Wednesday, July 5th 2017 — Dozens of states have refused to comply with a request from the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, Donald Trump’s election fraud commission, arguing that state laws and privacy concerns prevent them from handing over sensitive voter information including addresses, voting history and partial social security numbers.
PERMANENT LINK: abc6onyourside.com/news/nation-world/voter-fraud-commission
According to one count by CNN, as many as 44 states have rejected the administration’s request. Even the commission’s co-chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) admitted that under Kansas state law he could not legally provide all of the information being requested.
s more secretaries of state objected to the commission’s request, Kobach issued a statement Wednesday afternoon trying to clarify the numbers. Kobach explained that while 14 states and the District of Columbia have outright refused the commission’s request, 20 states have agreed to provide “publicly available information” and 16 states are still reviewing which information they can release.
“Despite media distortions and obstruction by a handful of state politicians, this bipartisan commission on election integrity will continue its work to gather the facts through public records requests to ensure the integrity of each American’s vote because the public has a right to know,” Kobach wrote.
Opposition from the states began almost immediately after Kobach sent a letter to each secretary of state demanding an in-depth look at voter registration rolls.
The letter asks states to submit all publicly available voter roll data electronically, including full names, addresses, birth dates, political party, voting history going back to 2006, felony convictions, and the last four digits of voters’ social security numbers. In some cases, state officials have reported requests for driver’s license numbers as well.
While some states like Colorado, Missouri and Tennessee are working to comply with the request, others have flatly refused.
“They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico,” Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann (R) said of the panel’s request.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolfe (D) responded to the request with deep skepticism, raising concerns that the data could be used in a “systematic effort to suppress the vote.” He recommended the commission pay the $20 fee to purchase the state’s publicly available voter file, “like any citizen.”
Wisconsin cited legal restrictions that prohibit the state from sharing the type of personal information requested. But Secretary of State Douglas La Follette (D) encouraged the election commission to purchase the official voter roll for $12,500.
In Kentucky, Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) issued a scathing statement, saying, “Kentucky will not aid a commission that is at best a waste of taxpayer money and at worst an attempt to legitimize voter suppression efforts across the country.”
She later told MSNBC that “there’s not enough bourbon here in Kentucky to make this request seem sensible.”
Other states were confused as to why the information was needed and not satisfied with the the vague explanation they were given in the letter that the data would be used to “fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting.”
Security-minded officials wary of cyber vulnerabilities were alarmed that the letter recommended transferring the information in an email, or uploading it to a government FTP site.
Even more troubling was the the portion of the letter alerting state secretaries that “any documents that are submitted to the full Commission will also be made available to the public.” Essentially a detailed database of the personal information of all registered U.S. voters.
When the commission hit resistance, Trump took to Twitter to ask “What are they trying to hide?”
Marc Rotenberg, president and executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) explained that the states are not hiding anything; they have an obligation to protect the privacy of their voter record systems. “They’re upholding their law,” he said.
On Monday, EPIC filed a lawsuit to block the transfer of state voter records to the election integrity commission, arguing that the extent of the information requested and the plan to make that data public “is both without precedent and crazy.” The group is anticipating a decision by the end of the week.
EPIC sees a strong case against the election commission for failing to follow standard privacy practices, like completing a privacy impact study, and its failure to issue any kind of public statement explaining how the data would be used.
“They hadn’t done any of the necessary privacy preparation,” Rotenberg explained. “The commission decided it could go off and request almost 200 million voter records without even thinking about the privacy consequences.”
For example, many commercial institutions, including banks, use the last four digits of a person’s social security number as a default account password.
“What the federal commission is asking for is very sensitive information,” Rotenberg explained. “It’s the home addresses of military families, it’s whether people have felony convictions, it’s their social security number. This is the kind of data that states have always tried to protect.”
EPIC has also filed a Freedom of Information Act suit to get access to more information regarding the purpose of the data request and whether the election panel coordinated its request with the Department of Justice.
The overall purpose of the election commission is also in doubt after numerous studies and state-wide audits uncovered only a few dozen cases of voter fraud, a far cry from the millions of irregularities cited by the president.
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity was created in May by executive order against the backdrop of Trump’s repeated claims of widespread voter fraud and election rigging in 2016. Before creating the commission, Trump claimed that as many as 3 to 5 million people voted illegally in the 2016 election, which he said cost him the popular vote.
Trump’s election fraud claims were fact-checked by reporters and disputed by state officials, but the president made a case to voters that dead people were voting, millions of illegal immigrants cast ballots and individuals were registered and voting in multiple states.
In a press conference shortly after Donald Trump was sworn in, White House press secretary Sean Spicer cited a 2012 Pew Research study allegedly proving the president’s claim that millions of voters improperly cast ballots.
What the study found was that approximately 24 million voter registrations were inaccurate or no longer valid. Some voters moved, others died, but according to the study’s author David Becker, the report had nothing to do with voter fraud.
“There is a big difference between a voter roll being out of date and a fraudulent vote being cast as anyone with rudimentary knowledge of election administration will tell you,” Becker said.
Becker, who is now the executive director of Center for Election Innovation and Research noted on Wednesday that there is “absolutely zero evidence” to support Donald Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.
Still, his research has been cited by conservatives like the Heritage Foundation’s Hans Von Spakovsky, who was recently appointed to Trump’s election commission. Von Spakovsky has argued that given the millions of inaccuracies in voter registration rolls, including individuals registered in two locations, combined with reports of illegal immigrants registering to vote, there is no way to conclude the extent of voter fraud.
“We don’t know how big of a problem voter fraud really is because no systematic effort has ever been made to investigate it,” Von Spakovsky wrote before Trump created the commission.
Becker explained that numerous investigations at the state and federal level have all reached the same basic conclusion, that while voter fraud does exist, it is extremely rare. The idea of millions of individuals voting illegally, he said, “is frankly a laughable statement.”
While working to uncover the millions of fraudulent votes, the Presidential Commission on Voter Integrity appears to be paying very little attention cybersecurity, a growing concern that state election officials have to face.
At the end of the week the National Association of Secretaries of State will hold their summer meeting in Indianapolis, with a significant portion of the agenda dedicated to cybersecurity challenges.
“There is a very, very real threat that Republicans and Democrats agree exists, and that is the threat of foreign interference and cyber hacking into our political campaigns and into our election infrastructure,” Becker explained.
Last month, former Department of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson testified before Congress that dozens of state election officials were probed by Russian hackers attempting to break into registration rolls and jeopardize election infrastructure ahead of the 2016 election. None of the interference observed by the intelligence community effectively changed the vote, but at least two states, Arizona and Illinois, had their registration databases breached.
“There is a real threat to the infrastructure of our democracy and that is cybersecurity,” Becker said. “When I talk to election officials, Republicans and Democrats all over the country … that’s issue number one on all of their minds. That is something they are laser-focused on.”
Even with state officials raising concerns about hacking, Becker finds it “very, very puzzling” that the Trump administration is focused on voter fraud, despite what he sees as conclusive research from state audits, national studies and even past presidential commissions.
Election experts and state officials may be able to point to only a few dozens of instances of voter fraud in each election, but it has done little to allay the fears and skepticism of the American people. In a 2016 Gallup poll a record 69 percent of American adults said they do not trust the honesty of elections.
The Washington Post analyzed polling data in the weeks before the election and found that 84 percent of Republicans believe a “meaningful amount” of voter fraud takes place, along with 52 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of Independents.
Americans may be wary of the integrity of their vote, but with dozens of states blocking the commission’s request and a pending privacy battle in court, there may be more credible ways to ensure that federal elections are fair and honest.
