I would cast my drop-in-the-ocean vote if it didn’t require needlessly reckless disclosures. The question is- which states offer more privacy than others? These are some of the issues:
publication of residential address
It’s obviously fair enough that you must disclose your residential address to the election authority so you get the correct ballot. But then the address is public. WTF? I’m baffled that the voter turnout isn’t lower.
Exceptionally, Alaska enables voters to also supply a mailing address along with their residential address. In those cases, the residential address is not made public. But still an injustice as PO Boxes are not gratis so privacy has a needless cost.
Some states give the mailing address option exclusively to battered spouses. So if you are a victim of domestic abuse, you can go through a process by which you receive an address for the public voting records that differs from your residential address. Only victims of domestic abuse get privacy that should be given to everyone.
publication of political party affiliation
You are blocked from voting in primary elections unless you register a party affiliation, in which case you can only vote in the primary election of that party. A green party voter cannot vote in the democrat primary despite the parties being similar. The party you register in is public. So e.g. your neighbors, your boss, and your prospective future boss can snoop into your political leanings.
AFAIK, this is the same for all states.
publication of your voting activity (which is used for shaming)
Whether you voted or not is public. If you register to vote but do not vote, it’s noticed. There is a shaming tactic whereby postcards are sent saying “your neighbors the Johnsons at 123 Main St. voted early – will you do your civic duty too? Note that the McKinneys at 125 Main St. have not voted; perhaps you can remind them?” They of course do this in an automated way, so non-voters know their neighbors are receiving postcards that say they did not partake in their civic duty.
forced disclosure to Cloudflare
These states force all voter registrations through Cloudflare:
- Arizona
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Idaho
- New York
- Ohio
- Rhode Island
- Washington
That’s not just public info, but everything you submit with your registration including sensitive info like DL# and/or SSN goes to Cloudflare Inc. Cloudflare is not only a privacy offender but they also operate a walled garden that excludes some demographics of people from access. Voters can always register on paper, but whoever the state hires to do the data entry will likely use the Cloudflare website anyway. So the only way to escape Cloudflare getting your sensitive info in the above-mentioned states is to not register to vote.
To add to the embarrassment, the “US Election Assistance Commission” (#USEAC) has jailed their website in Cloudflare’s walled garden. Access is exclusive and yet they proudly advertise: “Advancing Safe, Secure, Accessible Elections”.
solutions
What can a self-respecting privacy seeker do? When I read @BirdyBoogleBop@lemmy.dbzer0.com’s mention¹ of casting a “spoiled” vote which gets counted, I thought I’ll do that… but then realized I probably can’t even get my hands on a ballot if I am not registered to vote. So I guess the penis drawing spoiled vote option only makes a statement about the ballot options. It’s useless for those who want to register their protest against the voter registration disclosures.
Are there any states besides Alaska that at least give voters a way to keep their residential address out of publicly accessible records?
- it was mentioned in this thread: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/8502419
Correction: Many states have open primaries, meaning you don’t need to register with a party to vote in primaries (but you can only vote in one). Illinois has open primaries, for example.
Illinois also requires two-party consent for voice recording, meaning you can only be filmed in public without sound.
You can also file taxes here for general delivery, meaning you don’t need to have a mailing address, you just get your documents sent to the post office for pickup, no PO box needed.
Is there any reason to register a party affiliation in the case of open primaries? The more important question: if you vote in a democratic primary, is it public that you did so? If yes, then the privacy factor would be mostly the same.
(edit) I just noticed there is a national voter reg form (paper format) and for Illinois the instructions say:
“7. Choice of Party. Leave Blank. Exception: for primary elections, unless a voter only wishes to vote on public questions, a party preference should be indicated.”
Seems a bit counter-intuitive considering the open primary. The instructions for Ohio seem more intuitive for an open primary than any other state in those instructions:
“7.Choice of Party. You do not register with a party if you want to take part in that party’s primary election. Party afliation is established by voting at a primary election.”
That has some interesting relevance to my other thread. I wonder if you call Discovercard customer support from Illinois whether they can take your voice print without your express consent.
That’s surprising because you would need to know that you have something waiting there. If I send you some correspondence via general delivery (“poste restante” in French which is internationally recognized), you would know about it unless I told you in some way. General delivery sits for 2 weeks and if not collected it gets returned. So you would have to visit the post office every 2 weeks and ask if the IRS has sent you anything, correct?
W.r.t to the topic at hand, it’s interesting to note that homeless people can register to vote if instead of an address they unambiguously write their usual hang-out where they can often be found; e.g. “park bench near Main St. and Broad St.”, “under the yada yada bridge” or use the address of a homeless shelter.
Yes, it will be public that you cast a vote in that primary. You are not required to register a party, they don’t even ask. I refuse to register for a party, even when I lived in South Dakota, where declaring a party is part of registering, I register independent.
Yes, they inform you that you will be recorded before they start the recorded portion of the call.
Yes, with general delivery it’s on you to check. And I know this exactly because I helped a bunch of unhoused neighbors file to get their stimulus a few years back.
I can’t help but wonder if you could register to vote with “no fixed residence” even if you have a home, as though you were homeless. Something to look into.
I suppose that could be considered “consent”. I think Discovercard always said something like “the call will be recorded for QA”, but there was a recent change. Now they say add something like “your voice will be used to identify you” (i.e. voice printing), which seems to be an extra measure of intrusion.
Under some legal theories a simple notification would not hold up as /consent/. Well, I could be confusing EU law. Not sure about Illinois but consent in some contexts (e.g. certainly in the GDPR) must be “freely given” in which case there must be a clear choice. If service is refused as a consequence of non-consent and the consent was requested for a collection that was not actually necessary for the performance of the contract, then the consumer was not actually given a choice but rather a “bend over or fuck off” ultimatum in which case consent fails to be “freely given”. I guess the legal standards of protection in most of the US is probably quite poor on this. CA has the CCPA which I have not read but it would be interesting if they have any fairness clauses along those lines.
There is a trick in some 2-party consent states that you can use against the corps. Suppose a telemarketer calls. You can “accidentally” have an answering machine pick up and start a greeting shortly after you answer and as soon as you realize it’s a telemarketer. Then you shout over the greeting and say “looks like my answering machine downstairs picked up at the same time; is it okay if I let that go?” Telemarketers never think it’s a trick to record evidence of their illegal call, so they usually say “sure, no problem”.