AMY GOODMAN: Dozens of state lawmakers and civil rights groups have denounced an election
commission established by Donald Trump which has asked all 50 states to hand over detailed
personal information about U.S. voters.
The request was made by the Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and vice chair of
Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
In a letter addressed to secretaries of state and other officials across the country, Kobach
requests, quote, "the full first and last names of all registrants, ... addresses, dates
of birth, political party ... last four digits of social security number if available, voter
history ... from 2006 onward, ... information regarding any felony convictions, information
regarding voter registration in another state, information regarding military status, and
overseas citizen information."
Kobach recently defended his request on MSNBC.
SECRETARY OF STATE KRIS KOBACH: This is publicly available information.
The commission is only requesting what any person on the street in California can walk
into a county election office and get.
So, if Social Security number is not publicly available—and it is not publicly available
in most states—then we aren’t requesting it.
AMY GOODMAN: Forty-four states to date have said they would refuse to comply with Kobach’s
request.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe blasted the request in a statement, saying, quote,
"I have no intention of honoring this request.
Virginia conducts fair, honest, and democratic elections, and there is no evidence of significant
voter fraud in Virginia.
This entire commission is based on the specious and false notion that there was widespread
voter fraud last November.
At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump’s alternative election
facts, and at worst is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression," the Virginia governor
wrote.
On Saturday, Trump called out states that are refusing to turn over the information,
tweeting, "Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished
VOTER FRAUD PANEL.
What are they trying to hide?" he tweeted.
Meanwhile, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has called on the U.S. Office
of Special Counsel to investigate whether Kobach violated the Hatch Act, a 1939 law
that limits certain political activities of federal employees.
Kobach announced last month he’s running as a Republican candidate for governor of
Kansas.
The Lawyers’ Committee alleges Kobach may have violated the law by highlighting his
role on the commission in campaign materials.
For more, we’re joined by two guests: Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of
the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Ari Berman, senior contributing
writer for The Nation, where he covers voting rights.
He wrote about Kris Kobach in The New York Times Magazine in an article "The Man Behind
Trump’s Voter-Fraud Obsession."
We welcome you both to Democracy Now!
Kristen Clarke, let’s begin with you.
You are suing?
KRISTEN CLARKE: So, what we have done is we’ve filed a complaint against Kris Kobach under
a federal law known as the Hatch Act.
This is a law that was passed by Congress in 1939, and it prohibits federal employees
from using their official government position to engage in political activity.
It prohibits government employees from soliciting political contributions.
So, Kris Kobach is running this commission.
He was appointed by the president to serve as vice chair.
And several weeks after he was appointed to that role, he announced that he was running
for governor of Kansas.
Since that time, he has actively exploited his role as the vice chair of the election
integrity commission to promote his gubernatorial bid.
In our complaint to the Office of Special Counsel, which is housed inside the Justice
Department, we lay out extensive evidence in which we show that Kris Kobach would appear
in a news interview—for example, on June 30th he appeared on Fox News and MSNBC and
other networks—to talk about his role leading the election integrity commission; in the
next breath, he promotes those appearances on his political campaign sites, on his social
media sites linked to the campaign, and solicits political contributions around those media
appearances.
This conduct, we believe, runs afoul of the Hatch Act.
We don’t know if Mr. Kobach agreed to serve in this commission because his goal ultimately
was to use his role to promote his gubernatorial bid, but what we know is that these are not
isolated instances but a pattern in which Kobach talks about his work on—work with
the commission and then goes out and uses those media appearances to solicit political
contributions and to promote his governor bid.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the 44 states refusing to hand over information to this
election commission?
KRISTEN CLARKE: So, we should qualify: There are 44 states that have said that they will
not fully comply with the president’s request, and so we continue to keep those states under
a microscope.
There are many state privacy laws that simply prohibit state election officials from disclosing
the vast amount of data that this so-called election integrity commission seeks—Social
Security numbers, date of birth, address information.
There actually just is no way for many states to disclose the kind of data that the commission
seeks.
So some states have said that they, outright, will not participate in any fashion.
Some of those states include California and Virginia and New York and Kentucky, and we
applaud those states.
But there are a number of states that are saying, "You know, we may be able to give
you something.
You have to make your request in the way that anyone else would.
You have to pay for the data that we provide."
And so, we’re watching closely to see how much states turn over.
At the end of the day, we don’t believe that any state should participate in this
commission.
The goals of this commission are clear.
This commission was set up to lay the groundwork for a massive push of voter suppression laws
and policies on a national scale.
We think that goal is a very dangerous one.
And our hope, ultimately, is that states will not in any way legitimize the work of this
commission by turning over data that could be ultimately abused by cyberhackers.
There are 200 million registered voters in our country, and we’ve never seen an effort
like this to comb and pull together this extensive and vast amount of data on individuals in
our country.
So, we’re going to be watching closely to see what states do this week.
Secretaries of state will be convening at the National Association of Secretaries of
State.
They’re holding an annual summer meeting in Indianapolis.
And our hope is that, at that forum, we will see secretaries of state collectively take
action to condemn the commission and make clear that they won’t allow this federal
overreach to interrupt the good work that they are doing across our country to maintain
their own state registration rolls and the work that they’re doing to carry out their
job.
AMY GOODMAN: Ari Berman, even Kansas, where Kobach is secretary of state, has refused
to hand over some information.
ARI BERMAN: Well, this is amazing.
So, Kris Kobach asked all of these states for what he called publicly available data.
But a lot of the data was, in fact, not publicly available: Social Security numbers, political
affiliation, criminal history, military history.
His own state—he is the secretary of state; he could not comply with this.
Amazing letters from members of Trump’s own election integrity commission said they
would not comply with this request.
The Maine secretary of state denied Kobach’s request.
The Indiana secretary of state, Mike Pence’s home state—he’s the chair of the commission—said
she would not comply with this request.
So it seems like Kobach, number one, did not think this through at all in terms of what
was publicly available, and, number two, did not consult with members of his own commission
in terms of what he was asking for.