BOISE, Idaho (CBS 2) — If you requested an absentee ballot in Idaho, your name, address and political affiliation is now easier to find.
Political action committee Idaho Freedom Action paid a fee to the Idaho Secretary of State's Office, got the info and published it on their website.
Idaho Freedom Action is the politicking arm of the Idaho Freedom Foundation.
The IFA published the information of every person who has requested an absentee ballot for the upcoming election with no explanation of why.
It was on their website yesterday, then off, then back up again this morning and now a new message is in its place.
Instead of one click away from over 300,000 people's information, you can send them an email.
CBS2 reached out to the IFF on a few platforms and asked why.
"The information posted to our website is publicly available to anyone in the world via the Secretary of State's Office," said the IFF in a Facebook message. "Hundreds, if not thousands, of politicians and campaign workers already have these lists. They are public record. Anyone who wants to change that should contact their state lawmakers."
From their response, it's still unclear why the information was posted, but yesterday 670 KBOI host Nate Shelman asked spokesperson Dustin Hurst that same question.
After several attempts here's the answer he gave.
"How many people are concerned with the integrity of the election. We've moved to an all mail-in election," said Hurst in the radio interview. "People are concerned about their ballots being returned. Literally anyone in the entire state can quickly and easily go to our site and see if their ballot has been returned."
We talked to Steven Rausch owner of Capital City Law office and host of KBO Eye on the Law to ask about the legality of the post.
"In Idaho, it's the Idaho Secretary of State that maintains that information. That information is public record," said Rausch.
If you ask for that information from the secretary of state, you can pay a small fee to get it. The state statute poses some basic rules to abide by.
"Generally that is that that information is not supposed to be used for commercial purposes," said Rausch. "but they do carve out that it can be used for political purposes."
Rausch says the main concern with that personal information being out there and easily accessed is it could open the door for harassment.
"We're in such a polarized society right now just that information of what political party you affiliate with can cause maybe even your neighbor to change their views about who you are," said Rausch.
He says, in this case, it's less about if it's legal and more about if it's right.
"There are some federal statutes that criminalize harassment and intimidation and voter but in this situation, they probably don't apply because this is a primary election," said Rausch. "I've had many people reach out to me now after we found out about it in the last couple of days, very concerned. Because it may not even have anything to do with their voting. It may have to do with, they may have a domestic violence issue going on in their relationship and now all of a sudden all of their information is available. Or they may have a bad business deal.... so there's a lot of reasons that this information being out there can be detrimental."
He says the main focus should be on why it was posted. The link was posted without any written explanation, and it's not clear that they legally need one.
"There's not really any guidance as to whether or not the person who gets that information from the Secretary of State's Office how they have to inform the public if they publish that information," said Rausch. "There's just not really any guidance there and I think that's a short sight in the statute as well as the Secretary of State's, I think the mandate of maintaining that data."
We've reached out to the Secretary of State's Office. Here's what they told us --
They have an absentee ballot report order form. It’s a standard form utilized by political candidates and others.
IFA paid for the copies. As for the legality, they weren’t selling or using it to promote anything of value.
One other note, nine or ten different organizations were also given the same list, but there was apparently an error. The Secretary of State provided a corrected list.
That’s why the PAC took it down from its website and then reposted it.
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