President Donald Trump is trying to compile a list of voter data from all 50 states by compiling an extensive range of information on American voting habits going back over a decade.
The President’s commission on election integrity sent letters to all 50 states asking for voter names, birthdays, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, and their voting records from 2006 until today. But, state officials from red and blue states alike are fighting back.
Officials more than 10 states, including Virginia, California, New York, and Kentucky all refused to honour the request for their voter roll data, saying they had an obligation to protect the fairness of their elections.
The White House called the refusals a "political stunt".
“At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump’s alternative election facts, and at worst it is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression,” Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, said.
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla argued that the request would only serve to legitimise the President’s false claims that there was widespread voter fraud in the 2016 election, which Mr Trump says is why he lost the popular vote by nearly three million votes.
“I will not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgement that millions of Californians voted illegally,” Mr Padilla said, referring to the President’s claims that Californians voted illegally en-masse. “California’s participation would only serve to legitimise the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud by the President, Vice President, and [Kansas Secretary of State Kris] Kobach.”
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