Jena Griswold’s dangerous double-standard on privacy

By Jon Caldara

Colorado’s Secretary of State Jena Griswold is responsible for running the state’s TRACER system. This is the public database where campaigns must file their contribution and expenditure disclosures. If you wanna see who’s funding a candidate, that’s where you go.

But if you went there last week, you would have seen it was “down for maintenance.”

That was a lie. There was no “maintenance.”

You can’t handle the truth

Griswold took it down to have the home addresses of elected officials redacted from the site. In the wake of the shootings of state legislators in Minnesota, many of Colorado’s elected officials asked her to do it.

So why not just tell us that? We would have more than understood the truth.

This database is required by law. Scrubbing it might or might not be a good policy. She might or might not have the authority to do it. But to fib and say it was “down for maintenance” just adds to the reasons trust in government is at an all-time low. They can’t even tell us the truth on this reasonable feat.

In fact, we might not have known any of this falsehood had it not been for a scoop by Axios Denver’s John Frank. Only when confronted did the Jena’s office cop to shutting it down to redact information. Yes, a tiny lie. But that’s the gateway drug to big lies.

A couple of years back, the Colorado Department of Transportation didn’t want folks driving on a high mountain pass during a snowstorm, so they lied and said it was closed. A fabrication, it was open and fine.

There is a pretension and arrogance with those it’s-for-your-own-good lies. And it conditions citizens to let government play parent to them.

It takes a certain amount of arrogance to use the machinery of government to promote inaccuracies and lies (insert Trump joke here). Government should be the record holder and storehouse of truth.

The secretary of state, county clerks, law enforcement, auditors and researchers must be wholly committed to recording only the full truth, no matter what.

Where does my property line end and yours begin? Who owns that car? When was someone born? When did he die? We must trust government records or pretty much everything — everything — falls apart.

But now records can be redacted and altered.

Changing one’s gender on a Colorado birth certificate is as easy as changing your mailing address. Was a person born a boy on a certain date? Who knows? Those records can now be legally falsified.

If changing birth certificates is legal, I need to change the birth date on mine. I identify as 67 despite the government record saying I’m 60. I want my Social Security checks now.

A double-standard for donors

We’re told redacting TRACER records was a matter of safety for those in politics. But lots of us are in politics. Why only protect the elected?

These records still show the home addresses of everyone of us who donated to a campaign. Aren’t we worth the same level of safety and protection?

If an elected official is targeted for an act of violence, wouldn’t those who paid for him to get into office also be possible targets? Why does Griswold protect the privacy of her elected colleagues but not their supporters?

There’s a reason why people want to give their money anonymously — to save their lives and livelihoods.

During the bloody civil rights battles, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP, had to go to court to protect their donor’s privacy. Why? If doxed, those who financed their mission would have been lynched.

A few years back, there was a mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood office in Colorado Springs. Fortunately, Planned Parenthood also keeps their donors private. If that shooter could look up their funders’ addresses, they might have been targeted, too.

Every year the legislature tries to pass bills to end donor privacy, labeling such donations as “soft money.” “Soft money” is the pejorative term for “political speech I want to support, but don’t want to be killed over.”

How fun it will be to watch those very legislators who pressured Jena Griswold to redact their home addresses to turn around and demand others involved in politics be treated differently and stay easy targets.

Privacy and security for me. Exposure for thee.