Voters' Addresses Should Be Confidential: HB56

Virginia House Bill #56 looks good on first reading, but on closer inspection I don't like it. The full text is online here:

http://lis.virginia.gov/cgi-bin/legp604.exe?121+ful+HB56

In previous years, anyone who's paying for a post office box has had the right to display only the post office box address on state ID and voter registration. This is as it should be. This right does not need to be restricted to special classes of voters.

Let's put it this way: Simply as citizens of the United States, we have all been threatened and harassed by individuals with an abundantly documented history of violent crimes...specifically, Al-Qaeda (and never mind anybody else). Therefore, we all need to be extremely careful about disclosing our physical home addresses.

If only specific types of people categorized as especially vulnerable are allowed to protect their home address information, then the protection of this information will be an automatic signal to evildoers that someone is especially vulnerable. This is not the best way to protect crime victims, witnesses, seniors or young women who live alone, people who use medications with high illegal resale value, people who work in law enforcement, or anyone else.

The best way to protect these people in these vulnerable classes would be a mandate that no complete physical address could legally be transmitted electronically or shared with anyone to whom it had not been directly given by the property owner. If people don't want to bother maintaining a post office box, then the law should require that only a street name, without a street number or apartment number, can be published.