Officials in 44 states have gone on the record stating they will not comply with an appeal from the Trump Administration to turn over detailed voter roll information.
The blockade shows how distrustful states are of the White House’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which was created by President Trump via executive order in May.
As part of its fact-finding mission into so-called illegal voting, the body last week requested from all fifty states comprehensive voter data, including full names, addresses, dates of birth, party affiliation, vote history, felony convictions, and the last four digits of social security numbers.
The request was signed by the commission’s vice chairman, Kris Kobach.
Both Kobach and President Trump have previously made statements suggesting widespread voter fraud in US elections while offering no evidence to back those claims up.
Kobach, the former Secretary of State of Kansas went as far as to create a “Crosscheck” system with 27 other states to identify potential double-voters. The system, however, reportedly produced unreliable results—perhaps by design—and may have been responsible for erroneously knocking hundreds of thousands of voters off the rolls across the country, including in key battleground states.
“Given Secretary Kobach’s history we find it very difficult to have confidence in the work of this Commission,” Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill said last week.
“I will not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla also said last week.
On Monday, Delaware’s Secretary of State Jeffrey Bullock said he “will not be a party to this disingenuous and inappropriate campaign against one of the nation’s foundational institutions.”
Kobach defended the request, claiming the commission is only asking for publicly available information. Much of the data Kobach requested, however, is not publicly available in many states—including addresses and social security numbers.
“The President’s Commission has quickly politicized its work by asking states for an incredible amount of voter data that I have, time and time again, refused to release,” Louisiana’s Secretary of State Tom Schedler said Monday.
Virginia’s Governor Terry McAuliffe said the commission was based on a “specious and false notion” that could later be used as a “tool to commit large-scale voter suppression.”
While 44 states and the District of Columbia are refusing to turn over the requested data to the commission, three states are intending to comply: Colorado, Missouri, and Tennessee.
“The commission’s questions are fair and we will be glad to assist in offering our thoughts on these important matters,” said Jay Ashcroft, Missouri’s Secretary of State.
Other states are still reviewing the request.
Republican politicians, like Kobach and Trump, have often advanced the myth of widespread voter fraud to push restrictive new laws like Voter ID. The rules often make it more difficult to vote for young people, minorities, the poor, and the elderly.
Comprehensive research on the issue, however, has revealed that voter fraud is virtually non-existent. A Loyola study looking at US elections between 2000 and 2014 found only 31 instances of voter fraud out of more than 1 billion ballots cast.
