ERICKSON: You have been exposed

The 2018 Georgia gubernatorial campaign kicked off last week while you were distracted. Brian Kemp, Georgia's secretary of state, is widely perceived as a top contender for the Republican nomination. Or at least he was until last week.

If you are a registered voter in Georgia, the Elections Division of the Georgia Secretary of State's Office released your Social Security number, driver's license number and date of birth publicly. I am told the employee who sent out the data was fired pretty quickly. Nonetheless, it happened.

It is not as awful as it sounds. The data was on CD-ROM discs and went to 12 entities including, but not limited to the Georgia Democratic Party, the Georgia Republican Party, the Georgia Libertarian Party, the Atlanta Journal and several other media outlets. All 12 discs were recovered and destroyed before anyone had uploaded the data into databases or onto the Internet where the data could be retrieved. The odds, therefore, are really slim that anything happened.

Still, it is not reassuring that it happened in the first place. A friend who works for the Georgia Department of Revenue tells me that the data had been prepared for the Department of Revenue by the Secretary of State's Office. Two other people have told me the same thing. While interagency data transfers happen, I am less than reassured that the Secretary of State's Office would take my voter information and private data, including my Social Security number, and hand it over to the Department of Revenue.

Democrats have already filed a class action lawsuit. That is a point missing from the news reports. The suit was filed by people close to the Democratic Party, which might suggests the Georgia Democrats had opened the data and seen what was there considering how under the radar the Secretary of State's Office tried to be about the situation.

Brian Kemp has been working hard to put himself in a position to run for governor in 2018. He set up the SEC primary wherein most Southern states will have their presidential primaries on the same day. He has worked hard to put himself in leadership positions within the National Association of Secretaries of State. He has worked hard to transform his office and make it more efficient.

All that planning could be unraveled by the release of this data. Regardless of the partisan origins of the lawsuit, the suit has merit considering what happened. The only question is whether the release was contained and damage prevented. That seems certain. However, state and federal law is more likely than not going to burden Georgia's taxpayers with large costs to notify every affected person.

The data release is the largest of its kind by a governmental entity. Some six million Georgians are affected. Some of those have moved out of state. Costs will be incurred reaching out to those voters in other states. It really is staggering that the mistake of one employee could cost so much and affect so many.

Republicans who argue that President Barack Obama blame shifts and refuses to let the buck stop with him are now going to have to decide if Brian Kemp must own the blame or pass it off to one employee. The Legislature must examine why the Department of Revenue is relying on confidential voter file information instead of using its own information. The state must incur costs to notify voters their confidential information was released into the wild and potentially help with credit monitoring for millions. This story will not disappear any time soon.

Erick Erickson is a Fox News contributor and radio talk show host in Atlanta.

This story was originally published November 19, 2015 at 9:58 PM.