Citizens scare politicians more than Trump does
Secretary of State Michelle Reagan was going to kowtow to President Donald Trump and his voter-suppression enforcer Kris Kobach and hand over the personal information of Arizona voters to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Reagan tried at first to deny it. After The Arizona Republic’s Mary Jo Pitzl wrote an article under the headline “Arizona will provide voter information to White House as concerns swirl,” Reagan responded angrily on Twitter:
“Such a BS headline @maryjpitzl ! AZ will NOT provide personal voter data...”
In a statement Reagan said, “Social security numbers, date of birth and identifying information such as mother’s maiden name will not be transmitted. Arizona’s voters can expect to have their personal information remain private and safe.”
Except that Kobach wants every voter’s name, address, age, political persuasion and voting history. All of which sounds VERY much like personal information, because it is.
And you let Reagan know it. And this time she kowtowed … to you.
As for his part, Trump is still preaching fake news about voter fraud. He tweeted:
“Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?”
Actually, there IS nothing to hide. Voter fraud is not now — and has never been — a widespread problem. It hasn’t even been a small problem. Essentially, it doesn’t exist. And Trump’s commission is a sham, a ham-handed attempt at voter suppression, at knocking citizens off voting rolls.
As for seeking “integrity,” how does that happen with Kobach running the show? He was fined $1,000 by a federal magistrate judge for making representations about a document he was photographed taking into a November meeting with then President-elect Donald Trump. The judge wrote, “The court agrees that the defendant’s deceptive conduct and lack of candor warrant the imposition of sanctions.”
The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law published a study of 42 jurisdictions across the U.S. The center’s summary of that study said, “Election officials who oversaw the tabulation of 23.5 million votes in the 2016 general election referred only an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution. In other words, improper noncitizen votes accounted for 0.0001 percent of the 2016 votes in those jurisdictions.”
So, Arizona will join more than 40 other states that won’t hand over the personal information of their citizens.
We’ve learned a few useful things from the experience. We learned that President Trump and his underlings can intimidate Republican politicians into doing things that they know they shouldn’t do. And we learned that only one thing frightens those politicians even more than Trump: you.