the left that praised Chavez and Maduro in Venezuella

I was talking about Europe and the US. Clearly Venezuela is really fucked up. I don't see anyone there praise Maduro, but you're absolutely right that Chavez seemed to have the support of his people. That doesn't make him representative of the left outside Venezuela, though. Everybody in the EU and US is horrified by what's happening there.

wax poetic about cuba while wear Che Guevera shirts

I guess people love rebels. Don't forget that Guevara and Castro started out rebelling and overthrowing a pretty horrible dictator. That superficial story of standing up to the man appeals to a lot of people, as long as you ignore the reality on the ground of what they did, or the fact that Castro became just another dictator. Though it's worth noting that nobody is wearing Castro shirts. People on the left tend to like rebels, not dictators.

I'm not saying that all people on the left abhor all kinds of violence. Not everybody is a pacifist. Many do consider it legitimate to use violence in order to fight against oppression, for example. A few go overboard and end up supporting new oppression, but that's certainly not universal to the left, and neither is it

Re:Kemp

[Crashmarik]

No and I hope you aren't deluding yourself with that or anything else you tried to wave past. Antifa are not peaceful protestors. You don't believe PP kills children ? Call them up and schedule an abortion for a child that's viable, no problem. Oh South America doesn't count ? Try France Spain and Greece. Castro did his revolution 50 years ago tell me how that's relevant to people insisting the Cuban system is great today.

But ultimately, whatever meaning you and I want to attach to "left" and "right", they're mostly labels

And no again. We started this because you couldn't accept the fact that the NAZIs have more in common with the historical left and modern left than they do the modern right, that they and socialists occupy almost exactly the same spheres of thought. Richard Spencer for example is a full on socialist the only difference between him and Maxine Waters is he blames non white people for the worlds problems while she blames white people. They both blame jews, as does most of the leaders of the women's march.

Oh yeah I did forget to mention that. The NAZIs were virulently antisemitic most people think it's they're defining feature, so is the left these days.

Re:Kemp

[mcvos]

Antifa are not peaceful protestors.

I'm not sure who is or isn't Antifa and what happens under that label. I have heard of protests where Antifa used violence to protect peaceful protesters from violent Nazis. But even there, not everybody on the left agrees with that. Even if it is, in large part, a response to violence from the right. You keep pretending that this is only a left-wing issue, but it's not. The vast majority of people on the left oppose violence, and strongly oppose initiating violence. Meanwhile, on the right, there are people actively preaching violence, and large crowds chanting violence.

You don't believe PP kills children ? Call them up and schedule an abortion for a child that's viable, no problem.

You can't abort a child. A child has already been born. Trying to paint a late term abortion in those terms is itself dishonest. Yeah, I don't think PP kills children, and you have given me nothing to doubt that, so I suggest we accept this as established.

As for late term abortions, they are legal by law, but also incredibly rare. Only 1.4% of all abortions in the US happen after 21 weeks, which is still well before a fetus is viable. And of that 1.4%, many are simply because of a lack of availability of abortion at an earlier stage (there are parts of the US where abortion clinics are rare and early abortions are strongly discouraged), or teen pregnancies, which tend to have much later abortions, and tend to be due to a lack of proper sex ed. If you want to prevent those late term abortions, fight for better sex ed and better accessibility of early abortions.

Try France Spain and Greece.

Try what with France or Greece? Live there? I've never been to Greece, but France is great.

Castro did his revolution 50 years ago tell me how that's relevant to people insisting the Cuban system is great today.

Who is insisting the Cuban system is great? Certainly nobody I know. The only thing I can imagine you might be referring to, is that Cuba, despite its poverty, has a better health care system than the US. Well, better, Cuba is very slightly behind the US in life expectancy (and both are far behind Europe), but it's free and accessible to everybody. But that's the only thing I know that anyone might consider good about the Cuban system. Everything else is pretty terrible.

Richard Spencer

You mean the guy who coined the term "alt-right"? Wasn't he at the "Unite the Right" march? In the US, Nazis are the modern right.

Face it, Nazis are right-wing, they call themselves right-wing, and in the US, they have been embraced by the right-wing. Your definition of right-wing is completely detached from the political reality in the real world.

If you want to find classical conservatives in the US, you actually have to look at the right-wing of the Democratic Party. Despite his campaign for change, Obama didn't change all that much about Bush's policies, and continued many of them. He's fairly conservative in the original sense of the word. The problem is that the Republican Party was so eager to hate him and paint him as extreme left, that they ran to the extreme right in response.

Also, look at at whose marches people chant things like "kill all Jews" or "Jews will not replace us". Look at which part of the political spectrum the Pittsburgh shooter came from.

I'm willing to grant you that anti-semitism is far too common in the US in general, but that doesn't help your position much, as the US is on the whole a very right-wing country compared to other wealthy industrialised nations.

Re:Kemp

[Crashmarik]

You can't abort a child. A child has already been born

Yeah that's bullshit. If it's viable outside the womb and you kill it, you've committed murder and killed a child

Look if you don't like the left's actual positions that's fine but don't think crap like this

"Antifa I have no idea what is or isn't Antifa if they are violent they must be someone else".

"Spencer see see he named himself Alt-Right it's got right in it he must be right"

"Nobody I know goes around touting Cuba as how a country provides for its people"

Will convince me or anyone else.

P.S. Just to answer your implied question "Also, look at at whose marches people chant things like "kill all Jews" "

https://www.google.com/search?...

I

Re:Kemp

[mcvos]

Yeah that's bullshit. If it's viable outside the womb and you kill it, you've committed murder and killed a child

That's what I said. That's murder, not abortion. Don't confuse the two.

Look if you don't like the left's actual positions that's fine but don't think crap like this

Like I said, this isn't even a left-wing position, it's a libertarian position. Right-wing libertarians like Gary Johnson and Ayn Rand also support the right to have an abortion, for the very simple reason that it's your body. It's a bodily autonomy thing, and has nothing to do with economic equality or inequality.

Re:Kemp

[Dr_Terminus]

So following this logic, Trump should be in jail because he is using an unsecured phone for all of his presidential activities...

Re:Kemp

[DNS-and-BIND]

Following this logic, since Hillary is still walking around free, what's the problem with Trump (or anyone else) doing the same thing?

You're just advocating the same old double standard: when Hillary or one of your tribe does it it's OK, but when Trump or anyone from The Other does it it's automatically wrong.

Re:Kemp

[Dr_Terminus]

Sorry, you're the one who made the claim that Hillary should go to jail, not me. So following your logic Trump should also be in jail. Then you accuse me of a double standard? Look in the mirror dude...

And who says I'm part of Hillary's tribe... is everything so black and white to you that you don't understand there is more than us vs them?

Voter Rolls are Often Public

[Anonymous Coward]

Voter rolls are public in many states. For example in Colorado registration information including address, phone number, and declared party affiliation are available through several websites. Records of whether someone voted or not aren't public, but their registration details are easily accessed for free.

Re: Voter Rolls are Often Public

[jd]

Registration rolls, yes. This isn't a registration roll. This is private personal information (PPI) coupled with ballot data.

Data aggregators

[Anonymous Coward]

I always wonder where personal data aggregators get their information. I wish it were illegal to aggregate personal information like that for public gawking and stalking.

Gawking and stalking. I'm sure cops and prosecutors and judges like their personal information and that of their families easily available online.

Re:Data aggregators

[BringsApples]

There used to be a phone book that was released by the phone companies. It listed (if you had an account with them) everyone's name, address and phone number. If you wanted to NOT be listed in that book, you had to pay a fee. That book was given to all of it's members. So if you had a phone, you had that book.

Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

Pointless exercise. Most people in the U.S., and in democratic countries in general, do not deserve democracy.

While people in tyranical dictatorial shit-holes would die, and often actually do die, for the chance of voting freely in democratic elections, more than half of americans sit on their fat asses for the one hour every few years that is asked of them, and always seem to have a good excuse for doing so."Governements are evil", "The game is rigged", "They're all the same", "It won't change anything", blah blah blah.

That's why you get psychopath after psychopath after psychopath in the White House.

You people deserve the governements you get.

Re:Pointless exercise

[sjames]

You do realize this was an attack specifically against people who did make the effort to vote, right?

Re:Pointless exercise

[kenh]

Public information being made public isn't an "attack".

Re: Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

This wasnt an attack, go RTFA. Voter records in most states are public record, as are property title holders including mortgage lender info, arrest records, court appearance notices, tax liens, etc.

Re: Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright. Give me a link to your information.

Re:Pointless exercise

[quantaman]

You do realize this was an attack specifically against people who did make the effort to vote, right?

Yes, but they were judged more likely to vote Democrat, and therefore not deserving of the vote according to Brian Kemp.

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it is. Just like parking next to a strip club, parking at a STD testing center, and listing everything you buy in a store on a website is all public information. Someone can watch the cashier scan everything you buy and write up a list and post it. It's all public info. Your address and home phone are public info, same as what you paid for your house or your rent. All those things have proper uses. Combining everything together and telling people 'hey look at this' completely changes the intent of the data.

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

When you're a renter, your address isn't part of public records.

Analogy of your statement is similar as to saying:
By not supporting Trump you support open borders.

Or calling USA "America"

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if Google/Alphabet has this info. It is really valuable for automated calls to urge your side to get out and vote. And not call the ones who never voted, or inspire them to vote by asking them about the 'Vote or Die' campaign with retribution measures for non-voters.

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

Dumb ass, if you register to vote, your address - doesn't matter if its a rental property or not - becomes part of the public record. And there's about hundred different reasons your apt. address is part of the public record that don't have anything to do with voting.

Re: Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

It's in the file. Whatcha gonna do with it, putz?

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Brian Kemp's home address public? If every time there's a story of a home invasion you went out of your way to post Brian Kemp's home address in the comments, would that not send a message? If every time there was a person who seemed mentally unstable, you gave them Brian Kemp's home address, would that not send a message? If right after an election releasing a large list of the homes of "disabled" and "elderly" addresses available to "check", would that not send a message?

But, yea, doxing isn't an attack either because your name, address, and phone number is almost certainly public information. So, out of curiosity, would you reply with that information? I mean, it's not at all that giving out that information would be or lead to an attack.

Re: Pointless exercise

[kenh]

You have no right to my private data, only public data - voting records are public, my "information" is private.

Re:Pointless exercise

[kenh]

Brian Kemp's office made the public records available as required by law - he didn't write the law, he's sworn to follow it. By posting his home address in the comments of reports of home invasions you are attempting to entice/encourage someone to attack him - if someone follows up on your postings and attacks him, you may very well be liable to be prosecuted as an accessory/accomplice...

Re:Pointless exercise

[kenh]

What a stupid comment. Somehow following the law and making public records easily accessible, how does reporting on their vote after the fact impact the election?

This law was on the books before Kemp was sworn in as Secretary of State, he only did what his predecessors did - as required by law.

See http://elections.sos.ga.gov/El... - you can download absentee voter records from the past few year's elections.

Re:Pointless exercise

[kenh]

I'm curious how you imagine one can register to vote without providing an address, and once one registers to vote, their address is public record.

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

Brian Kemp's office made the public records available as required by law - he didn't write the law, he's sworn to follow it.

That's some high class bullshit. "made the public records available" != "make the records publicly available". The former is to treat the records as already published in public and using that to justify wildly distributing them to various parties. The latter is to make records available upon request to those interested, which generally limits the pool of potential suspects if there's a rash of robberies/attacks upon people on that list. Given Brian Kemp presumably voted, your interpretation amounts to State Laws requiring that "Brian Kemp's address be made publicly available". That leads to...

By posting his home address in the comments of reports of home invasions you are attempting to entice/encourage someone to attack him - if someone follows up on your postings and attacks him, you may very well be liable to be prosecuted as an accessory/accomplice...

You're just following State Law and making Brian Kemp's address publicly available. You've got to get the word out about Brian Kemp, his voting, and his address. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Re:Pointless exercise

[Aighearach]

My advice is to wait until the Courts are done ruling before you decide that it was all legal.

You don't sound like you're even aware that there were lots of irregularities and the situation hasn't even "settled" yet.

You're making a strong statement that relies on facts that are not yet known.

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

"Locking up kids in cages was an Obama thing. He was simply enforcing it."

If someone is so great as they claim they are to be, then he or she should have the ability to think and act ethically in spite of what was set by predecessors.

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

It's clearly meant to make people who vote absentee think twice. And due to strict requirements on who can vote absentee, it may target specific groups of people who may be likely to vote one way or another. Would you vote absentee if you knew it meant having your name, address, and reason for voting absentee posted online for all to see? I wouldn't.

Let me extrapolate a fear one might have with that outcome: What if you voted as "disabled" because you have PTSD and crowds make you nervous. Then in this hyper political environment, some nut bag comes to your house and starts accosting you that you "don't look disabled to me!" and begins accusing you of voter fraud. Suppose this person brings a firearm with them, like Pizzagate. Suppose there's more than one of them. Even if nothing bad comes of this, bet you won't vote absentee again after that. And if you really are disabled, that simply means not voting.

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

Making public records available does not mean posting them online for anyone to see. It means I can drive to some government building, fill out a form, maybe pay a search fee, and get the list. It means if I go ask for them, I can't be told no.

You can't be so dense as to think this was a good idea. But if you do, perhaps you'd like to share your full name, home address, and how you voted (abstained, in-person, early, or absentee). After all, if you're registered to vote that's all public record anyway. No harm telling these few hundred people and the search spiders.

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure it is. Just like parking next to a strip club, parking at a STD testing center, and listing everything you buy in a store on a website is all public information. Someone can watch the cashier scan everything you buy and write up a list and post it. It's all public info. Your address and home phone are public info, same as what you paid for your house or your rent. All those things have proper uses. Combining everything together and telling people 'hey look at this' completely changes the intent of the data.

Don't be ridiculous. The law doesn't mandate that the government has to collect, much less publish parking data for strip clubs, but it does mandate publishing absentee data. And whenever the law says the government has to publish some data, then posting an electronic, easily searchable document, preferably in an open format, on the Internet, is exactly how that instruction should be followed by default, unless the law in question EXPLICITLY states otherwise.

So don't blame a govt. agent for following the law, it's exactly his job. Blame the law and the lawmakers.

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course it is. Just because because "public" doesn't mean it's normally easy to get or conveniently packaged. These might very well be the reasons for it being "public" in the first place.

Your argument is basically that anything that isn't forbidden is allowed, which if you think about it is baloney; there is no way to forbid everything that is undesirable for some reason or other. This is what you're supposed to have respect for other people, common sense and decency for.

People like you are the reason the number of laws continually go up and we really can't have nice things, because you, and people like you are dicks. You will abuse and ruin everything as soon as you discover how, because, hey, it's not forbidden.

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

So the elderly are more likely to vote Democrat? You might want to lay off whatever your smoking.

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

Public information being made public isn't an "attack".

Public information being made public isn't "technically illegal, and may be an effective method to manipulate future voter participation in the service to the great orange one.".

Re: Pointless exercise

[sjames]

And yet they're not generally released in the form of an address list suitable for choosing homes to burglarize.

Re: Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the article again (or once)

Re: Pointless exercise

[jd]

It isn't public information. Since when was private medical data a public record?

Re: Pointless exercise

[jd]

It was medical data. Whatever else was present, medical data was present. Medical data record laws apply.

Re: Pointless exercise

[jd]

What was published was not required by law. Instead, what was published was required by law to be kept private.

Don't go making excuses for your tribe when it does wrong. I don't excuse anyone for wrongdoing, nor do most others.

This is government intrusion, which I suspect you oppose when it affects you. When it causes physical harm to your imagined enemies, you're all for it.

This isn't about the law, this is about you wanting those of other political persuasions to come to harm.

Re: Pointless exercise

[jd]

But not medical records, which were included.

Re: Pointless exercise

[jd]

Show me where the law requires medical information published

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it is immoral to follow public records laws so this Republican criminal is immoral for releasing the information he is legally required to release. Republicans don't care about morals.

In the garbage state of Washington where I live, the Republican rulers have made voting information public in order to hate on us.

Re: Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

What a coincidence! These weren't either,

Re:Pointless exercise

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, youre so right. Lets allow the govt and the big corps to keep beeing the only ones with access to this. That is bound to end well for the common man.

Public Information

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't want this information public record, change the laws. Don't make it a political issue. I have to deal with this shit every day just because I own a small business. Every little detail about me, home address, business address, income, phone numbers, age, email address, etc, are all publicly visible and easily searchable on multiple sites. Does it suck ass? It sure does. But that's public record for you. Why should it be any different for voters' interaction with the government? Reform public records laws, don't go after a guy doing his jawb.

Re: Public Information

[Anonymous Coward]

But he is a Republican so we hate him. If he was Dem we would justify it.

Freedom of Information Act

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if the government is required by law to release the information to anyone who asks, then the blame goes to FOIA.

Re:Freedom of Information Act

[sjames]

Don't blame FOIA. One, FOIA wasn't invoked. Two, it has exceptions for personal information of people who aren't public officials.

Re:Freedom of Information Act

[kenh]

Voter Registration information is public information, not private.

Apparently GA state law obligates the Secretary of State to make absentee ballot information available, if that's the case, the law should probably better specify the manner to make that information available, if that's not the case then he broke the law.

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.

Re:Freedom of Information Act

[sjames]

And FOIA is involved how? I was specifically addressing a claim that FOIA is somehow to blame.

Re:Freedom of Information Act

[kenh]

Comment directed at parent, not you.

Re:Freedom of Information Act

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd bet $20 this act (bulk release of information) was illegal. Charge the dude and see where it goes.

If nothing else, laying charges is a sharp slap across the face and a warning. Play games, or toy with citizens and act incompetent, and there will be a price to pay.

"it is not publicly available in aggregate"

[Nutria]

ISTM that security expert Jake Williams is relying on security by obscurity.

Re:"it is not publicly available in aggregate"

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because with apps like these, why would you need the database at all?

Ends justify the means

[rsilvergun]

he won after all. And his party held onto the Senate, paving the way fro Trump to fire Sessions. This is what winning at any cost means.

My question is will the voters keep going along with it. So far it looks like the answer is yes. If that's the case I'm hoping to die before we go full on authoritarian and that my kid gets to move to Canada. I'm not being hyperbolic anymore. This timeline sucks.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

Well thank god the blue fart in the wind didn't amount to much then! You can live long and prosper.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm hoping to die before we go full on authoritarian and that my kid gets to move to Canada. I'm not being hyperbolic anymore. This timeline sucks.

You remind me of Republicans when we have a Democrat in office.

Re: Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

Times change, people change, but everyone is equally lazy

Re:Ends justify the means

[Ungrounded Lightning]

My question is will the voters keep going along with [alleged voter suppression].

My question is whether the voters, along with relatively honest politician, will continue to go along with a system where unverified mail-in registration and abentee balloting can be com bined to create an unlimited number of extra votes from imaginary voters.

Cries of "There isn't a lot of fake voting." cut no ice with me. What they really mean is "There isn't a lot of fake voting being caught and prosecuted." This could just as easily mean there is no effort by the current winners to upset the system that got them their jobs - perhaps because that system WAS corrupt and they KNOW it.

Getting the list of absentee voters into the hands of people who want to check whether the voters in question actually exist is the first step in finding out whether such fraud is common, and in stopping it if it is.

Since it IS public information, which is supposed to be easily available to anyone who wants to see it, any attempt to hamper access to it is not merely obstructionist, but may actually be a crime.

Meanwhile, electoral politics is merely "war by more peaceful means". A voter is a volunteer soldier in these wars. Letting other people know you've joined the battle is part of signing up to fight it, part of the cost of injecting your preferences into the policy making of the government.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Darinbob]

Well, Democrats haven't had a utter loony in office in a very long time, and Democrats haven't had to hold their nose while being asked to kiss their president's ass. Somehow the very same Republicans who publicly criticized Trump before he was elected managed to turn around and kowtow to him. Trump publicly insulted Ted Cruz's wife, and yet Cruz still turned around and praised Trump after the election.

Seriously, I miss the Republican Party, because what we have today no longer resembles it.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

Make a law and fully fund a new program supporting a free national ID distributed universally and then you can have voter ID with that. Rural states use mail-in because they lack funds to place polling stations close enough to enough voters to be economical. Fully fund that form federal budgets and you can ban mail-in voting too.

Re:Ends justify the means

[ClickOnThis]

"Won?" Perhaps, but nobody has called this contest yet. I suspect he may survive the potential recount and tallying of yet-uncounted ballots, but let's not be premature.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

The world would be a much better place if the Republican primaries were the official presidential election.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Aighearach]

Well, Democrats haven't had a utter loony in office in a very long time

You haven't seen my City Council!

Re:Ends justify the means

[AmiMoJo]

Seems like a risky move now that the Democrats control the house. They can make life difficult for Trump, and firing Mueller would just give them ammunition.

You can bet they will be inviting CNN to every event they possibly can too.

Hopefully the days of "they go low, we go high" are over.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

Voters doesn't matters. Gerrymandering and other voter suppression tactics are making sure of that.

At the moment the idea that justice will be served eventually is what keeps people sort of calm, but if Republicans keep the Senate after 2020 then I expect that there will be bloodshed.

With a population of 325 million I'm surprised that we haven't already seen a couple of nutjobs try.
I guess they are all in the other camp.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude is a public figure, name him so that we can judge for ourselves.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah. For the past three years Trump has played the entire Democratic party like a cheap kazoo. If they can't find a way to counter him - and so far, they don't even seem to realize they need one - he's gonna keep on doing it. Mere control of Congress isn't even going to slow him down.

I mean, it would, if he were interested in enacting legislation. But he's made it painfully clear - apart from cutting his own taxes, he doesn't care about that.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

This timeline sucks.

Hey, at least it isn’t as bad as the Kelvin timeline in Star Trek.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

Us libs would be so much happier if we had to dig to the City Council level to find Dominionist Nazis.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? Colorado just elected Jared fucking Polis to governor. Mr. "It's better to remove a person from college if they're accused of rape just to be safe. We don't want to have potential rapists on university campuses do we?" and "I support the 'believe women' movement". This guy is a full on supporter of "guilty until proven innocent". He honestly terrifies the shit out of me. You guys bitch about the Rs so much that you never look at your own party and see how they seem to have looked at history lessons from the guistapo and thought "you know, they had really good ideas".

Re:Ends justify the means

[drinkypoo]

Hopefully the days of "they go low, we go high" are over.

It wasn't we go high, it was more like we go home. The Republicans didn't just go lower, they also demonstrated dramatically more competence. They were on message, on point, and unified. Democrats could learn a lot from the Republicans while still retaining whatever high ground they've got left.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wait? Move to Canada now.

Authoritarian is losing it's sting when the people screaming it only allow one school of thought.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

Escaping to Canada to avoid authoritarianism. The land where you can get thrown in prison for saying "he" in reference to a man in a dress.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, we will end up full on authoritarian regardless of who is in power.
It will be like China.

A consumerist fantasy where your social credit means everything.
Every move, every keystroke, every heartbeat, every thought will be monitored and analyzed.

Technology is driver, not politics.

Even the most bleeding heart, intentioned politico can't stop the train were on.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Democrats haven't had a[n] utter loony in office in a very long time

I'm guessing you mean the Presidency. Congress is full of them.

and Democrats haven't had to hold their nose while being asked to kiss their president's ass.

Obama made H.R. Clinton do it. W(B).J. Clinton made lots of women literally do it, but not H.R. Clinton.

Re:Ends justify the means

[DarkOx]

The Republican party IS Trump's party. He is the president, he won get over it. Actually look at the midterms yesterday - the GOP members that continue to resist Trump's policy and approach are the ones who lost! Cruz goes along because he knows his damn place; and look it got him re-elected against a popular democrat in a state increasingly being over run with migrants; where we have DACA recipients casting illegal votes.

The old GOP was stupid and served nobody but the uber rich. The DNC serves nobody but their own and uses little loud mouthed inter-sectional minorities as useful idiots.

Actually if you think about the environmental and economic issues for 5min; ONLY Trump's ideas promise a long term bright future for America. Everything else is just hopium.

Re:Ends justify the means

[BringsApples]

Democrats haven't had a utter loony in office in a very long time

You can't prove that.

Re:Ends justify the means

[aquacrayfish]

The old GOP was stupid and served nobody but the uber rich.

So that recent tax plan, was... not for the uber rich? I'm confused.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

When Jesus freaks call Trump God's candidate, you know we are all fucked.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

Democrats and the Media ROUTINELY insult a huge portion of the country. Like every single night routine.

Wake up.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

You could say the same thing about the Democrats. The party has assumed that workers will always vote for them even if their jobs keep going away. Most workers have figured that out. They also figured out that H's power bases are in entertainment and banking. Neither of those groups are worker friendly.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Darinbob]

Yes he won. What is surprising to me is that despite holding views that are not mainstream Republican views and which are different from traditional Republican values, the mainstream Republicans are backing up. This is a NEW Republican party.

This is what is weird to me. Is a political party unable to coherently state what their core values are and have those values last for longer than an election cycle? Will every new election mean we must rewrite what a party stands for? Because the Republican party of this year has little resemblance to the Republican party of 4 years ago.

Trump acts like a damn dictator, and his followers kowtow because they're worried about losing elections. He has bad trade policies that are going to hurt the economy, and an isolationist standpoint that has been discredited since the twenties. Anyone who was ever a fan of Reagan should be against Trump, as they are opposites.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Darinbob]

Anyone who can pass as normal may be a loony but wont' be an "utter" loony.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you need a safe space to hide away from the politically incorrect meanies triggering you?

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I miss the Republican Party, because what we have today no longer resembles it.

Has there been a decent GOP President since Eisenhower? (Maybe Bush Sr.?)

Seems that they've been getting wackier and wackier as time as gone (which says something about the nomination process I guess).

Re:Ends justify the means

[kqs]

Simple. The GOP used to serve nobody but the uber rich. They still do, but they used to, too.

Re:Ends justify the means

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Republican party of this year has little resemblance to the Republican party of 4 years ago.

Same with the other half. 4 years ago Bernie or someone like him could run as a member of the (un)Democratic Party. Now, after they made their rigging permanent, that is no longer possible.

Information wants to be free!

[Anonymous Coward]

Free information for all!

And prop 8 donors?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don’t recall anyone here complaining when prop 8 supporters had their addresses released and suddenly they were all hunted down.

You might’ve heard of a few that were hounded out of their jobs.

Re:And prop 8 donors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hounded out of their jobs. Yes, like Brendan Eich, inventor of JavaScript, founder of Mozilla, and architect of the Brave browser. Mozilla kicked him out Papa John style. So much for "diversity" and freedom of expression. Only offically approved diversity of opinion is allowed!

Re:And prop 8 donors?

[Anonymous Coward]

In all fairness, he should have been fired for inventing JavaScript.

just another example

[Anonymous Coward]

of kemp proving himself to be incompetent and corrupt as fuck as secretary of state and guardian of his state's elections. how anyone could even consider tossing a vote in his direction is beyond comprehension.

Re: just another example

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes just another example of Kemp FOLLOWING THE LAW which is pretty much THE SAME EVERYWHERE in the US.

You are a moron. Please do not vote or breed.

Re: just another example

[Anonymous Coward]

i think your keyboard is corrupt or incompetent. or maybe your caps key has resigned in protest.

Vote Zapper software

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you remember Cash Register Zapper software? It was outlawed software that let you change the records of Cash Registers including the audit log file.
Companies were using it to cheat on taxes. The software was made illegal in many states to prevent it being used.

What the Dems need to do is offer substantial reward for squeeling out the vote zapping software on these voting machines that don't have a paper record.
A big fat cash reward the squeeler will be set for life, will get someone to release that software.

BECAUSE IF A CASH REGISTER ZAPPER EXISTS, OF COURSE A VOTE ZAPPER SOFTWARE EXISTS.
Elections are a $ billion plus business, so of course someone spent a couple of thousand dollars to make a bit of software.

Kemp fought long and hard to keep the paperless voting systems in use. Maybe you'll get lucky and find his tech people.

Re: Vote Zapper software

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the Republicans/Russians are willing to pay more to get a VoteZapper than a legitimate government function can budget for.

If you offer me a million dollars for a an ATM zapper, and anyone can steal ten million a day using it... Why would I sell it for just one million to the bank security team?

Who Cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Voter records aside from who you actually voted for are public records in most states. This isn't any kind of leak of information, or hack or whatever else you want to call it. These lists can be obtained for free or for minimal duplication fees by just going to a supervisors of elections office and just asking for it. Or visiting their website or OMG an "unsecured" anonymous access FTP site where all the public records might be held.

Please stop with this foolishness esp about the "unsecured" FTP site. there is no difference between requesting http://supervisorofelections.com/publicvoterrecord.csv and ftp://supervisorofelections.com/publicvoterrecord.csv other than the protocol used.

Re: Who Cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. Placing the records online ensures that anyone can use a public library computer to see them FOR FREE. No duplication fee required. That ought to be praised not condemned, especially by a party claiming to be the champion of the underprivileged

He also fought to keep the paperless voting

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:He also fought to keep the paperless voting

[kenh]

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/20...

"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.

What, like with a cloth?

At least he didn't take a hammer and smash the server, like someone else did with their old cellphones.

Re:He also fought to keep the paperless voting

[anegg]

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.

Interesting premise about paperless voting systems... I wonder why the Democrats that control the Maryland legislature forced counties to switch to paperless voting systems? The county I lived in had a very nice paper ballot system with electronic tabulation when I moved there in 1996. It was a "gold standard" for easy counting yet manually verifiable after the fact. It was replaced by a paperless system mandated by the Democrat-controlled legislature; this system continues to be problematic today https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/maryland-cant-protect-its-elections/2018/07/20/ee64beb0-89ce-11e8-a345-a1bf7847b375_story.html?utm_term=.10e6235436cc.

I agree that the paperless voting systems can't be trusted. If Georgia's is seen as being used to keep Kemp in power, who is Maryland's keeping in power?

Re: He also fought to keep the paperless voting

[Anonymous Coward]

My Maryland county switched TO paper ballots this time.

Re:He also fought to keep the paperless voting

[Anonymous Coward]

Maryland uses paper-ye olde scantron- voting in 2016 and again here in 2018. That was said in your own link that you claimed it was "problematic today". No problem, we finished giving it the boot two years ago.

Re:He also fought to keep the paperless voting

[anegg]

Maryland uses paper-ye olde scantron- voting in 2016 and again here in 2018. That was said in your own link that you claimed it was "problematic today". No problem, we finished giving it the boot two years ago.

I'm glad to hear about the switch. I moved to Maryland in 1996, when the paper ballots were in use (in Anne Arundel County, anyway). I found the system easy to use and thought it met needs well. I was aghast at the switch to the paperless system, although I don't remember exactly when it occurred. It was still in use for the last election that I voted in in Maryland (probably in 2014). I thought that the Washington Post article said the paperless was still in place in some locations; I'm gad to be wrong.

More fake news.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can go get that information for any city/state/county you'd like.

You're full of shit. Stop being full of shit.

Privacy

[markdavis]

I have posting about things like this for many years now. Back "in the day", "public" information didn't mean posted, in mass, in real-time or short-time, in a machine-readable format, with a zero barrier of entry, online. No such things existed. This type of thing happens all the time now and is a serious erosion of privacy, made possible by increased data collection, data standardization, computers, and the Internet.

Even just 50 years ago, the concept was one of if someone wanted to obtain such information, they would have to really want/need it and commit themselves to it.... they would have to perhaps get in a vehicle, travel to some records place or courthouse, fill out forms, and wait a long time to then retrieve information that would be in non-machine format (paper with no OCR), and often pay some type of processing and location and duplication fees. All this helped to keep a check on abuse.

There are so many ways this can go wrong. Driving is a public activity, for example. Governments are now starting to track license plate data with cameras. (It is bad enough to collect such information in the first place, but that is a different topic). That information might be publicly available.... but what does it mean if all that data were posted on-line, in short-order, like this? Court records are "public" and we see how that is a problem. Housing records, gun registrations or licensing, business licensing, professional licensing, marriage records, political party affiliation, school registrations; the list goes on and on. Now take all these and store them "forever" and make them easy to get, free, and computer-readable and then allow people and businesses to download them en-mass and start linking everything together. Scary.

So while transparency can often be a good thing for society, we might have to re-examine what it means for information to be "publicly available" like this.

Re:Privacy

[mentil]

OTOH if everyone's dirty laundry were plainly out for anyone to see, people might stop criticizing others for things they have plainly also done. Less hypocrisy is good. This goes double for anything considered even slightly deviant related to sexuality.

A separate problem that needs addressing more is that employers tend to terminate any employee that catches the public eye for some controversy, regardless of if they're in the wrong. This is along the lines of whistleblower protection, in that employees need to be protected sometimes even if their employer might consider them a liability.

Re:Privacy

[Ichijo]

Driving is a public activity, for example. Governments are now starting to track license plate data with cameras. (It is bad enough to collect such information in the first place, but that is a different topic).

Every car on the road is a hazard, so from a safety perspective, it makes sense to collect license plate information from passing cars. The real issue is the data retention policy.

Not that it even matters. The roads are still filled with cars, so it seems the convenience of driving outweighs the loss of our vehicle's privacy. So maybe we should reconsider the way we force developers to build more parking than the market wants, and business owners to provide more of it than their customers want, and the way we pay people to drive everywhere by transferring wealth from people who don't drive to those who do. The loss of freedom and property rights preceded the loss of privacy by over half a century!

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

> OTOH if everyone's dirty laundry were plainly out for anyone to see, people might stop criticizing others for things they have plainly also done. Less hypocrisy is good.

You're joking right? It's well known with a contentious thing like abortion some women who are pro-life still get the abortion because they think their circumstance is somehow special or unique. They go into it pro-life and come out pro-life. There's a distinct lack of basic empathy, a strong sense of cognitive dissidence, and a strong sense of moral superiority. Knowing someone else's dirty laundry is just gossip or just fuels the sense of moral superiority. People are just too damn narcissistic to not be hypocrites.

Re:Privacy

[AmiMoJo]

The issue isn't really criticism, it's safety and privacy.

Many people would prefer that the fact they are elderly or disabled is not generally available to anyone with a couple of clicks, both because they are vulnerable to bad actors abusing that information and because medical privacy is important to them.

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

These people spent my childhood threatening to blow my face off if I so much as winked at one of their pure, precious daughters. They voted for Donald "Grab them by the Pussy" Trump, who stands accused of unannounced "inspections" of occupied changing rooms at the teenage beauty pageants he sponsored. There's an argument that enough sunlight might make the hypocrisy stark enough for others to call it out, but with the available evidence I think you've got the right of it.

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

The same document you link to states that pedestrians and cyclists are also hazards. Your general argument, then, would seem to support that cyclist and pedestrian information should be collected as well.

Re:Privacy

[drinkypoo]

OTOH if everyone's dirty laundry were plainly out for anyone to see, people might stop criticizing others for things they have plainly also done.

If you put a camera in everyone's bedroom and make it available to everyone then the world might become a better place. Or it might just become more repressed. But in actuality, you will never get to see everyone. Instead, only the rich have their channels in the bedrooms of the poor.

Substitute whatever you want for bedroom, nothing else has to change even slightly except that the Cohen reference would no longer make sense.

Re:Privacy

[cascadingstylesheet]

Even just 50 years ago, the concept was one of if someone wanted to obtain such information, they would have to really want/need it and commit themselves to it.... they would have to perhaps get in a vehicle, travel to some records place or courthouse, fill out forms, and wait a long time to then retrieve information that would be in non-machine format (paper with no OCR), and often pay some type of processing and location and duplication fees.

Depends on the information.

Your house and how much you paid for it, and of course, who you are, were public then, and well before too. I think even printed it in newspapers.

It was a kind of funky backup to deeds ... the transaction was literally public, so that it was much harder for someone to cry foul later.

I think it's still done that way?

Re:Privacy

[markdavis]

>"Your house and how much you paid for it, and of course, who you are, were public then, and well before too. I think even printed it in newspapers. "

Indeed. But in the example of the paper, it required getting the paper each day, searching it, and copying the information. Then you would have to aggregate it. You couldn't, on a whim, just instantly download every single record for an entire city and relate fields to other databases you might already have. I am not saying some of this information shouldn't be "public", just asking people to think about what barriers might be in place to prevent abuse of the information. In the above example, maybe some of these might apply:

1) Filling out a request form before access. Like a registration. Maybe also requested a reason for the data... and make THAT public, too.
2) Removing any mass download, allowing just individual queries by address or name.
3) Small transaction fees.
4) Artificial delays in information return or at least in registration.
5) Restricting by IP address to prevent automated scraping.
6) Allowing mass downloads but only if key identifiers are masked (like name or account number).
7) Limiting historical data as opposed to just current data.
8) Not allowing (by law) re-distribution or publication of collected mass data.
9) Notifying the subject of the information when it is accessed and by whom/when/stated purpose.

Re:Privacy

[Ichijo]

A moving car has thousands of times as much kinetic (destructive) energy as a person walking, there's a few orders of magnitude difference between the two.

Re:Privacy

[DarkOx]

Umm how about No!

Why don't we drop all the crap about protecting this and that. We are big enough, diverse enough, dynamic enough economy there is no need for such protection. If you boss wants to fire you because you are gay, black, Christian, Muslim, White, whatever - find somewhere better to work!

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, that will never work.

1. you are going against the unconditional God given right of employers (according to the GOP) to fire people at will and without proving cause.

2. Even if the number of people who do any particular thing becomes known, that will be grounds to some people to fire or kill them. If "God wills their punishment", then they will be hurt or killed at any effort. Also, governmental "science" policy that could be used for bigoted reasons or just because the decision made on current understanding is premature. And then there are policies that are purchased by corporations....

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

AmiMoJo is SO TRIGGERED right now you guys...

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, 50 years ago this information was still available, en masse. You just had to send a letter asking for it (and a check to pay for it) then you'd receive a printed hardcopy.

While it is faster and easier now, it was easily available to anyone, anywhere, before.

Re: Privacy

[tgrigsby]

Great idea.

You first.

Re:Privacy

[Anonymous Coward]

Now take all these and store them "forever" and make them easy to get, free, and computer-readable and then allow people and businesses to download them en-mass and start linking everything together. Scary.

As compared to what? Everything you describe, sans the "allow people [...] to download", already happens today. And it's been the case for decades, but only for those with money and resources. I'd say those two are not fair qualifers for something like this. And fairness was/is one of the prime reasons for having information public in the first place. Another one was to keep check on abuse, and now its argued that it enables another kind of abuse.

So what to do? As you explain, the case seems to be one of legislation not keeping up with technology, but does that mean that we shouldnt use technology to fulfill the purpose and intent of the law? I'd say no, because one's personal opinions/feelings about a law shouldnt factor into its application/execution. Such sentiments should be applied to changing the law. The alternative is a path to anarchy.

Personally, im much more worried about individuals and organisations with vast resources maintaining their current unfair advantage over the common citizen than i am about local burglars. Today's technology is enabling that advantage to produce results wich can greatly endanger democracy and given enough rope, our freedom.

It might be scary when information is available to everyone, but its even more scary when its only available to some.

Re:Privacy

[markdavis]

>"As compared to what? Everything you describe, sans the "allow people [...] to download", already happens today. "

As compared to 50 years ago, like I said in my original posting. 50, 100, 150, 200 years ago, we didn't have the types of dangers about "public information" because the tools were not there to abuse them like there are with computers and the internet. There were built-in barriers that limited the availability, usefulness, and impact of the data.

fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Not unusual nor unprecedented at all. In fact, if you go here (hey everybody, I'm doxxing Georgia!) you can download Georgia voter absentee files in State, County, and Municipal elections dating back to 2013.

Fake news.

Re: fake news

[Anonymous Coward]

Canâ(TM)t be fake news. I read it on the internet so it must be true. I am a very trusting person.

Re:fake news

[anegg]

Not unusual nor unprecedented at all. In fact, if you go here [ga.gov](hey everybody, I'm doxxing Georgia!) you can download Georgia voter absentee files in State, County, and Municipal elections dating back to 2013.

I just went to the link and downloaded absentee ballot information from a Georgia state-wide election in 2016 that included names, addresses, ballot status, and more. This may not be a good practice, but it is apparently a standard practice.

They don't benefit from it

[Anonymous Coward]

Kemp got the benefit,
The person who wrote it, will be some crappy Russian software engineer paid pennies, whose benefit is to not get poisoned for talking.
The person who applied it to the election server will not be getting millions either. He'll be well paid and on an NDA, like the various Cohen NDAs
for Trump and the head of the GOP fundraising.

If Daniels NDA can be broken, and Broidy's NDA can be broken, you can get that tech's NDA to break.

Kemp was quick to get the election servers erased immediately after a legal challenge was filed. A court needs to enjoin everyone to keep those servers till they can be examined forensically.

Re: They don't benefit from it

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, servers? Wiped? Court orders to preserve? Did you feel the same way about Hillarys email? Does it bother you at all that she wiped it despite orders, investigations, and the fact that ALL of her email was subject to FOIA Act preservation? Yet she wiped it and no one cared or did a god damned thing about it?

No. That did not and does not bother you at all. Hypocrite.

Re: They don't benefit from it

[Anonymous Coward]

When will they lock her up then?

Not voting is illegal in most one party regimes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to make that information classified.

Guess where those incomplete registrations came fr

[raymorris]

What you may not have seen, depending on your news source, is where those incomplete registrations came from.

99% of them came from his opponent. Georgia has a nice online registration system that cross-references with driver's licenses. People working for his opponent went out and registered a bunch of people using paper forms and made sure to leave certain fields blank, so that by state law they were considered "provisional". Provisional means, in this case, the person has to actually vote in order to "activate" the registration.

The opponent then ran ads deceptively trashig him for following state law and properly marking the registrations that the opponent purposely filed improperly.

Re:Guess where those incomplete registrations came

[Cyberax]

Except that it only does it with the drivers' license. If you don't have one - you're screwed.

I question this whole event!

[oldgraybeard]

What competent individual; or organization would put close to 300k rows worth of information in an excel spreadsheet. It is basically unusable for anyone not technically competent to manipulate it. The first thing someone like me would do is put it back in to a database where it belongs.
Who would put the information out in this fashion and say it is so the public can check on their absentee ballot. Granted these were most likely government employees/contractors who did this. Not the sharpest tacks in the box. But I would like to know if there is a paper trail of who signed off on this before jumping to any conclusions.
This had to be dumped from a database by a technical person in a format (csv) where they could easily import it in to a spreadsheet. I do this for clients all the time with small amounts of information.

TBH I don't really care either way. I am not a DEM or GOP anymore. Maybe the guy is that stupid. There sure seemed to be some dumb stuff going on in that state. I just think the conspiracy stuff is often over blown because carelessness, laziness or stupidity often come closer to being true.

Just my 2 cents ;)

Re:I question this whole event!

[sabbede]

Wait, you're taking issue with the file format? That's the most interesting response I've seen.

Voter rolls are public, and get published. If you've ever held a copy, you'd understand why an excel spreadsheet, even one that causes excel to grind nearly to a halt, is better.

Re:I question this whole event!

[oldgraybeard]

OK, maybe excel is what the real world uses even for big data sets. Just seems really odd to me but then I am not in the real world so to speak. Jokingly I tell people I create tech but don't use it much.

Just my 2 cents ;)

Re:I question this whole event!

[GonzoPhysicist]

It could have been exported into an Excel file from a more handy database format, I doubt this is just a straight copy of the master.

Re:I question this whole event!

[J053]

It's Georgia. They probably keep the entire voter registration "database" in a giant Excel spreadsheet.

Re:I question this whole event!

[sabbede]

I don't think I've ever thrown that much data at it, but like I said, still easier than the printed editions. Physically, they're like a cross between a set of encyclopedias and large-print phone books. Which much take a toll on the often elderly election volunteers.

Seems like headline is misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

https://gizmodo.com/no-brian-kemp-did-not-just-doxx-georgia-voters-but-the-1830295683

Russia and China thank-you Brian

[Anonymous Coward]

#MAGA

If you don't have one, you need to eventually vote

[raymorris]

If you don't have a driver's license or state ID, you need to vote within 26 months after you register. If you never vote, eventually the incomplete or incorrect registration becomes inactive and you need to register again whenever yo decude to actually vote.

Yes I keep saying that

[aepervius]

This is the same issue as the "right to forget" that so many decry. Decades ago you had a chance to rehabilit people in case of offense, or in case of incident (debt/accident etc...) have them have a second chance because people had to do an EFFORT to get data or collate it. So de facto we had the possibility to be forgotten. This is going away. Which is why I think the right to be forgotten is good (yes I am an Euro trash which think rehabilitation/second chance is not a dirty word).

The issue you speak about is a general one. Bad situation which were avoidable decades ago because data could not be easily gatherable or collatable are now becoming increasingly possible. I personally think the right that information do not get collated and stay semi private is a greater right than the one of the public think they have to get "informed" about everything and anything.

"Currently unoccupied properties"

[Bartles]

"could be used by criminals to target currently unoccupied properties."

This makes no sense. By definition these addresses need to be primary residences. How would the list be in the slightest bit helpful? If you are trying to find people that went on vacation or aren't living at the property, you still have to check them one by one. It's just as easy to drive around picking targets without a list. Or just use a phonebook.

Re:"Currently unoccupied properties"

[theM_xl]

Because this is a list of absentee voters, which by definition didn't expect to make it to the nearest booth come election day. Including a reason why - so scanning it for people that weren't at home (traveling) should be easy. Doesn't mean EVERYONE at the address is gone, and the information should rapidly get out of date the further from that date we get.

Re:"Currently unoccupied properties"

[Anonymous Coward]

Early voting strongly favored GOP so this is nothing but a hit list.

Democrats keep losing for a reason.

Legal doesn't imply moral.

More like someone has something to hide

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been epic. And I mean epic cheating by mercenary enemies if the state in many sections to favor mainstream globalists on the left and right. Check out Project Veritas

NPC above

[Anonymous Coward]

YouTube project Veritas

GDPR

[Anonymous Coward]

And then they try and claim GDPR is bad... I would have loved to see the fine for this. :)

Data aggregation = instant panic

[geekmux]

Personally, I do agree and have a problem with the "disabled, elderly, or traveling" detail, but then I really start to wonder how much of that information you can easily glean elsewhere (VA, AARP, etc.) Ironically, the campaign would have broken the law had they not released this voter information, so perhaps we should get our shit straight when it comes to laws regulating voter information vs. PII.

What really bothers me though is the seemingly instant panic we throw ourselves into because we find data in "aggregate". Having one pound of shit doesn't magically turn into something else when you add another 99 pounds to it, You just have more of the same shit. Before PII, SPI, GDPR, NIST and the other 31 flavors of ice screen started freezing data, do you know what we used to call an aggregate list of names, addresses, and phone numbers?

The White Pages.

Which of course is online now, searchable by anyone, and includes far more detail than we would have ever shoved in a phone book.

And if we're going to use the excuse of criminal efficiency, then I would argue that Home Depot selling shitty door locks and renting moving vans without performing a full criminal background investigation contributes to the "efficiency" of criminals. Besides, peoples own narcissism tends to be their downfall. Criminals define social media as one-stop shopping now.

Re:Data aggregation = instant panic

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only a day after the election and I have a list of addresses for potentially vacant properties in the state of Georgia. All I need to do is see who stated their reason as travelling. Sure I could dig around on Facebook looking for vacation photos, hoping to tie that name to an address in the phone directory. But this is soooo easy.

Re:Data aggregation = instant panic

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only a day after the election and I have a list of addresses for potentially vacant properties in the state of Georgia. All I need to do is see who stated their reason as travelling. Sure I could dig around on Facebook looking for vacation photos, hoping to tie that name to an address in the phone directory. But this is soooo easy.

Paved roads make it easy for criminals to get away. We should start digging up all this asphalt. Outlaw narcissism and shut down social media to protect oversharing idiots from themselves. Search engines should be illegal. How far are we really willing to take the "soooo easy" excuse?

Thankfully morals and laws still exist and prevent the overwhelming majority of humans from becoming criminals regardless of what they have access to, which is the true preventative measure.

THIS IS NOT A GAME

[Anonymous Coward]

Antifa mobs attacked Tucker Carlson at his home last night.
You're f***ing with the people who trying to take America back from the globalist cartels. You will get hurt.

The Russia investigation is a fraud and always was.

Re: THIS IS NOT A GAME

[Anonymous Coward]

Bring it. I've got a gun that was built to kill Nazis. It should have no difficulty killing a few more.

Re:If you don't have one, you need to eventually v

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't have a driver's license or state ID, you need to vote within 26 months after you register.

This is like when parents claim their baby is 26 weeks old.

If you don't vote every other year you are purged. Miss one election and you are out.
The great part is that if you shut down someones voting location or otherwise prevent them from voting a single election you can purge them.

People who supports that rule doesn't like democracy.

Privacy Consistency

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem I have is that google has stashed every credit and debit card users first and last name, and the last four digits of their card. From there purchases are mined and it is offered so that companies like Amazon, Target, KFC, and many others can tie your phone and its number, every computer you use, and email address, so they can spam you with ads and emails. People are okay with this.....But not this.

It really doesn't make any sense and it is nearly impossible to op out of it.

What did you expect from that

[Anonymous Coward]

despicable, racist piece of shit and vote manipulator par excellence?

Ohio publishes a lot more than that

[Anonymous Coward]

The Secretary of State's office has, for many years, made CSV files available on their website of all registered voters including their date of birth. If you have a restraining order against anyone and moved to avoid them, don't be a registered voter in Ohio.

Alternative And More Accurate Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

Butthurt Loser Attempts To Mischaracterize Public Record As Affront Worthy Of Outrage

News at never. No one cares.

NPC above

[Anonymous Coward]

Fake moon pie Russian hoax crap with no citations or factual evidence of any kind makes for a nice nothing burger. Antifa will be dead street meat soon. The decent people are more and more ready to support martial law against these domestic terrorists and their handlers in the mainstream news. Cuckanadistan is waiting for you.

Provisional ballots slow down the polls

[rsilvergun]

So that working men and women don't have time to vote. The point is chaos at the polls among the lower working class. It's cheating. They win by cheating, and we keep pretending that makes us a democracy.

Kemp doesn't count jack

[Anonymous Coward]

Kemp doesn't count jack. That isn't the system here.

He is upper management and wasn't even at the office on election night. Heck, I'd be impressed if he could even remote into the computers they have. After all, we've learned that IT at the SoS office is pretty clueless.

The counting all happens at the county election board level, then gets passed to the state where Kemp's reports (probably 2-3 layer below) put everything into a spreadsheet.

The State of Georgia uses spreadsheets WAY, WAY, too much. But if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Right?

For a long time, Democrats were doing the same job while on the ballot as well. Nobody ever thought their were any conflict of interests then.

Kemp is hardly an ideal guy. He's too political for me, but
I live in Georgia.
My name is in that released file.
I did not vote straight party ticket. I voted based on the individual running.
It is state law that much of that data be released as part of govt transparency.
There are some records which should not be released, MHO. The registration number probably can be used to correlate voting habits. I've seen them in other voting data previously released showing which election and primaries prior voting occurred.
The reason why someone requested the absentee ballot isn't important. Georgia doesn't require any reason be provided. I don't plan to ever stand in line to vote here again.
Absentee voting = paper. I don't understand why everyone doesn't do it this way.

    I wouldn't be against a state law that automatically addressed this for the SoS race.
While we're at it, a new privacy law should be enacted that removed names or "sensitive data" which could be used by criminals to target any specific person. And that privacy law should also say that city, county, state govt cannot proactively provide data to the Federal govt unless required by law or for criminal investigations where a legal warrant has been provided.

Re:Kemp doesn't count jack

[sjames]

Of course he wasn't actually there at the time, that's strictly amateur hour crap. He already purged the voter rolls based on demographics, made sure other demographics would have a harder time getting registered, closed polling places with unfavorable demographics to reduce turnout, etc. The manipulations happen in the days, weeks, and months before election day.

OH, and made sure Ga continued to use a system that leaves no paper trail where there have already been security and integrity concerns.

Oh good, distorted, miss-framed, partisan BS

[sabbede]

Voter rolls aren't just public record, they're published. It's required. This isn't unusual or unprecedented, it's common practice. I don't know why Williams has his panties in a bunch over not having to order a printed copy.

But, let me guess, it's okay if Dems do it?

[Trailer Trash]

I mean, this came out a couple of days ago:

https://politics.slashdot.org/...

Interestingly, few people thought they were evil. The left-leaning folks here who are getting the vapors didn't seem to show up for that one, presumably because it was also made by left-leaning folks.

Re:But, let me guess, it's okay if Dems do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Evil? No. Stupid? Yes. It's also not being done by a government official. And it's a significantly different use case with very different concerns. Details matter, everything doesn't just boil down into simple left vs. right comparisons.

Re:But, let me guess, it's okay if Dems do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) They don't give you a complete list, and they only show your friends, not your racist ass neighbor down the fucking street.

2) You have to sign up for it.

3) The people behind that measure are not the Secretary of State in charge of their own election process.

Re:But, let me guess, it's okay if Dems do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

"left" (aka, middle) people may seem more hypocritical in opinion . . . but the right (aka, extreme right) [adjustments made for USA] gets away at the administrative level with epic levels of disinformation, lies, and aggressive behavior.

Funny, they said that the court nominee debacle hurt Democrats, but leaving a position empty just because someone took their toys away is magnitudes worse. EVERY Obama appointee that got even the slightest flack before proposing them, they dropped. The republicans have been tossed every piece of legislation, appointments and everything else under-hand for years, sometimes even using the Tee.

There's a double standard in opinions, it's inversely proportional to the standard in practice . . . funny that.

The simplest explanation is probably the best one:
Democrats have, for years, embraced technology without knowing anything about it and it bites them in the ass.
Republicans have a PROUD history of voter suppression . . . occasionally a court slaps them down, if we're lucky.

But, let's all share your indignation.

Re:But, let me guess, it's okay if Dems do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't like either scenario, but the obvious difference is that in this case they specified whether people were disabled or not. I wonder if that qualifies as a HIPPA violation.

Re:But, let me guess, it's okay if Dems do it?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) There is a difference between a government agency collecting and publishing your data and a private company doing it. Government agencies are supposed to answer to the people who would be on that list. Private companies are under no such obligation. I'm not sure where you got your subject line of "if Dems do it". Are all tech companies now assumed to be filled with Democrats for some reason?

2) Apparently that link takes us to different pages. The comments I saw had pretty much everyone agreeing that being able to reverse search voter data is a bad idea. I didn't see any sort of partisan divide on that subject.

3) Are you seriously suggesting that this is a non-issue that only left-leaning people would have a problem with?

God, seeing more people getting highly rated comments these days for scoring "burn" points against their opposition group of choice instead of posting anything informative or insightful is getting sickening.

Opiod addicts.

[Anonymous Coward]

OTOH if everyone's dirty laundry were plainly out for anyone to see, people might stop criticizing others for things they have plainly also done. Less hypocrisy is good. This goes double for anything considered even slightly deviant related to sexuality.

Tell that to alcoholics and drugs addicts -especially those poor people caught up in the opioid epidemic. And when a poor girl is made an addict by her own doctors and then shamed by another doctor that's clueless, we got a real problem in this country.

People love to throw stones when they live in glass houses.

Plenty of politicians aren't hypocrites

[rsilvergun]

here's a bunch of them.

Look for politicians who don't take corporate PAC money and who, when interviewed, talk about specific policies and not fluffy nonsense like "Make America Great Again".

Why did anyone vote for him?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a gift from Brian Kemp to every identity thief! And this guy Kemp wants to be governor?!? Seriously?

Yikes

[cascadingstylesheet]

I'm sorry, doxing (even with public information) is the sole prerogative of "progressives".

You are way out of line!

Only if the voters turn on Trump

[rsilvergun]

and so far his approval rating hasn't budged. What killed Nixon was the voters turned on him and would have ended the Republicans if he wasn't impeached.

Trump's got a cult of personality. It doesn't matter what he does or even what he says. It's how he says it. His mannerisms fill people with hope and confidence. They love him.

No, if you don't vote *ever*, and the form is wron

[raymorris]

You misunderstand. The registration goes away if all of the above are true:
1) They don't use online registration.
2) They don't complete the paper form, submitting a partial registration
3) The person NEVER shows up to vote

As soon as they show up ONCE, the poll worker gets the information that was missing and that finalizes the registration.

This is quite deliberate and calculated

[Anonymous Coward]

The person who posted this list is a moron.

No, the person who posted this has an agenda. A very specific agenda. Discourage absentee / mail in ballots. They're harder to forge, easier to check, and can't be modified with a keystroke en masse the way electronic votes can. In other words, it's harder to steal an election (particularly a close election) with paper mail-in ballots than it is with a USB stick full of (potentially doctored) voting data. And many more absentee voters typically vote for one party over the other (hint: not the party that owns Kemp)

Does this feel like the Last and Final "Free and Fair" American Election to anyone else (even for very loose definitions of "Free and Fair")?

"Too Bigoted to Survive": RIP American Democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Explain to be how the Electoral College is racist, I'm dying to see how you came to that conclusion...

The electoral college was created as part of a compromise to get the slave states on board during and shortly after the American war of Independence. It was tied directly to another part of the same compromise: to count black slaves as "3/5ths of a man" for purposes of allocated Representatives based on population, which in turn translates directly to an electoral college vote.

It doesn't get a lot more racist than that ... and it is somehow historically fitting that such a disgusting remnant of our darkest past is responsible for the rise of American Fascism and the end of the American experiment in democracy. We've earned whatever horrors we've now brought down upon ourselves by tolerating this crap, and the two horrific presidents (George W. Bush, Trump) we've ended up with as a direct result of the electoral college this century alone.

Agrigating public data.

[fish_in_the_c]

I think people need to get over the idea that aggregate data is somehow different then data. Anyone with motivation and a little time can get the same data weather or not you aggregate it , so why make it hard.

hold their nose while being asked to kiss ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh, You missed Pelosi and Clinton. Slimy and slimier. Both beholden to bankers, both talk "progressive" while robbing from the poor. Together, so fucking horrible that the working class is now voting Republican.

Re:hold their nose while being asked to kiss ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Together, so fucking horrible that the working class is now voting Republican.

What do you mean "now"? The working class has been voting Republican for over 30 years now, ever since the neocons convinced them that removing taxes from the rich people would eventually hoist the working class up by the bootstraps.

Not counted if it's not close

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no need to count the absentee ballots if none of the elections are close than the number of absentee ballots. I think mine was counted twice in the last 5 years, and not at all in the previous 10.

Yes, it does slightly skew the voting totals, as absentee ballot voters used to be military, and are now old people, but it's nto a big deal.

This is why you shouldn't register to vote

[Anonymous Coward]

Being on government lists will never work in your favor.

Voting should be secret

[jd]

I don't care what the law currently is, it is nobody's business but yours if you voted, unless voting is mandatory.

Your current state of health, financial well-being, etc, absolutely should be private.

It's sickening that those normally critical of government intrusion tend to be the ones supporting this government intrusion.

Some exceptions, yes. Good that you're consistent. I'm in favour of government with mandatory access controls and I try to be consistent in that, too.

It's those who care nothing for what actually happens as long as their tribe takes from others that anger me.

Vote fraud found

[WolfWalker545]

One of my friends checked that and found that his neighbor, who died last year, voted in this election.

Re:Vote fraud found

[Anonymous Coward]

One of my friends checked and found that you're full of shit.

Hypocrites?

[Anonymous Coward]

If some hacker did this and called it a public information freedom exercises or something, all of Slashdot would celebrate.

Flase Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

"Kemp Doxes" is NOT the same thing as "Kemp's Office Doxes." Hang the Lügenpresse.

Re:Flase Headline

[Locke2005]

So Trump isn't responsible for anything the executive branch does? Why does he keep bragging about it then?

Re:Flase Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

So Trump isn't responsible for anything the executive branch does? Why does he keep bragging about it then?

Non-sequitur. Trump's bragging about things the executive branch does because he orders them to take those actions He is the causative agent. This article doesn't even try to establish that the source of the decision to make voter records public was Kemp - just guilt by association.

Politicians behaving badly

[Locke2005]

MAGAbomber wanna-bes, here's your chance to take out some Democrats!

So here's the thing

[Locke2005]

Somebody sent me several postcards saying that I had voted in the state of Washington. That means all the information in my voter registration, as well as my voting history, is ALREADY a matter of public record, available to anyone!

Re: "ran for governor while he was..."

[lamber45]

Maybe I'm missing something specific about Georgia's government structure, but in Michigan, it's fairly common for the incumbent Secretary of State to be running for Secretary of State (for reelection after the first term), or for a statewide office like Governor or Senator (in the second term; Michigan has term limits), with no public outcry. The path into Secretary of State is highly political, because the candidates are nominated by state party conventions (not a primary). In the current election, both candidates campaigned on, among other things, being the right person to keep voting "fair" (for their definition of "fair").

Aggregating Public Records is not Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

All of the information is public record. Hell, if you own a home, your address is public record, as is the tax card, plat map, and everything else about your home.

The information published does not include the actual vote, and contains no non-public information.

And, we all know that if Nancy Pelosi had done this, nobody would be saying jack shit about it.

And yeah, Kemp won. Get over yourselves.

You spelled Governor wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

We told Stacy Abrams what we think of Yankee Transplants here.

Ooo! Ooo! Pick me teacher!

[rsilvergun]

It's because their ideas aren't popular. Seriuosly, they're not. 90% of Americans support legal protections for pre-existing conditions. 70% of Americans support Medicare for all (52% of _Republicans_). 70% of Americans are pro-choice. And I've never met anyone but a member of the GOP inner circle who favors the kind of trickle down economics they popularized in Kansas (and apparently neither has Kansas, they just kicked Scott Walker to the Curb).

Americans are surprisingly left wing when you poll them. Which makes sense. The left wing tends to focus on worker's rights and quality of life, and most Americans are workers. We're not a nation of well to do aristocrats. There's not enough serfs to go around for that.

If the GOP ever stops cheating they'll stop winning.

I think the bigger news there

[rsilvergun]

is that enough ballots went "missing" that it would have swung the election to the GOP. Nobody contested the ballots were real or not. The GOP tried to steal the election. I think that's both obvious and terrifying.

Oh, and even bigger news, I didn't know about this, and I follow the news a lot. This should have been front page news. Especially if the constant complaints from the right about the "Liberal Media" were to be believed.

That's the trouble with the Democratic party

[rsilvergun]

it took you several paragraphs to explain all that. Meanwhile the GOP can get by with "Millions of illegal Mexicans are voting!" and call it a day...

It's hard to have a reasoned discussion with bad actors...

Re:That's the trouble with the Democratic party

[Anonymous Coward]

Meanwhile the GOP can get by with "Millions of illegal Mexicans are voting!" and call it a day...

Well, yeah, look at the drooling, knuckle-dragging audience. Of course the democrats have their own distraction that has proven to be most effective.

Barack Obama won two terms

[rsilvergun]

and the Dems just took the House. That's all the evidence these people need. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a 3 hour wait in line to vote at my left leaning districts polls....

They were always like this, it's their strength

[rsilvergun]

they have a laser like focus on their goal. And there is only one: shift as much money to themselves and their donors. Always, always, always follow the money.

The Dems will sometimes sell you out. Sometimes they won't. Even the worst (Pelosi & Schumer mostly) are happy as long as they get reelected and have pangs of conscience. Some of them (the Bernicrats) even have a real desire to make the world better. There's none of that with the GOP. And it makes them _strong_. When you focus on one and only one goal you can move mountains.

Watch what the GOP does. What it's always done. Don't listen to their rhetoric. Do not, under any circumstances, watch a Trump rally. Those are there to make you _feel_. You need to think. Watch how they vote.

Oh God No

[rsilvergun]

we're human beings. We are not "good people". Air everybody's dirty laundry and we'd descend on each other in a blood orgy until no one was left.

Strawman

[rsilvergun]

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.

Not doxing

[reanjr]

Doxing involves releasing private info, not aggregating public info.

Like Caesar said, divide and conquer works

[shanen]

I think what happened is that they got tired of negotiating in good faith and decided it was easier to move the goalposts. The left wing just left the political playing field and went over to science fiction, but the right wingers were much more serious about it and they kept moving the goal posts until they fell down the rabbit hole and wound up in Alice's Wonderland. Really hard to reach rational negotiated settlements with flocks of mad hatters and herds of March hares, but that is where most of the GOP is these days.

Other factors, too, but mostly I'm disappointed that this story generated lots of smoke but very little "funny". Of the 10 matches, 7 were to a sig, one was to the header, one wasn't funny, and the last one was only slightly funny. That's out of 154 posts that are currently visible to me.

Shithole Country.

[Anonymous Coward]

What more neer be said?

Shithole Country. BIGLY.

Doxes

[Tulsa_Time]

I don't think that word means what you think it means....

Public masturbation of 462549

[Anonymous Coward]

Z^-1

Re:Guess where those incomplete registrations came

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you also didn't know that this is the first time in GA's history that they enforced this law. Strangely only when it could be used in their favor, and not once been used when it could harm Republicans. The bragging about it also seems to tip off that it was a calculated effort.

Absentee ballot requests are public records in man

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worth noting that absentee ballot requests are public records, including your address and if you've returned your ballot. In many states. As are many aspects of voter registration information and even which elections you voted in. Parties amd candidates use this information for outreach and campaigns. The information might not be online or might have a cost to request, but that wouldn't stop people from aggregating it and posting it online. Just makes a little harder.

but the terrorists are right wingers

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet no one died. But for some reason we have RIGHT WING TERRORISTS killing people weekly in this country. We just had another one today in Thousand Oaks. You don't seem to have a problem with them.

You obviously think your shit smells good

[Crashmarik]

and tastes sweet as well

If you claim you can't tell the difference between antifa and Democrats, you're obviously both trolling, and an asshole.

Really ?

"Let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere. We've got to get the children connected to their parents," -- Maxine Waters

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/25...

We owe the American people to be there for them, for their financial security, respecting the dignity and worth of every person in our country, and if there is some collateral damage for some others who do not share our view, well, so be it, -- Nancy Pelosi

https://www.washingtontimes.co...

Re:You obviously think your shit smells good

[Aighearach]

Yep. Really.

Pointing at two women and giving partial quotes with selective added emphasis that take their words out of context and make them sound like something different, that does indeed underline that you're an asshole, and you're trolling.

We owe the American people to be there for them, for their financial security, respecting the dignity and worth of every person in our country, and if there is some collateral damage for some others who do not share our view, well, so be it, but it shouldn’t be our original purpose

What kind of dumb fuck is against politicians caring about the American people's financial security, dignity, and worth? You're hating on Nancy Pelosi for saying, basically, that if you're against American values it is OK if you don't get what you want. And you're against Maxine Waters for advocating that Americans petition their government for redress of grievances more often! Pathetic.

Re:You obviously think your shit smells good

[Crashmarik]

You just made it worse for your case.

What the first part does is amplify the fact that people that disagree with her deserve the damage as you just showed.

What kind of dumb fuck is against politicians caring about the American people's financial security, dignity, and worth?