Aclu Fights Sunshine In Wisconsin Recall

[Geee]

American Thinker:

When should names on public rolls be kept secret?

 

Judging by the ACLU's double standard, secrecy is warranted if exposure might reveal voter fraud. On the other hand, if exposure puts marriage supporters at risk for harassment by radical activists...well, then, that's okay.

 

Unlike its apparent indifference to abuses of pro-marriage donors exposed in California in 2008, the ACLU pressured a Wisconsin agency not to create an online database to verify two million signatures for recalling Gov. Scott Walker, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, and four Republican state senators. The ACLU cites possible threats to victims of domestic violence. This might wash, except that the ACLU is also suing Wisconsin over its photo ID law that curbs voter fraud.

 

"The GAB [Government Accountability Board] is under no obligation to make it easier for stalkers to find their victims by having a searchable database online," ACLU of Wisconsin spokesman Chris Ahmuty said, according to ABC news affiliate WISN.

 

On Tuesday, the GAB posted the petitions online without a searchable database and not in alphabetical order, so someone looking for a particular name would have to read through hundreds of thousands of entries. The state GOP, which has until Feb. 26 to challenge the signatures, says it has more than 2,000 volunteers to comb through them looking for fraud.

 

The ACLU was not always so solicitous of the privacy of petition-signers.

 

In 2008, the names and addresses of people who gave $100 or more to California's Proposition 8 constitutional marriage amendment campaign were posted by Prop. 8 opponents on websites, complete with marked Google maps, as an invitation to harass them.

 

In a California lawsuit asking the state to shield the names, James Bopp, attorney for the groups Protect Marriage and the National Organization for Marriage, along with the Alliance Defense Fund, cited "death threats, acts of domestic terrorism, physical violence, threats of physical violence, vandalism of personal property, harassing phone calls, harassing e-mails, blacklisting and boycotts."