New York City Board of Elections published the complete voter rolls of all 4.6 million New York City voters last week.
The move means anyone can go online and search through the name, party affiliation, and home address including apartment number of any registered voter in the city.
While the city’s Board of Elections emphasized that the information was already public record, privacy advocates and even New York’s Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo criticized what they thought was a risk to digital privacy.
“The New York City Board of Elections’ decision was theirs to make, but we believe sensitive voter information should always be protected,” Caitlin Girouard, a spokeswoman for the governor said in a statement.
“When it comes to the current administration, we need to be extra vigilant to ensure New Yorkers’ information isn’t being used for politically motivated ill will,” Girouard said.
Before being uploaded online, nosy citizens needed to buy a paper or CD copy from the elections board allowing city officials to have some idea of who was looking into the elections information.
“It was the method for us to meet our obligations under the new statute and enable candidates to begin the timely gathering of signatures to qualify for the ballot,” Valerie Vazquez-Diaz, a spokeswoman for the Board of Elections said in a statement. “By law, this information is a public record.”
