4 ms·

Why would the DMV have access to or notice political affiliation? Was your friend wearing a MAGA hat?

• abhorrence 7y ago
  In many states the DMV allows you to register to vote while obtaining your drivers license (or other state ID card).
  • Too 7y ago
    Wait what? Are votes not anonymous?
    • ckrailo 7y ago
      Political party affiliations are set during voter registration, which in some states can occur at the same time as getting a driver's license. (Setting a party affiliation gets you a ballot for that party's primaries.) So it'd all be in the same DMV form and the end result is a drivers license and registered voter. Party affiliation is generally public information (search for it).
      • MertsA 7y ago
        At least in Florida it's not "public" but you can look it up online without any kind of privileged information other than like name and date of birth IIRC so... Effectively you can just look up party affiliation for anyone and let's be realistic here, unless the person doing it publicly declares that they've fraudulently been looking up other Florida residents voter registration records, there's no way anyone's going to get caught doing this.
        • ckrailo 7y ago
          It's definitely public, but it might not have an easy-to-use online portal. I bet a FOIA request or similar offline method would get the whole set. (Source: https://dos.myflorida.com/elections/for-voters/voter-registration/voter-information-as-a-public-record/ https://dos.myflorida.com/elections/for-voters/voter-registr...)
• itbeho 7y ago
  No, he wasn't wearing anything political.
• serf 7y ago
  >Was your friend wearing a MAGA hat? does that somehow excuse the actions of the DMV person in any way? I don't see how it's relevant, given that a public official shouldn't discriminate against political affiliation regardless.
  • jeromegv 7y ago
    No need to twist everything, the question is about knowing if this is data the DMV has on their computer, or is that something that was noticed by looking at them. Where was this data known? This is the question.
    • bonestamp2 7y ago
      I assume it has something to do with registering to vote at the DMV (a service they offer). I always naively thought they offered to do this because it was just the government trying to do something that benefits the people (their job), but now we know it's because that is very valuable information that they can sell along with your other information (otherwise they may as well toss it after forwarding it to the appropriate elections registration desk). If they're going to store it for any reason, they should at least hide it from the low level workers... there's no reason anyone, of any political affiliation, should have to even talk about something so irrelevant to the role of the DMV. Not to mention, it would speed things along for everyone and that's a real benefit that we all need.
• newshorts 7y ago
  I would guess it was the other way around...