California official bristles

California official bristles at Trump voter fraud panel’s records request

By John Wildermuth

A startling call by a White House commission studying voter fraud in the 2016 election for the name, address, date of birth and partial Social Security number of everyone who has cast a ballot since 2006 has provoked howls of outrage from voting rights advocates across the country and outright defiance from California’s secretary of state.

“I will not provide sensitive voter information to a committee that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally,” Alex Padilla said in a statement Thursday. “California’s participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud.”

In May, President Trump formed the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity by executive order, a move he had promised days after his inauguration as part of a “major investigation into voter fraud.”

After November’s election, Trump said, without providing any evidence, that he would have won the popular vote if it weren’t for “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California.” He also claimed, also without citing any facts, that as many as 5 million illegal votes were cast.

While Vice President Mike Pence is the chairman of the commission, the letters sent Wednesday to all 50 states were signed by the vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has called for tough new laws that could make it harder for many people — most notably poor, minority and young people — to qualify to cast ballots.

Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill, while saying in a statement Thursday that she would share “publicly available information” with the commission, added that Kobach “has a lengthy record of illegally disenfranchising eligible voters in Kansas.”

The courts “have repudiated his methods on multiple occasions,” Merrill said. “Given Kobach’s history, we find it very difficult to have confidence in the work of the commission.”

Kobach is spreading a wide net for voter information, saying that the data, which he wants by July 14, is needed “to fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting.”

While much of the information, including the names and addresses of voters, is publicly available, it is typically kept by individual counties, although since 2016 California has had a statewide voter database.

But Kobach also is requesting information that’s more questionable, such as the last four digits of Social Security numbers, a list of elections individuals have voted in since 2006, information about any felony convictions, military status and more.

The commission also wants the states to provide information about any instances of voter or registration fraud or convictions for election-related crimes since November 2000.

Given Kobach’s record as an election rights hard-liner and Trump’s oft-stated conviction that voter fraud cost him the popular vote, there are real questions about just how independent and unbiased the commission’s investigation will be, said Jessica Levinson, an election law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

“What’s the reason for getting this information?” she said. “This is a fishing expedition to find something that will allow the federal government to implement laws that shouldn’t be implemented.”

In a tweet, Vanita Gupta, chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and former head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, was more direct.

“The letter @KrisKobach1787 is sending to states confirms: Pence and Kobach are laying the groundwork for voter suppression, plain & simple,” he tweeted.

Virginia has joined California in refusing to provide the voter information. Gov. Terry McAuliffe, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said there is no evidence of voter fraud in his state.

“At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump’s alternative election facts,” McAuliffe said in a statement Thursday. “At worst it (is) a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression.”

The commission “is a waste of taxpayer money,” Padilla, a former Democratic legislator, said.

While election officials in other states hedged, saying only that they will provide what information their state voting and privacy laws allow, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, a Republican, said the state will “offer our support in the collective effort to enhance the American people’s confidence in the integrity of the system.”

It’s impossible to say whether Padilla and McAuliffe will be able to avoid producing any voter information, said Levinson, the election law professor.

“I expect that everything that’s public likely needs to be turned over,” she said. “Anything else, I can see a judge telling the commission, ‘You need to show a reason.’”

If Padilla refuses to follow a court order to produce the information, he could be held in contempt, which possibly could lead to a night in jail.

Given California’s anti-Trump leanings, however, “I imagine (Padilla) would live tweet every step of the way to jail and never have to send out a campaign mailer again,” Levinson said.

It’s just as likely, though, that Kobach would use the refusals as talking points, she said, suggesting that those states “must have something to hide.”

If the states do comply, for the first time it would give the federal government direct access to the records of the more than 200 million people now registered as voters, as well as information about anyone else who has been registered anytime in the past decade. Until now, it has been the individual states that maintained the hold on their own voters’ information.

The commission has suggested that all the voter data collected might be made public, which would provide a “one-stop shop” for anyone seeking to collect and use that trove of information, for good or ill.

Regardless of the final outcome, Kobach’s request alone could have repercussions in future elections, Levinson warned.

“A lot of people already are anxious about voting and even about registering, for no good reason,” she said. With Kobach now calling for all that information to be turned over to a federal committee, “The sheer act of the request could have negative effects on would-be voters.”