Organizations running Background Checks

The Fresno Bee has an article about The Fresno Chamber of Commerce’s four year old policy of conducting background checks on political candidates before it endorses them.

The organization’s president says the chamber would rather know before it supports a candidate if there is a reason not to.

At issue is the organization’s request for Social Security Number and Driver’s License information from the candidates in order to conduct a more thorough background check. As with pre-employment background checks, conducting a background check using SSN information (with consent from the candidate) provides an essential identity verification and weeds out potential mismatches, especially with candidates with common names.