Setting www-data (lighttpd) as sudoer not working

I have installed lighttpd with fast-cgi on the raspberry pi. When running a python script that requires root priveleges, I get the following error: > RuntimeError: No access to /dev/mem. Try running as root! Traceback > (most recent call last): File "/var/www/index.py", line 134, in > GPIO.setup(17, GPIO.OUT);#enable A RuntimeError: No access to > /dev/mem. Try running as root! I have added www-data as a sudoer using visudo and "sudo usermod -a -G sudo www-data", but it did not work. How can I give lighttpd root priveleges? Security is NOT important as this is a personal project.