State Officials Of Both Parties Reject Requests For Voters’ Identification Details

Not all state leaders have disregarded the commission’s letter. “His role as vice chair is proof that the ultimate goal of the commission is to enact policies that will result in the disenfranchisement of American citizens”, Padilla said.

The massive data request spurred governors and secretaries of state across the country and from both major parties to say they’re trying to protect – not hide – sensitive voter information.

He said Trump formed the commission not to curb fraud, but to commit voter suppression.

As Trump wrote incorrectly in a November 27 Twitter post, “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally”. His conspiracy makes no sense, and it all centered around a belief that he did not lose the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. “Now they’ve set up this commission that’s going to create phony findings to support that lie”.

Condos said Friday there is no evidence of the kind of fraud alleged by Trump. States were given a deadline of July 14 to comply. In Kansas, he drew criticism (and lawsuits) for his aggressive actions, including instituting a law that required people to show a passport or birth certificate to register to vote.

“Whether someone is eligible to vote or not does not depend on what party they are registered with”, Levitt said. Recent studies have confirmed that noncitizens by the millions have voted in US elections since 2008.

Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, also refused to release any information, telling the voter fraud commission to “go jump in the Gulf of Mexico”. Although Kobach will submit most of his state’s voter information to the presidential committee that he leads, he said he won’t turn over Kansas voters’ Social Security numbers. As the Kansas City Star points out, Kansas won’t share its residents’ social security numbers (though it will give out names and addresses, because that’s allowable under its open records laws).

“The letter [Mr Kobach] is sending to states confirms: Pence and Kobach are laying the groundwork for voter suppression, plain & simple”, tweeted Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

As of Friday afternoon, 25 states were at least partially refusing to provide all the information requested by the commission, according to the Washington Post’s count. “Under Indiana public records laws, certain voter info is available to the public, the media and any other person who requested the information for non-commercial purposes”.

KOBACH: Well, this is publicly available information.

California, Massachusetts, Virginia, New York and Kentucky all quickly rejected the request. What he doesn’t mention is that all but one were cases of people who’ve lived at multiple addresses and simply failed to update their own information – a glitch not unknown even within Trump’s family. “We are proud of what we’ve built in Ohio”, Mr. Husted said. He notes that the letter invited states to send sensitive voter roll information over email, which is highly insecure.

Condos says he has no choice but to hand over publicly available lists of voters.

We’d tell President Trump and his commission’s leaders to go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, but the Secretary of State of MS, from Trump’s own Republican Party, got there first. “If it is not publicly available in most states, then we aren’t requesting it”.