[EL] Security issues with revealing residential location

[Lori Minnite]

Many states have provisions in their election codes for concealing the 
addresses of people who are crime victims and want to keep their 
addresses off the publicly available voter file.   Since elections are 
administered by the government, the government is going to need to know 
where voters live.  For those who believe transparency in election 
administration is a good anti-dote to corruption, the public needs to 
know what the government is doing when it tallies votes.  Making the 
voter file a matter of public record, with exceptions for people where 
the release of their address might put them in harm's way, seems like a 
reasonable compromise.

Lori Minnite

On 9/11/2011 10:56 AM, Jon Roland wrote:
> A few years ago a guy was being burglarized every few months. So 
> sooner would he replace the stolen items, than someone would break in 
> and take them again. He even moved a couple of times, and the 
> burglaries followed him. Finally he asked a police detective what he 
> could do. The detective advised him to move again and when he did, to 
> put his utilities in fictitious names and register to vote at a nearby 
> vacant lot, and use a private mail box service for receipt of official 
> mail. He explained that is what most police and public officials do 
> who don't have 24/7 security to protect them.
>
> Disclosing your physical location is providing criminals with a 
> shopping cart. Gone are the days when one could live in peace and 
> didn't even have to lock one's doors. Today such security concerns 
> have gone from being paranoid to being rational. The wise person today 
> puts himself into his own protection program, because one never knows 
> when one will have or acquire real threats to one's safety.
>
> The authorities of course would like to know where everyone is. But do 
> you really want the authorities to know where you live, or be able to 
> track your movements? especially when any corrupt cop can access it 
> and pass it on to criminal cohorts?
>
> We have been discussing the disparate impact of voter qualification 
> systems on some minorities, but what about on the properly paranoid? 
> We need a qualification system that does not compromise physical 
> security of voters. If you want to do something useful, figure out a 
> way for protected witnesses to vote without getting whacked, then 
> apply the same system to everyone.
> -- Jon
>
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