Obligatory Dave Chappelle commentary:
http://comedy-quotes.com/dave-chappelle/political_affiliations.html
This sort of information should not be pubic. Does anyone have a compelling reason to offer as to why it should be?
Of course it has to be public. If Charlie Q Citizen of 154 Oak Street did not vote, but the record shows him casting a vote, then there’s a problem.
And anyone needs to be able to audit that information – investigators, newspapers, concerned citizens.
Should it be publicized like that? No.
It definitely shouldn’t be pubic, though.
I got one of these too in yesterday’s mail, and I gotta say it really pisses me off. All I can think to do is send them an email promising they will never get a nickel out of my pocket.
I little research is making me very leery of the Greater Wisconsin Political Fund.
Their website has no “contact us” link, no names, no it solicits money but not volunteers, and the contact info they have is the same as the Greater Wisconsin Committee.
The Greater Wisconsin Committee is another shadowy organization, according to this article in Madison’s Isthmus newspaper:
The Fund seems to be the openly political arm of the Committee, though the committee claims non-partisanship.
Wisconsin native here: proud of it until just last week when I finally snapped.
How many hours left until the incessant Robo-calls and the misleading mailers and the inflammatory TV commercials end?
And why don’t I just stop answering the landline and watching TV until Tuesday’s over?
I would be livid if I got a mailing like that. I understand that its public information. If I wanted to, I could find out if my neighbor’s voted, but it just seems like such an invasion of privacy for an entity to send that info out without anyone requesting it.
As to the books, they are going away in my state. There is a new gizmo that allows a poll worker to swipe a voter’s driver’s license and be able to tell if they are registered to vote and if they are at the right poll. The voter signs the screen before getting the ballot.
As a Records Manager, this distresses me. Those records are supposed to be kept forever, but technology changes so fast and data is always lost during the migrations.
Oops, sorry for the highjack.
tl;dr version. I share the outrage.
I’ll be in my voting booth.
Yes! Come hang out at the dope, where there’ll be no mention of…nvm.
Fellow Wisconsinite here. I feel your pain. It’ll be over soon. For a little while, at least.
I’m not getting the outrage here. This isn’t information about HOW you voted, just whether or not you voted at all. Big whoop … why would that information bother anyone? If we’re going to be all, “OMG, voter fraud, show your ID, prove you are a legal voter, SAVE DEMOCRACY!” then this is just the reasonable next step, right?
Now, as for your name being on a flyer available to the neighborhood crack dealer or whatever, I kind of understand … but if the name’s not matched with an address, I still don’t quite get the anger.
The name IS matched with an address.
So wait. There’s a list I can check against for when people complain about their political leaders?
“BLAH BLAH BLAH OBLAMER BLAH BLAH BLAH”
Well hey, I see you didn’t bother to vote in 2008, so SHUT THE FUCK UP. You had your chance then and you couldn’t be bothered to participate, so as far as I’m concerned you got fuck all to say now…
There could actually be some value in this.
Right. So they know you didn’t vote.
In Wisconsin, at least, anyone can request a voter list, and the list has a check mark next to each election each party participated in for the last 10 elections. Those lists are used to find people who don’t vote regularly and could be strongarmed to come to the polls.
I think, but I’m not sure, that the voter’s party affiliation, if any, is also public record. You can see how this could be quite useful for party workers looking for a specific vote.
if the state has an open primary then you never have to disclose your party affiliation at the polls. states with a closed primary you would have your party affiliation recorded.
If you don’t like the laws about disclosure of voter names, then vote for a representative who will change them.
This could just be my partisanship and general paranoia talking, but I sort of wonder if this might actually be a smear attempt trying to make it look like a Democratic-affiliated organization is doing something obnoxious.
It could be real – left-leaning groups are way more likely to try to push non-voters and occasional voters to the polls than right-leaning groups. But it’s hard for me to imagine how anyone working in politics could possibly think this would do anything besides make the group sending it out look bad.
Yup, that’s how a county GOP group in Illinois found out my husband and I chose Democratic ballots in a primary, as noted above (and as johnpost noted, we have open primaries).
I kind of wondered about that, but the people behind the Greater Wisconsin Committee referenced in Boyo Jim’s post are mostly trial lawyers, and hence there’s a good chance they are actual Democrats/left-leaners.