Florida voters’ data sent to Trump panel
TALLAHASSEE — The personal information of about 13 million registered voters in Florida has been handed over to a federal commission set up by President Donald Trump, Florida Department of State officials confirmed Monday.
Secretary of State Ken Detzner had previously said he would release voters’ names, addresses, dates of birth, party affiliation, whether they voted in the past 10 years’ elections and military status in accordance with Florida’s public records laws. But the release of the data was put on hold until a judge in a Washington, D.C., court case ruled the information could be released.
The case was resolved, and the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, a panel set up by a Trump executive order in May, renewed its request for the information last week. Florida’s information was sent late Friday, officials said.
The state, however, did not release all of the information requested by the panel. Detzner, an appointee of Gov. Rick Scott, who was an early Trump supporter, has noted that partial Social Security numbers are exempt from state open records laws and the state doesn’t keep criminal histories on registered voters.
All of the data given to the federal panel is a public record under Florida’s open records laws, or “Sunshine Laws,” and are regularly given out to political parties, candidates, advocacy groups, political consultants and other groups who use the information to tailor their ads and messages to targeted voters.
But the request from the commission has unsettled some voters who don’t want their data released and have attempted to unregister to vote, even though their information is already in the state system.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, 1,715 people across the state canceled their voter registration since June 28, the day the commission asked for the information.
Democrats and left-leaning groups, however, are still wary of the commission’s agenda, which they fear is aimed at voter suppression rather than cleaning up the voter rolls to prevent voter fraud. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit in a Miami federal court over the issue.
Democratic candidates for governor, including Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum and former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham, had called for Detzner to reject the entire request outright, as other states have done. Democratic lawmakers like state Sen. Oscar Braynon of Miami Gardens have said they suspect the panel’s purpose is to try to back up Trump’s claim that 3 million to 5 million illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election. There is no evidence to support that claim.
In renewing the request for the voter information, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the commission, said personal data won’t be released.
“The only information that will be made public are statistical conclusions drawn from the data, other general observations that may be drawn from the data, and any correspondence that you may send to the Commission in response to the narrative questions enumerated in the June 28 letter. Let me be clear, the Commission will not release any personally identifiable information from voter registration records to the public,” he wrote in a letter to Detzner last week.