Protecting Your Privacy
by Representative Kevin Van Diepen
South Dakota voters treasure the right to political participation, but that right shouldn’t come with mandatory exposure of their personal addresses and sensitive date to the entire world. House Bill 1062, which narrowly passed the Legislature this winter, attempts to require publication of the entire voter registration file including names, home addresses, absentee ballot requests, recent voting history, and more to everyone on the internet, whether in South Dakota or Serbia.
Under this bill, anyone, be it a political actor, date miner, commercial marketer, or worse, could access and download bulk voter data weekly.
Under HB 1062, spammers and scammers will have a feast on South Dakotans’ personal data. With street addresses tied directly to individual names and past behavior, it becomes all-to-easy for harassers to figure out patterns or for telemarketers to blast tiresome calls and emails.
Privacy isn’t political, it’s personal. Opposition to this bill isn’t about hiding anyone’s vote, it’s about safeguarding basic privacy. Even though surface-level data (e.g. dates of birth, SSNs) remain redacted, addresses plus voting habits are more revealing than you might think. They invite targeted political advertisements, tailored with eerie precision, identity thieves, mapping out personal information for phishing and stalkers and harassers who track domestic violence victims and other vulnerable populations.
Transparency in elections matters. We should let journalists, watchdogs, and policymakers confirm who is registered, turnout trends, and demographic patterns. But this can and should be balanced with privacy.
We need common sense. HB 1062 is not just bureaucratic housekeeping; it attempts to mass-publicize intimate personal information of every South Dakota voter. Next year, we need to repeal this bill and start respecting our citizens’ privacy again. Transparency and democracy should go hand in hand- but not at the expense of our homes, our safety, and our trust.
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Kevin Van Diepen is a retired Law Law enforcement officer, and State Representative for District 22
Just for the record, I disagree with a lot of what he’s said, as voter registration and history have ALWAYS been public information in South Dakota. Over the last 30 years, we’ve removed Social Security Numbers (a good move), and more recently dates of birth (I’m a bit torn on that).
I think people’s objection is that it’s now the full list is available for free out on the internet (I just downloaded it yesterday) versus the full list being $2500 which the election conspiracists had conniptions over because it was a barrier to them.
In a free society, information filed and held with the government SHOULD be open and accessible, but because of paranoia – such that invading forces will collect a list of gun owners – we’ve trended towards less open government.
Maybe one of these days we’ll figure out what we want.
As a normal average person who votes and hates unwanted political mail and spam e-mail and harassing phone calls, I have zero issues with this list being made private. With all due respect to many people on here – you all have reached the tipping point. Time to bring the pendulum back to point zero.
Thank you Rep Van Diepen. Now that the voter list is available free of charge, it will certainly make us more vulnerable and potentially place us in harm’s way.
Repealing that bill would be good, but do not go back simply to the status quo prior to its passage. Take off the internet voters’ addresses and party identification. There is no reason that potential employers, clients, marketers, or anyone else need to know someone else’s party identification, and the government has no need to publish voter’s addresses.
the thing about voter addresses, when you are actually a precinct committee man or woman who does the job, (yes there are probably 2 or 3 who do the job they were elected to do) and you are updating voter registration lists, and you find a voter who lives in an abandoned farm house or a vacant lot, that needs to be corrected.
Also, people sure don’t care about the hard word that legislative district realignment committees have to do. This address and party data should be widely available, for the real clarity we need to do our duty.
Leave it alone.
Then why have a voter list at all? Again – voter registrations have been public documents.. well, since statehood.
I went back and looked at this bill. Why was there not a fiscal note requested or attached? This will most certainly be one of those unfunded mandates as the SOS office and many county auditors/IT departments will be requesting FTEs to ensure safeguards are in place so that this won’t happen again.
The Dakota Scout has articles out talking about the impact HB1062 has. One deal with those who registered to vote and applied for Government Assistance Programs and the other article about Attorney General Jackley appointing counsel for SOS’s office and the South Dakota Legislature involving possible lawsuit by the ACLU of South Dakota.
Convenient that this straw-man debate gets space, but the massive failure of the SOS to keep legally protected private information private is nowhere to be found.
Not professional to throw the SOS under the bus. What caused this in the first place??? Oh, the bill itself…always have to change things, never satisfied.
If a bill was pushed by sd canvassing then it should be thrown in the trash. It isn’t about transparency for them. They’re nosy busybodies who want to weaponize your voting record.
The SOS deserves to be under the bus for this F up. The voter role didn’t need to include welfare recipient information.