Scott mum on Trump voter investigation data request

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Rick Scott’s administration is looking over a letter from a federal commission set up by President Donald Trump asking for detailed personal information on Florida voters.

However, Scott hasn’t made a decision about whether to comply with the request and isn’t talking about it.

“We have received the letter. We are reviewing it,” Florida Department of State spokeswoman Sarah Revell wrote in an email.

Scott spokesman John Tupps, when pressed for comment, said his office would like more time to review the request.

The request is being sent to all 50 states as part of the Trump administration’s push to clamp down on voter fraud. Although Trump won the Electoral College vote, he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by nearly 2.9 million votes, something Trump claims because of rampant voter fraud. There is no evidence to support this claim.

The letter was sent by Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, set up in May by Trump through an executive order.

Kobach, who is also Secretary of State of Kansas, asks for “publicly available voter roll data,” including names, addresses, dates of birth, political party, the last four digits of social security numbers, voter history dating back to 2006, criminal record of any felony convictions, military status and overseas citizen information.

The request was made “in order for the Commission to fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting,” he wrote in a letter to Ken Detzner, Florida Secretary of State.

Democrats across the country have condemned the request as a Trump plot to suppress Democratic voters. Governors in California and Virginia have already pledged not to comply with the request.

Two Florida Democratic candidates for governor echoed that sentiment Friday. Former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham of Tallahassee sent a letter to Scott calling on him to reject the request.

“This sham commission was not designed to address real problems, it was created to stroke President Trump’s ego,” she wrote.

Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, another Democratic gubernatorial candidate, called the commission’s request a “voter suppression scheme.”

Scott has conducted similar efforts to clear up Florida’s voter rolls in a search for non-U.S. citizens. Democrats condemned those efforts, made in the run-up to the 2012 elections, as a “voter purge.”

After an initial 180,000 suspect voters, Scott ended up removing 85 voters from the rolls. A federal appeals court later said the effort was a violation of federal law because it removed voters within 90 days of an election.

Mike Ertel, the Seminole County Supervisor of Elections, doesn’t expect the commission to find massive amounts of voter fraud that Trump has claimed.

“[The] commission will use data to compile a list of (wait for it...) 3-5 million who are registered in multiple states, or are deceased,” he wrote on social media. “What the commission will not find: 3-5 million illegal immigrants who voted in the 2016 election.”

Ertel said that while the commission may find hundreds of cases of people voting in two states, the majority of people registered to vote in two states or voting precincts usually happened inadvertently or unknowingly.

“On voter registration application forms, there’s a spot to tell us where you used to be registered to vote,” he told the Sentinel. “If you don’t fill it out, we can’t contact states. There’s no database reciprocity between all states.”

But even if people are unwittingly registered in multiple places, “There’s a very, very minute number of people explicitly trying to vote in two states.”

Ertel said he believes the commission could always end up getting voter information from public records requests anyway, despite the states not cooperating.

“[The] commission will not propose nationalizing of elections, but might call for a national registration database (which will not happen),” he wrote. “It will suggest states implement a Florida-style voter ID, which allows for verification, but also options for those without an ID.”

Ertel did share a warning, though: “At some point there will be an attempt by some entity to hack into some portion of the commission’s files.”