Re:191M US Voters’ Personal Info Exposed by Misconfigured Da...
by billyhoffman on Monday December 28, 2015 @11:07AM
(#10801748)
Party registration is not private. It's public. Even if it was private in many states you can only vote in a primary with you are a registered member of that party which are then included in the voter registration lists.
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Re:191M US Voters’ Personal Info Exposed by Misconfigured Da...
by saalweachter on Monday December 28, 2015 @12:40PM
(#10802249)
The party affiliation data in the voter roles is probably one of the most heavily used fields in there to boot. A lot of petitions need to be signed by a certain number of registered party members -- the local party apparatus has to get signatures each (election) year to demonstrate that they are indeed the local apparatus for that party, individuals wanting to primary need a certain number of signatures to get on the primary ballot, you may also need to collect signatures to force an open (write-in) primary with no specified candidates...
Campaigns will also use it to target their literature; you might send one mailer to the members of your own party ("X is a totally loyal party member, here's seven things he did to support our core party values!"), another mailer to the opposition party ("X is not a total baby eater, here's five ways he crossed party lines to support things you probably care about!"), and a spattering of other mailers to the third-parties to emphasize support for their particular interests.
The weirder thing to me is that these databases also include birthdays. You could send birthday cards to everyone.