Voter registration makes your personal info public

Editor,

With election season upon us and our campus once again swarming with campaign volunteers, it seems important to remind students that, if they value their privacy at all, it is vitally important that they do not register to vote.

This seems almost heretical in our society, with its zeal for participating in elections, but the dangers of registering are simply too large. Once a registration has gone through, anyone who knows your name and date of birth may look up your registration on the Bernalillo county website. This gives them access to your full name, party affiliation, and most troublingly, your address. Anyone at all may use the website, and there are no safeguards on the information whatsoever.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, “Yeah, that’s a bit weird, but hey, it’s not like my birthday is all that common knowledge,” (unless someone can view your Facebook page, of course). However, the privacy issues that occur with registration are far more serious than this. Our county clerk is willing to sell its voter records to anyone affiliated with a campaign, and both the Democrats and the Republicans make a habit of buying this data at regular intervals. Once they have it, they enter it into a database program (the Democrats’ version is called Vote Builder).

Information stored includes date of birth, phone number, address, time of residence at that address, party preference and, in some cases, ethnicity.

This information stays in the program basically forever, and the data is searchable by name. Further, if more than one person living in a house is registered to vote, it’s usually fairly simple to use this information to determine the relationship between the various inhabitants. So, for instance, if you’re an elderly woman who lives alone, anyone who looks at Vote Builder will know this. Or if your son has recently returned from college and had to move back in with you, total strangers will know about it. This would be pretty creepy even if it were only highly-vetted professionals looking at the information.

As far as the national races go, the campaigns may very well put the effort into making sure that only people who have some business looking at the database are granted access. However, in state campaigns, no vetting takes place. These organizations are generally so starved for volunteers that they’ll accept anyone who’s willing to show up for a few hours, no questions asked.

These volunteers are then given access to Vote Builder to help the candidate figure out which neighborhoods and houses to visit and which people to contact.

The potential for abuse of this system is pretty much limitless, and the state campaigns do nothing to stop such misuse. All of this would, I suppose, be acceptable if the rewards for voting were greater. As it stands, the risk (getting entered into Vote Builder or the Republican equivalent and giving strangers access your personal information forever) far outweigh the rewards (having an infinitesimally small chance of deciding which of two fairly similar candidates will be given nominal control of this country for a few years). So, the next time you see one of those eager young people with their clipboard and t-shirt, turn around and walk away from them. It just isn’t worth it.

Lawrence Allen
UNM student