A handful of states are pushing back against a sweeping demand from a controversial Trump voting commission for information about voters in every state.
Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity was met with outrage at its inception last month, as it is headed by “notorious vote suppressor” Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and is tasked with investigating “the imagined scourge of voter fraud.”
But a request the commission sent Wednesday to the 50 states and District of Columbia requesting voter names, birthdays, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, felony convictions, military status, and their voting history dating back to 2006 was met with swift rebuke. While one civil rights group called it a “meritless inquisition,” Esquire political columnist Charles Pierce characterized the move as “the final step backwards across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.”
Advocacy organization Common Cause welcomed the fact that several election officials have voiced their concerns about the information request. The organization’s president, Karen Hobert Flynn, said they were right to be wary:
California’s response to the request? Not a chance.
In a press statement that notes the president “has falsely alleged that three to five million votes were cast illegally in the 2016 election,” Secretary of State Alex Padilla said “California’s participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud made by the President, the Vice President, and Mr. Kobach.”
“The President’s appointment of Kobach—who has a long history of sponsoring discriminatory, anti-immigrant policies including voter suppression and racial profiling laws—sends a clear and ominous message. 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.
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