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Are you registered to vote in New York City? If so, then anyone can find out your party affiliation, full name and home address down to the apartment number — all with a few mouse clicks.
The city’s Board of Elections recently posted its voter enrollment lists to its website, a massive upload of thousands of pages, covered in tiny all-caps letters, that offer a district-by-district breakdown of voters sorted by party and street name — one line for each of the 4.6 million active registered voters.
City officials said that the information was already public record, and that a new forum did not change its availability. But the move raised alarms among privacy advocates and some election experts, who said the ease of access could play into the hands of mail scammers, internet trolls and domestic violence perpetrators.
register to vote in NYC and any nut, activist, employer, stalker has access to your address, your apt. number, and your party affiliation. Quite the price to pay for voting...
But knowing your party affiliation isn't the same thing as knowing how you vote.
I have been a registered Republican most of my life, but I voted for Democrats as often as I did for Republicans. I have always voted my conscience, not a party line.
On Ancestry when doing genealogy you can often find out what party your ancestors were.
And You would be surprised to find out what people can find out about you online.
Voter registration is public record. It's never really been private.
How you vote in the voting booth itself, should be private, and is.
Apparently, the records were available with a few hoops. this has changed as of January, 2019. did you read the article posted?
In New York, anyone can request comprehensive voter data from the state or local Board of Elections, which usually provides the information on a compact disc. Political parties have long used the information to target their fliers, phone calls and door-knocking campaigns.
But Albert Fox Cahn, the executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a privacy advocacy group, said there was a “big difference” between information that is technically public as a matter of law, and functionally and immediately available to anybody who wants it.
Most jurisdictions will release voter data only after a request from someone who must give their name and contact information, or will give the data only to certain groups, such as political parties. Some charge a nominal fee.
That may be a low bar for access, but it is an important one nonetheless, said Jessica Baldwin-Philippi, an assistant professor at Fordham University who studies digital media and political campaigns.
Last edited by texan2yankee; 04-28-2019 at 01:06 PM..
My wife ran for office and they brought in a consultant (yes, even in little towns this is how it is done).
This was pre-internet...or at least "not todays inter web".
They knew everything....in a general sense. It's not hard to take that data and overlay it on campaign and other contributions, which are (or were - before Citizens United, etc.) public.
Basically they knew who the likely voters were and how they voted.
In other news, today you can look at my house online and even see my hot tub. You can find out the property taxes I paid....there are even companies who put ALL that data together and will dice and slice it any way you want to target me perfectly.
"it does include phone numbers, email and postal addresses as well as more than 400 personal characteristics, such as whether a person is a smoker, if they own a dog or cat, their religion and a multitude of personal interests"
400? Can any of us even think of 400 personal characteristics on ourselves?
This is the new normal and was exactly how Cambridge Analytica operated. You can effectively target any of those 400 characteristics. If I know you love cats I can have you see ads online or send you postcards saying Joe Dog wants to do away with Cats.
Shrug, I signed a petition to recall our governor a few years ago & that petition was released. I didn't care.
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