RNC Defends Using Its Database to Stalk Women

[Trigger warning.]

I only wish I were kidding:

Something that jumped out at us in that story about Brett Mecum, the Arizona GOP executive director charged with using the party's voter registration database to stalk a woman: the bizarre response from Mecum's boss.

Here's what party chair Randy Pullen, who is also the treasurer of the Republican National Committee, told an Arizona political site about the claim that Mecum had used Voter Vault to find the woman's address:

The Republican National Committee owns Voter Vault ... It's a private list. We own the list. We can do what we want with the list, quite frankly.

It's a felony to use a voter registration database for anything other than official purposes.

And, even if it weren't, it would still be, y'know, totally fucking unethical. I know the GOP waved buh-bye to ethics long ago, but I nonetheless feel obliged to make the point that whether using a database for the purpose of stalking someone is legal is almost beside the point, when it's so evidently wrong in principle.

[H/T to Shaker Kathy.]