News-Gazette: Voter phone numbers focus of debate in Illinois House

http://www.newsgazette.com/localnews/story.cfm?Number=17825

"SPRINGFIELD – Champaign County Clerk Mark Shelden's court battle to withhold voter phone numbers from a statewide voter registration database is now a subject of debate in the Illinois House.

Shelden first announced in 2002 that he would no longer keep track of voter phone numbers in his electronic files, and would delete all of those already in the system.

Voters had complained that their phone numbers were being sold to political parties and made available to telemarketing firms that called with recorded candidate endorsements or polling questions, he said.

The State Board of Elections challenged Shelden's actions in both the circuit court and the appellate court."

Shelden's original move was transparent election year grandstanding to paint himself as some sort of defender of privacy rights. The SBOE dragged it's feet on enforcing the law, but finally (and correctly) called him to account for it.

Both of the court decisions were fatally flawed, to the point where I have to wonder about the competence of the attorneys and judges. There is no real ambiguity in the law, but it has been horribly tortured by Shelden, who sees himself as some kind of Machiavellian maestro.

This bill needs to pass on common sense grounds, if nothing else.

This is the second time, BTW, that Shelden's monkey business has required state legislators to "clarify" an election law. A few years back, he attempted to impede voter registration drives on the U of I campus by arbitrarily limiting the number of registration forms he would give out. The General Assembly had to amend the law to make sure he wouldn't continue the practice.