All 50 states have received a letter from President Trump's new Election Integrity Commission, requesting the name, address, date of birth, party affiliation, last four Social Security number digits, and voting history back to 2006 for each voter in the state, and several state officials have already said they won't be turning this personal data over.
In the letter, the commission's vice chairman, Kris Kobach, said that "any documents that are submitted to the full commission will also be made available to the public." On Wednesday, Vice President Mike Pence's office said the commission is seeking "feedback on how to improve election integrity," but the commission is focusing on the wrong issues, multiple governors said. "I have no intention of honoring this request," Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) said in a statement. "Virginia conducts fair, honest, and democratic elections, and there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in Virginia."
Trump, who has made baseless claims that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election, created the commission to investigate voter fraud, which is incredibly rare in the United States. Kobach is the Kansas secretary of state who was fined $1,000 this month by a federal judge who ruled that he presented "misleading arguments in a voting-related lawsuit." Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrrill told The Washington Post she would share publicly available information with the commission "while ensuring that the privacy of voters is honored by withholding protected data," adding that Kobach "has a lengthy record of illegally disenfranchising eligible voters in Kansas" and due to his history "we find it very difficult to have confidence in the work of this commission."
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