Still the only voter ID anyone should need
Forty-four states and the District of Columbia have refused to provide certain types of voter information to the Trump administration’s election integrity commission, according to a CNN inquiry to all 50 states.
State leaders and voting boards across the country have responded to the letter with varying degrees of cooperation — from altogether rejecting the request to expressing eagerness to supply information that is public.
[…]
But the commission, which is chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, seemed to misunderstand voter privacy laws nationwide. Every state that responded to the commission’s letter said it could not provide Social Security numbers, for example. Others said they consider information such as birth dates and party affiliations to be private.
What’s more, Kobach asked states to supply the information through an online portal. Many states have rejected this specific request, noting that the commission should file a voter information request through established state websites, as any other party would.
As of Tuesday afternoon, two states — Florida and Nebraska — are still reviewing the commission’s request. Another two states — Hawaii and New Jersey — have not returned CNN’s request for comment. And while six states are still awaiting a letter from the commission, four of them — New Mexico, Michigan, South Carolina and West Virginia — have already pledged not to provide voters’ private information. The other two of those six states, Arkansas and Illinois, have not released statements ahead of receiving the letter.
Just three states — Colorado, Missouri and Tennessee — commended Kobach’s attempt to investigate voter fraud in their respective statements.
See here for the background. You can see a list of how each state responded at the bottom of the article. In the meantime, the DMN has the details about how Texas will respond.
Texas will release voters’ full names, addresses, dates of birth, voter history dating back to 2006 and a person’s voting status, according to the list that the office provided to The Dallas Morning News. Officials said the federal commission’s request is being treated as a public records request.
The secretary of state’s list did not quell concerns about how the information will be used. Justin Levitt, an election expert at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the information is protected against commercial use by state law.
But it will be publicly available once the state hands it over to the commission, which could lead to people sidestepping Texas law to gain access to voter information for commercial gains.
“If I’m someone that can really use this data to sell you something, I may not be able to get it from Texas, but I can turn around and go to the federal commission and get it from them,” Levitt said.
[…]
Levitt said Texas could deny the request on the grounds that the commission is violating federal laws, including the Privacy Act of 1974. Under that law, the federal government has to inform Congress that it is collecting information on individuals and explain why. It would also need to tell the public it was collecting the information and lay out guidelines for protecting it.
The law rarely allows for such information collection with few exceptions, Levitt said.
“Some of the information that Kobach has requested and the secretary of state has said he would release, like voter history and political party, seems squarely in the prohibitions the federal government isn’t supposed to collect,” Levitt said.
“There is absolutely no connection between political party and whether you can vote or not,” he added. “I cannot see a legitimate reason why they want it.”
Sounds like an opportunity for a lawsuit to me. If Mississippi can tell the Trump commission to go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, I don’t see why Texas ought to be handing this data over without at least a cursory inquiry as to who will have access to it and how it will be safeguarded. And if you find yourself getting more junk mail afterwards, you will know who to thank for it. Slate has more.
This reminds me of how frothy Texas Tories got over Jade Helm 15.