Ask HN: My political party knows I haven't voted yet. How? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: My political party knows I haven't voted yet. How?

California; just got the SMS. How TF are they being notified of my voting activity?

Your voting history is publicly available (nothing about who you vote for, just whether or not you vote in a given election year). There have been several studies showing that messages along the lines of “Your voting history is public, make sure to vote this year.” Or “keep up your voting streak!” are extremely effective, I believe the most effective single messages we know of or at least the most well-known ones.

Both parties and countless civic orgs do this now, it’s been a major thing since 08.

The original experiments were randomized, but usually if you’re getting the message now you’re part of a target demo someone wants to turn out.

Why on earth is it publicly available? Something like that could be abused pretty easily. I guess it lets non-voters verify that no one has stolen their vote, but still..

Many things could be "abused pretty easily"

but are they actually abused?

I can't think of anyway on the spot of how this could be abused. They still don't know who you voted for, just that you voted. Are there any common abuses of this data?

Some of us don’t want to support any of the people on the ballot.

Being forced to write down support for an entity that you don’t want is a psychological hack.

Now you can’t just tell the “vote or die people” that you already voted to get them off your back.

You can just spoil your ballot.

Just don’t enroll in a political party. Political people want to turn out votes for them.

In states with a closed primary that has some blowback. Where I grew up, the Republican primary was the election. Where I live now, the Democratic primary is the election - the only GOP candidates are clowns with no organization.

I haven't enrolled in a party and I get probably 6-12 a day now (from both sides).

Isn't it possible to put an empty ballot?

We use envelopes here to hide the ballot from the people in charge of the voting slot. We can put an empty envelope, or with ballots of two different parties that make it void, or with a nasty letter about the policianos, or like in Brazil where they "elected" a rhino for major https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacareco

Yes, you can definitely cast an empty ballot (at least in New York).

Sold to ad tech agencies who can match it with whatever other information about you they already have. It's a binary yes, no, so maybe abuse is too strong a word. There's limited use.

The voting system is a complicated balance between keeping your individual vote secret and making as much of the process transparent and public as possible. This kind of information being public is likely a check against ballot stuffing.

There's a near universal knee-jerk reaction to public accountability that is going to be the end of this republic...

In Virginia, the pollbook isn't secret, and technically any observer can challenge anyone showing up and trying to obtain a ballot.

This hasn't happened in my 10yrs of working as an election officer, but still.

You still doing that? Would love to peek at your blog.

Edit: from your KeyBase to Twitter to https://theothermccain.com/

"That" being an Election Officer? Yes, I'm supporting Tuesday.

The actual blog isn't something I contribute to frequently anymore. (a) Working on the PhD thesis proposal, and (b) haven't had much to add to the conversation lately.

Everyone who can legally vote on Tuesday should, though.

I can't think of anyway on the spot of how this could be abused. They still don't know who you voted for. Are there any common abuses of this data?

"I know you'll probably vote for $foo. If I check after the election and find that you did|didn't vote, bad thing $bar might just happen to your friends and family."

Edit: It's probably not a particularly good threat, but it could maybe be used to suppress certain targeted demographic groups that tend to vote one way or the other.

This seems like a pretty ludicrous threat to make. You could just submit a blank ballot or vote for the opposing party and your hostage-taker would have no way of knowing.

Right. It would probably be more effective for getting someone to just stay home.

You would have to do that on a pretty wide scale for it to be effective and would be caught pretty quickly after going after just a couple people.

Not being in the business of voter suppression, I couldn't tell you anything authoritatively. But if I was, I'd use the data to find who has a spotty or non-perfect record with the hypothesis that they're more susceptible to suppression methods than someone with a near perfect record.

Then the next step would be targeting locations that lean towards one party or using a combination of retargeting ads +obvious party selectors to run a BS phone or ad campaigns that disenfranchise or provide misleading information. Like this. Which was a real thing that happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canadian_federal_election...

That same data is also used by other people to encourage those people to vote - I'm sure on a much larger scale than disenfranchisement efforts.

Party registrations are public, and you can make a pretty accurate guess that someone who is registered to one party is likely to vote for that party, too.

I can imagine a situation where someone's boss doesn't like a certain party or politician, and they decide to take it out on their subordinates that they suspect will vote/have voted for them. Seeing a D or R next to an employee's name and that they voted could be enough evidence for them to face discrimination or threats not to vote.

"I know that you support $CANDIDATE_I_DONT_LIKE therefore if I see that you voted I'll break your kneecaps."

The data does have party affiliation if that’s a thing in the particular state, as well as residential information, at least from what I’ve seen.

Having public "who voted" records which can be compared against other public residency data is a transparency countermeasure against ballot fraud.

FOIA laws.

Voting integrity depends on transparency.

I wonder if someone could check who hasn't voted and send in mail in votes for those people?

Or just have mandatory voting. You need to prove that you turned in a ballot when you pay your taxes if you incur so e penalties.

Don't care who you vote for. Turn in a blank ballot, doesn't matter. But you MUST turn in a ballot.

Thatd make a fun little site, search my record and then displays a nice graphic of my streak.

Reminding me a bit of GitHub commit graph, but obv much less data points.

This isn't quite true at least in most of the US: if you never register to vote your voting history isn't public. If someone asks, you can always just say the IRS required you to give up your right to vote. This is a real thing done for some groups.

Interesting caveat, I didn’t know that.

> If someone asks, you can always just say the IRS required you to give up your right to vote. This is a real thing done for some groups.

I am aware of special exemptions to paying FICA, income, and other normal taxes for certain religious orders and clergy who have elected not to participate in things like Social Security.

But can you cite more information about what you mean by “the IRS required you to give up your right to vote?”

Many county elections officials release downloadable lists of who has voted (but, of course, not who they voted for). For example, here's King County, WA (Seattle), which is updated 1-2x/day during balloting: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/research/2022-general-elect...

Here's at least one option for Los Angeles County: https://www.lavote.gov/home/voting-elections/current-electio...

They're often called "matchbacks," since it's a list of voter IDs that campaigns match back to the list of registered voters.

This is what I am thinking too.

Couldn't the state just compel the county elections to delay this until 1 hour after the last polling place closes?

I live in King County. The frequently published lists have one big advantage. Once your ballot has been accepted, you see a big dropoff in texts, calls, and canvassers within 1-2 days. Nobody wants to waste time on somebody who's already voted.

One day, I got a knock at the door from a canvasser that started a conversation with "Since you've voted in every election," which is how I learned that it isn't just voter registration information that is public, but so is the record of whether you've voted or not.

If you're curious, here's a screencast of one popular canvasser-facing tool, VoteBuilder: https://youtu.be/2GJU5tIhYG8?t=1388

In addition to importing everyone's voting records, contacts/interactions with the party or campaigns, and the like, VoteBuilder also predicts a voter's likelihood to support different issues or races and chances of turning out: https://youtu.be/2GJU5tIhYG8?t=1428

Did I mention that it has voters' cell phone numbers too? And a ton of other stuff. And good luck getting it removed, or even finding out who to contact to get it removed.

(Longer intros: https://youtu.be/knCkUKUJU0k?t=533, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGP_VAN, https://support.nydems.org/support/solutions/articles/630002...)

Any clues how they get the cell numbers?

The same places that non-political telemarketers do. Many retailers sell customer info, as do credit bureaus/financial services organizations and telecom firms. Google “phone data appending” and you’ll find lots of data brokers.

I run a free site at https://simpleoptout.com that makes it easier to opt-out of data sharing. Doing that is the first step, but suitably motivated buyers (which includes the national parties) will still find someone selling your data.

One other step helps: when there’s no need for an entity to have your phone number, don’t provide it. If a phone number is required for no reason, provide a fake number at an area code that’s not in use. This can easily reduce the privacy “attack surface” by 50%. Every random e-commerce vendor does not need your phone number to fulfill your order.

"Public" to people who are allowed to access voter data. https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/access...

Have you considered they send those to everyone? And someone else who did vote is about to post "I already voted! Why did I get this message?"

Plenty of companies out there aggregating voter information -- see L2 Data for example.

I got a text and phone call today from the Republican party of New Hampshire.

I have not lived/voted in New Hampshire in 6 years. The only time I voted Republican was in the 2012 primary because Obama didn't have an opponent and I wanted to vote for the moderate I liked. I agree that the easiest explanation is that they send it to everyone - if you've already voted there isn't much downside.

I have a second phone number I use when I have to give a number to a company or government agency. All calls to that number go to voicemail, my phone doesn't ring, and I can look at transcriptions and swipe them into the trash.

In the past month I probably deleted over 100 phone calls about the upcoming election. I also received enough flyers in my mailbox to fill a garbage bag. None of the calls or flyers or ads on TV would change my opinion on anything on the ballot. I have a hard time imagining how any of it pays off, but I suppose some people respond to it.

Speculation: voter rolls are public, so everyone knows you’re a voter and what your registered party is.

Since you voted early the state must record that. Don’t they release counts of how many people have voted so far? Plus they would need to record you voted so they could reject any other ballots from you that might come in.

There is probably a record of which elections you’ve voted in (though not how you voted). There is in my state and with some basic info I believe I can look anyone up, not just myself.

So if your party has a list of their registered voters (they do, public information) then they could easily check the status to see if each of those voters has voted yet (public information). Combine that with your phone number from public records or maybe a past donation, and they’d have everything they need.

Most states make voter lists available (usually, for purchase) to parties, campaigns, and sometimes more broadly, and the list information often includes voting history.

General national summary is here: https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/access...

It doesn’t list California as providing voting history, but the information available from California County elections offices includes voting history in every county I’ve checked.

But that’s for past elections, I’m not sure exactly how they get information on status for the current election.

There are poll observers who watch this stuff.

In Wisconsin, the state provides a list of who has requested an absentee ballot, who has returned it, who has voted early, and who is just registered. These are updated around daily and can be accessed by anyone with the right knowledge (and possibly cash).

I'm surprised information about who voted is publicly available

Will businesses start offering discounts/bonuses for people that show proof that they've voted (under the guise of rewarding those that did their civic duty), but only in areas that are heavily biased towards one party? Technically it's available to everyone but only easily accessible to those that voted for the business' preferred party.

That's illegal. Currently some places do it here and there but if it became significant enough to affect the vote, they'd lose the lawsuit: https://www.eater.com/2016/11/8/13561804/election-day-free-f...

"The ground game" has always included "finding out if your supporters have voted yet, and calling them if not." Long before the Internet.

It's just that now it's much more efficient, more accessible to more people, and it isn't just on Election Day, but for the whole period of early voting. So that might be a good reason to stop releasing the information.

I’d disagree. The old ground game empowered political machines.

It sucks that successful “grassroots“ candidates tend to be… really awful today. But the parties, particularly the Democratic Party will eventually figure out how to actually appeal to people.

I don't quite understand your point. "The old ground game empowered political machines." so that was a good thing?

Some states release early and absentee data at the precinct level. Campaigners can glean a lot from this information, including modeling the likelihood that you have voted early or not based on your past vote history. With the exception of Utah (whose voter file is now opt-in), every state identifies which elections you have voted in.

How do you know they knew? Maybe they’re just spamming SMS’s at their list.

I get told at least once a week I could save money on car insurance despite the fact that I don't own a car. When it comes to mass direct marketing, it's a numbers game. Spam as many people as possible expecting to get a 1% response rate.

Could be a guess. I got similar message and it was incorrect.

I've been getting messages and mail in Oregon and I think they're just making things up. They even tried to shame me for voting in the general elections, but not the midterms. This is of course nonsense, but its probably easier to mail out a thousand of those than to research each voter.

Well, now you done confirmed it!

I'm not sure I could bring myself to vote for a party that did this.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xu8u9ZbCJgQ

Voting history is available to political parties and candidates.

It varies from state to state, but at least here in NC voting history is available to the world. You can jump on the SBOE website right now and see every election I voted in, for example, since 1992. What I'm not sure about, is how much latency there is in terms of when the public record is updated.

And before anybody asks, no they don't report who you voted for. Just the fact that you voted, whether the election was a general election or primary, and if it was a primary, which party's primary you voted in.

Available to anyone actually in most states I’m aware of.

in some states like Texas, your county posts your name publicly in a "voted" list. Its there for all to see without putting who you voted for

Maybe thats how they know

This should not be flagged.

username checks out /scnr

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