WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said Friday his office will not be giving a federal commission that he leads the partial Social Security numbers that he has asked other states to provide from their voter rolls.
Kobach, who is also vice chairman of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, has sent letters to every state requesting names, birth dates, addresses, party affiliation, voting history and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers for all voters, if state law allows it to be public.
Samantha Poetter, spokeswoman for Kobach, said in an email that in Kansas the Social Security number is not publicly available and would therefore not be shared with the commission. She said she would need to check further to see if any other information that would not be publicly available under Kansas law.
Kobach also told The Kansas City Star (https://bit.ly/2sv9jKK ) on Friday he would not be sharing the Social Security information for Kansas voters with the commission at this time. But he did not rule out the possibility of providing it to the commission in the future.
“If the commission decides that they would like to receive Social Security numbers to a secure site in order to remove false positives, then we would have to double check and make sure Kansas law permits,” Kobach said.
“I know for a fact that this information would be secured and maintained confidentially,” he said.
While the commission has no legal authority to compel states to hand over the information, the Justice Department does possess such power, Kobach said, adding he could not say whether the Justice Department would become involved in the effort to obtain information from states.
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