How third parties use your voter data

Election emails, TV commercials and new online databases put personal and public information on the voter list at the center of attention.

New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver is in a legal battle to try to restrict where voter roll data is released.

“I strongly disagree that this is an appropriate use for voter data,” Toulouse Oliver said.

VoteRef.com, funded by a former Trump campaign officialattempts to publish online voter roll information for all 50 states. Its website states that it has a “goal to encourage greater voter participation in all fifty states.”

“I suspected that their intent in putting that public voter data on the Internet was to encourage people to go out and knock on people’s doors and see if people actually live there,” Toulouse Oliver said. “Kind of creating some kind of justice, vote, watchers or voter checkers.”

Voter list information includes names, addresses, whether or not someone voted and how, and party affiliations.

Who someone voted for, full birth dates and social security numbers are never released.

A federal judge has sided with VoteRef.com, allowing them to publish New Mexican voter roll data online – Toulouse Oliver is appealing.

However, not all registered voters have their address published.

“I took advantage of a recent law that, as an elected official, I can make my voter address private,” said Toulouse Oliver.

State legislators made it possible to protect the publication of their addresses after Solomon Peña, a failed Republican candidate, was arrested for orchestrating shootings at the homes of elected Democrats.

“It’s one thing to know that this is public information,” Toulouse Oliver said of voter roll data. “It’s another thing to know that your data is just out there on the internet. No one should be held accountable for asking for this information.”

While Republican operatives published this data online, Democratic operatives are using this data to pressure people to vote.

Emails from the Voter Participation Center list people’s addresses and show the resident’s voting history and their neighbor’s voting history with a message “We will review these records after the election to determine whether or not you voted with your neighbors.”

A state’s attorney general sent a cease and desist order and said the shippers crossed the line.

A spokesman for New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said he was reviewing two complaints related to the mailers and that they were being reviewed by election protection attorneys.