Georgia's Secretary of State Brian Kemp Doxes Thousands of Absentee Voters 452
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Georgia's secretary of state and candidate for state governor in the midterm election, Brian Kemp, has taken the unusual, if not unprecedented step of posting the personal details of 291,164 absentee voters online for anyone to download. Kemp's office posted an Excel file on its website within hours of the results of the general election, exposing the names and addresses of state residents who mailed in an absentee ballot -- including their reason why, such as if a person is "disabled" or "elderly."
The file, according to the web page, allows Georgia residents to "check the status of your mail-in absentee ballot." Millions of Americans across the country mail in their completed ballots ahead of election day, particularly if getting to a polling place is difficult -- such as if a person is disabled, elderly or traveling. When reached, Georgia secretary of state's press secretary Candice Broce told TechCrunch that all of the data "is clearly designated as public information under state law," and denied that the data was "confidential or sensitive." "State law requires the public availability of voter lists, including names and address of registered voters," she said in an email. "While the data may already be public, it is not publicly available in aggregate like this," said security expert Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec, who lives in Georgia. Williams took issue with the reasons that the state gave for each absentee ballot, saying it "could be used by criminals to target currently unoccupied properties." "Releasing this data in aggregate could be seen as suppressing future absentee voters in Georgia who do not want their information released in this manner," he said.
The file, according to the web page, allows Georgia residents to "check the status of your mail-in absentee ballot." Millions of Americans across the country mail in their completed ballots ahead of election day, particularly if getting to a polling place is difficult -- such as if a person is disabled, elderly or traveling. When reached, Georgia secretary of state's press secretary Candice Broce told TechCrunch that all of the data "is clearly designated as public information under state law," and denied that the data was "confidential or sensitive." "State law requires the public availability of voter lists, including names and address of registered voters," she said in an email. "While the data may already be public, it is not publicly available in aggregate like this," said security expert Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec, who lives in Georgia. Williams took issue with the reasons that the state gave for each absentee ballot, saying it "could be used by criminals to target currently unoccupied properties." "Releasing this data in aggregate could be seen as suppressing future absentee voters in Georgia who do not want their information released in this manner," he said.
Why did they remove it then? (Score:5, Informative)
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? (Score:5, Funny)
Document successfully erased from the internet. Whew, that was close.
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Brian Kemp's Badass Georgia Governor 'big truck' Campaign Ad :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:Why did they remove it then? (Score:5, Informative)
The link is just shitty. It's actually http://sos.ga.gov/admin/files/Absentee%20Ballot%20Status%20File.xlsx
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An Anonymous Coward noted:
The link is just shitty. It's actually http://sos.ga.gov/admin/files/... [ga.gov]
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 [amazon.com] ...
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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."
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Can someone explain this data? I see these numbers for "Ballot Status" but no clue what they mean:
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.)
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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 th
Re:Why did they remove it then? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
"it is not publicly available in aggregate" (Score:5, Insightful)
ISTM that security expert Jake Williams is relying on security by obscurity.
Ends justify the means (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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"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.
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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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Well, Democrats haven't had a utter loony in office in a very long time
You haven't seen my City Council!
They were always like this, it's their strength (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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
Privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Yes I keep saying that (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Every car on the road is a hazard [nzta.govt.nz], 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 lo
I question this whole event! (Score:2)
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 b
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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.
Data aggregation = instant panic (Score:2)
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
Oh good, distorted, miss-framed, partisan BS (Score:3)
But, let me guess, it's okay if Dems do it? (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, this came out a couple of days ago:
https://politics.slashdot.org/... [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.
Strawman (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Kemp (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Kemp (Score:5, Insightful)
And we know that NYC is a bastion of the Republican Party!
Re:Kemp (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 sadl
Ooo! Ooo! Pick me teacher! (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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 writ
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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.
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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 ind
Re:Kemp (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
So supply the link
Re: Kemp (Score:5, Informative)
Ballots found after the election [thehill.com], breaking heavily for Franken.
Felons casting illegal votes in MN [washingtonexaminer.com]
Ballots "found" 5 weeks after the election [wikipedia.org] change the results by being just enough in favor of the loser, the Democrat, who by virtue of the found ballots, won the election.
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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.
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By "a little too coincidental", you mean that the Republicans behind the electoral fraud didn't do a very good job.
Re:Kemp (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Plenty of politicians aren't hypocrites (Score:2, Insightful)
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".
Re:Kemp (Score:5, Informative)
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.
He also fought to keep the paperless voting (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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... [snopes.com]
"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? [washingtontimes.com]
At least he didn't take a hammer and smash the server, like someone else did with their old cellphones [washingtontimes.com].
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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.
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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 w
Provisional ballots slow down the polls (Score:2)
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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 again
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Re:Kemp (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 th
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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.
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Re:Kemp (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Here is a list of countries that require a valid voter ID to cast a vote on election day. [external-preview.redd.it]
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
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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"?
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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.
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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...
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If you don't have one, you need to eventually vote (Score:2)
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.
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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?
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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.
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You do realize this was an attack specifically against people who did make the effort to vote, right?
Re:Pointless exercise (Score:5, Insightful)
Public information being made public isn't an "attack".
Re:Pointless exercise (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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You have no right to my private data, only public data - voting records are public, my "information" is private.
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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... [ga.gov] - you can download absentee voter records from the past few year's elections.
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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:Freedom of Information Act (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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And FOIA is involved how? I was specifically addressing a claim that FOIA is somehow to blame.
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Comment directed at parent, not you.
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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.