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.”
People on
Twitter quickly noticed, expressing anger.
https://t.co/1yqmo5dF92
Brian Kemp is so good at his job as GA's
secretary of state that he just posted the full names and addresses of everyone
who filed an absentee ballot. I don't even know who to tag in this.
@brooklynmarie plz advise.
— macho ayn randy savage (@hooper_x)
November 7, 2018
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.
That might
be technically true. Voter and electoral roll data is public and available,
usually for a fee, though rules vary state by state. Names and addresses of
voters can be requested from each state’s electoral commission or secretary of
state’s office. Political analytics firms often taken this data and supplement
it with their own polling data to try to determine potential swing voters.
State laws
put heavy restrictions on what can be done with voter data; rules that may not
apply to the general public who can now just readily download hundreds of
thousands of voter records.
It’s little
surprise that the way Kemp’s office approached confirming absentee ballots was
met with anger.
“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.
Not long
after Owojela’s Blog’s inquiry, the link to the downloadable file had been
removed from the website.
Republican
candidate for governor Kemp — at the time of writing — received 50.3 percent of
the vote on Tuesday, ahead of Democratic rival Stacey Abrams, who currently
serves as the minority leader in the state’s House of Representatives.
Kemp, who as
secretary of state effectively runs the state’s elections despite running in
one, has been accused of voter suppression in recent weeks, including accusing
the Democrats of hacking his office’s election systems, citing no evidence.
It’s not the first time he’s pulled the hacking card — Kemp tried a similar
move two years ago.
Kemp was
also responsible for purging the voter records of more than 50,000 minority
voters ahead of this week’s elections.
Abrams has
refused to concede in the race for governor, amid hopes of a runoff.
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