BreachExchange mailing list archives
Louisiana elections chief concerned about identity theft
From: Erica Absetz <eabsetz () opensecurityfoundation org>
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2013 13:33:13 -0500
http://www.thetowntalk.com/article/20130117/NEWS01/130117001/Louisiana-elections-chief-concerned-about-identity-theft BATON ROUGE, La. — If you registered to vote at a table set up at a mall or some other place where volunteers were signing up new voters in Louisiana, you took a chance that your identity could have been stolen. Secretary of State Tom Schedler and the State Board of Election Supervisors are asking the Legislature to add protections that could make it safer to register at such events. That's one of several law changes that will be suggested to the Legislature. "If you want to steal people's identity, just set up a table to register people to vote," Schedler said Wednesday at a meeting of the House and Governmental Affairs Committee. He said he's not suggesting that people do that, but prospective voters should beware and make sure that it's a legitimate registration drive before supplying personal information. Registration forms ask for Social Security numbers and other personal identification, and anyone who wanted more could add it to the form. "It's amazing to me, in this day and time, that people would go up to a total stranger and give all that personal information," said Fred Gwin, head of the fraud division in Schedler's office. Gwin said one woman came to the polls to vote in the presidential election claiming she registered to vote at such a drive, but there was no record of her registration being turned in. One way to combat the problem, as proposed by the election supervisors, would be to register those who conduct registration drives. Another proposal is to make it a felony to copy someone's voter registration. Another proposed change in election law is to allow registrars of voters to make changes, at the request of voters, in the addresses of active voters. Currently, the law says registrars can change only inactive voters who report address changes when re-registering. Schelder also is proposing that he no longer has to publish in each parish's official journal the names of inactive voters before presidential elections. He said it costs several hundred thousand dollars to print the names, and he has better uses for the money, like funding museums. To become inactive, a voter has to miss every election in a four-to-five-year period that includes two federal elections. A card is mailed to the last known address for voters to renew registration, but if no card is returned, that voter goes into an inactive file and can't vote until a renewal is posted. Schedler questions, "By what logic would that person wake up one morning and buy a newspaper to see if their name was there?... The concept that without this one-day printing the world ending is false." Another proposal would align qualifying for being on the presidential ballot with qualifying for other offices on the same ballot. In the latest election, qualifying ran a week later, which delayed printing of ballots. _______________________________________________ Dataloss-discuss Mailing List (dataloss-discuss () datalossdb org) Archived at http://seclists.org/dataloss/ Unsubscribe at http://datalossdb.org/mailing_list Supporters: Risk Based Security (http://www.riskbasedsecurity.com/) Risk Based Security equips organizations with security intelligence, risk management services and on-demand security solutions to establish customized risk-based programs to address information security and compliance challenges. Tenable Network Security (http://www.tenable.com/) Tenable Network Security provides a suite of solutions which unify real-time vulnerability, event and compliance monitoring into a single, role-based, interface for administrators, auditors and risk managers to evaluate, communicate and report needed information for effective decision making and systems management.
Current thread:
- Louisiana elections chief concerned about identity theft Erica Absetz (Jan 17)