Open Records & Election Flaws

Greg Borowski continues his excellent coverage on local election flaws:

In the United States, your ballot is secret, but almost everything else about an election is part of the public record: Who voted and at what ward. Where they live. How old they are. Even what number they were in line.

Until recently, that is.

At least in Wisconsin, where a 2003 change in state law put the birth dates of voters off limits to the public, making it nearly impossible to determine whether someone voted twice, a felon voted improperly, or someone voted as a dead person.

And in Milwaukee, where officials have denied access - for now - to nearly all information about the Nov. 2 election, citing an ongoing local-federal investigation into possible voter fraud.

The irony: The investigation was started only after the Journal Sentinel revealed a host of problems about the election - including 7,000 votes that are unaccounted for - by examining information it obtained through open records requests.

Posted by James Zellmer at March 13, 2005 7:32 AM | Subscribe to this site via RSS:
Posted to Politics