10 states say they won’t give panel any information
OKLAHOMA CITY — A request for detailed information about every voter in the U.S. from President Donald Trump’s voting commission is getting a rocky reception in the states.
Some of the nation’s most populous states, including California and New York, are refusing to comply. Even some conservative states that voted for Trump, such as Texas, say they can provide only partial responses based on what is allowed under state law.
Officials in 10 states and the District of Columbia said they would not comply at all with the request. Those states are California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, South Dakota, Tennessee and Virginia.
Given the mishmash of information Trump’s commission will receive, it’s unclear how useful it will be or what the commission will do with it. Trump established the commission to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the 2016 elections, but Democrats have blasted it as a biased panel that is merely looking for ways to suppress the vote.
White House spokeswoman Sarah
Huckabee Sanders blasted the decision by some governors and secretaries of state not to comply.
“I think that that’s mostly about a political stunt,” she told reporters at a White House briefing.
Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said in a statement he had not received the commission’s request.
“My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico,” he said. “Mississippi residents should celebrate Independence Day and our state’s right to protect the privacy of our citizens by conducting our own electoral processes.”
In a federal court case in 2014, a group called True the Vote sued Mississippi seeking similar information about voters. Hosemann fought that request and won. No state election official planned to provide the commission with all of the information requested — even Kansas, where commission vice chairman Kris Kobach is secretary of state.
A spokeswoman for Kobach’s office said the last four digits of Social Security numbers are not publicly available under Kansas law. That was the case in many other states, noted in statements from top election officials and responses to queries from reporters for The Associated Press.