Yo, Washingtonians--Help!

[Jackpine Radical]

Salin, a long-time DUer brought this story to our attention this morning:

In January of 2006 there was a story that broke and quickly was ignored (and I am not aware of any followup) about that a database created for the IRS to determine "scofflaws" to determine who to audit... contained party affiliation. Sen. Murray was on the case (any of her constituents reading this? Perhaps you could call for followup info?).

The IRS spokesperson claimed that this was this was a 'mistake', that the data was collected by contractors - who used voter registration rolls as part of their data collection - but that the party affiliation info was not supposed to be included in the data base. However, DUers determined that this 'excuse' didn't fly - because in several of the states for which this info was included in the database there is no party registration - thus the info would have to be sought in other ways (searching for political donations, perhaps?) In any event, we were told by the IRS that the info was being deleted and would never be used - as 'that would be against the law'. Don't we feel reassured by that?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x530611

Please check it out & start emailing Patty from within the state. There could be something big here.