President Trump on Saturday slammed states that have refused to turn over voter registration data to his newly created commission investigating voter fraud nationwide.
“Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “What are they trying to hide?”
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity sent a letter to all 50 secretaries of state on Wednesday asking for information from their voter rolls. Many states, including California, Virginia, New York, Massachusetts and Kentucky, are balking at cooperating with the commission’s effort to determine how many people voted illegally in last year’s presidential election.
Mississippi’s Republican secretary of state, Delbert Hosemann, said he does not intend to honor the commission’s request.
“My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great state to launch from,” Mr. Hosemann said in a statement. “Mississippi residents should celebrate Independence Day and our state’s right to protect the privacy of our citizens by conducting our own electoral processes.”
Kentucky’s Democratic Secretary of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes, rejected the president’s claim of widespread voter fraud.
“Kentucky will not aid a commission that is at best a waste of taxpayer money and at worst an effort to legitimize voter suppression efforts across the country,” she said in response to the commission’s request.
Some states, such as Tennessee, said state law prohibits them from turning over some voter information.
The commission, which will hold its first meeting on July 19, wants to compare federal lists of noncitizens in the U.S. with state data on those people who actually voted to determine how many illegal votes have been cast nationwide.
Commission Vice Chairman Kris Kobach, who is Kansas’ secretary of state, told the Kansas City Star Friday that it’s up to each state to decide whether to cooperate with the commission and that it’s “fine” if states decide not to comply. The panel also is being led by Vice President Mike Pence.
Common Cause President Karen Hobert Flynn said letters from the commission and the Justice Department seeking election information “are telling signs of a coordinated, partisan effort to remove eligible voters from registration rolls.”
“Some of the information sought by the Commission’s Co-Chair, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, isn’t publicly available data, and disclosure of such data runs the risk of rampant privacy breaches,” she said. “We are very concerned that the Pence-Kobach commission, premised on the lie of rampant illegal voting, is nothing more than a partisan attempt to manipulate our voting processes that will make it harder for eligible Americans to vote. We are pleased that so many election officials have already spoken out with their concerns about the requests they received this week.”
Mr. Trump has been insistent since his election that Democrat Hillary Clinton received millions of illegal votes, probably enabling her to win the popular vote total last November while Mr. Trump captured the majority of electoral votes.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
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