01 July, 2017
In New Hampshire, Secretary of State Bill Gardner, who is a member of the Trump administration's commission, said he would submit his state's data, but is unsure whether he will charge money for it.
However, if information that's considered confidential is requested, it'll be held back, he said.
I have no intention of honoring this request. I don't know where it's coming from. He said the only evidence of possible election fraud involves possible Russian tampering. "The State Board will provide to the Commission publicly available data as already required under state law", Kim Westbrook Strach, executive director of the Bipartisan State Board of Elections & Ethics Enforcement, said in a press release Friday. "And I support her in that position".
The letter dated June 28 and signed by Kobach asks for registered voters' names, addresses, dates of birth, partial social security numbers, political party, a decade's worth of voter history, information on felony convictions, and whether they have registered in more than one state.
According to The Kansas City Star, Kobach "has championed some of the strictest voting laws in the country during his tenure as secretary of state".
The commission is asking for the data by July 14.
"There's no reason to provide this data", Raimondo said. "The last thing we need is someone working for the White House handing it to them on a silver platter". Public release of that information is not permitted. We operate [an] excellent election system here in Rhode Island. "The Nation" reported that when he was at the FEC, von Spakosvsky pushed to have the wording changed in an Election Assistance Commission report that stated, "There is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud". "We will not be complying with this request..." Groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center have warned that the commission will be a distraction from these laws, which they say are the biggest voting-related problem of our time.
Both Korbach and Trump have claimed that millions of people voted illegally in the November election, but neither has offered any proof of that.
Civil rights and voting rights advocates were also concerned.
California, Kentucky, Virginia, Massachusetts and CT are also resisting.
The Democratic governor said in a letter to Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the election integrity panel, that the state will not share the detailed information being sought. One expert, according to reporter Jessica Huseman, was especially skeptical of Kobach, who has spent years focusing on voter fraud in his current role as Kansas' secretary of state.
As Ari Berman points out in The Nation, while Kobach asked for some public voter information, "much of this information, like someone's Social Security number or military status, is, in fact, private".
Democratic officials in some states say they will not comply with the request for publicly available voter roll data because it's based on false fraud accusations.
Padilla vowed to "continue to defend the right of all eligible voters to cast their ballots free from discrimination, intimidation or unnecessary roadblocks". It is deeply troubling that he has been given oversight of this commission by the President.
He did not rule out the possibility of providing that information to the commission in the future.
