States Won't Give Trump Voter Data Because They Would Lose Revenue from Selling It?

from the Washington Examiner

In the past week election officials in dozens of states have rejected a request from the newly-formed Presidential Advisory Commission on Electoral Integrity to provide voter records for a study on the extent (if any) of election fraud. Some of those officials have expressed great indignation that the commission would even ask. Yet many of those same officials would gladly sell those very same records — to campaigns, to candidates, to political consultants, even to you. It's a situation that baffles some political veterans.

President Trump created the commission by executive order on May 11. Vice President Mike Pence is the chairman, and the vice chairman is Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate. Kobach is the one who sent the request to officials in all 50 states.

The purpose of the commission, Kobach wrote, is to identify "rules, policies, activities, strategies, and practices that enhance or undermine the American people's confidence in the integrity of federal elections processes." Kobach asked state officials to answer some straightforward questions, like "What changes, if any, to federal election laws would you recommend to enhance the integrity of federal elections?" and "What evidence or information do you have regarding instances of voter fraud or registration fraud in your state?" and "What recommendations do you have for preventing voter intimidation or disenfranchisement?

Nothing too controversial there. But then Kobach added the request that has set off a firestorm:

In addition, in order for the commission to fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting, I am requesting that you provide to the commission the publicly available voter roll data for [your state], including, if publicly available under the laws of your state, the full first and last names of all registrants, middle names or initials if available, addresses, dates of birth, political party (if recorded in your state), last four digits of social security number if available, voter history (elections voted in) from 2006 onward, active/inactive status, cancelled status, information regarding any felony convictions, information regarding voter registration in another state, information regarding military status, and overseas citizen information.

In response, state officials not only refused to provide Kobach the requested information — at least 45 have said no so far — but have tried to outdo each other in expressing patriotic outrage that the commission would even consider asking such a thing.

"My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico," wrote Mississippi's Republican secretary of state, Delbert Hosemann.

"[The] Constitution ensures voters ballot choices will always be secret. Americans have died protecting this freedom," tweeted South Carolina's Republican governor, Henry McMaster.

"I find this request for the personal information of millions of Marylanders repugnant," said Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh. "It appears designed only to intimidate voters and to indulge President Trump's fantasy that he won the popular vote."

"I have no intention of honoring this request," said Virginia's Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe. "This entire commission is based on the specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November."

For commission members, the responses are hard to understand. "The reaction to this has been absurd," said Hans von Spakovsky, a former Bush Justice Department official, former member of the Federal Elections Commission, and head of the conservative Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative, who is now serving on the Trump commission. "The commission is asking for voter registration and other information that is publicly available. Not only do all of the political parties buy this information routinely from secretaries of states — so do candidates."

It's true. Just look at, say, the Department of Elections webpage in Terry McAuliffe's Virginia. The department lists "client services" that include the purchase of voter lists. To candidates, parties, campaigns, and "members of the public seeking to promote voter participation," the state of Virginia will sell:

Registered Voter List (RVL) and Newly Registered Voter List (NRV) — full name, residence address, mailing address, gender, date of birth, registration date, date last registration form received, registration status, locality, precinct, voting districts and voter identification number.

Want the data in slightly different form? Virginia also sells:

List of Those Who Voted (LTWV) — full name, residence address, mailing address, gender, date of birth, registration date, date last registration form received, registration status, locality, precinct, voting districts, voter identification number, election date, election type, and whether the voter voted in-person or absentee.

For another example, look at the state of Maine, which has also refused to cooperate with the commission, but which by law spells out the types of voter information it will sell:

The secretary of state or the registrar shall make available the following voter record information, subject to the fees set forth in subsection 2: the voter's name, residence address, mailing address, year of birth, enrollment status, electoral districts, voter status, date of registration, date of change of the voter record if applicable, voter participation history, voter record number and any special designations indicating uniformed service voters, overseas voters or township voters.

Notice that much of the information for sale in Maine and Virginia is similar, if not identical, to the data requested by Kobach. Many states have similar provisions. Which raises the question: If voter information is for sale, why is it a matter of principle to refuse to provide it to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Electoral Integrity?

"It's silly," said Chris Wilson, CEO of the political consulting group WPA Intelligence and former head of research and analytics for the Ted Cruz presidential campaign. "This is data that we can purchase online from multiple states and multiple sources."

Von Spakovsky added that, if the fact that states sell voter information were not enough, federal law requires states to keep and give out the same information. The National Voter Registration Act, also known as the Motor Voter law, includes a provision saying, "Each state shall maintain for at least 2 years and shall make available for public inspection and, where available, photocopying at a reasonable cost, all records concerning the implementation of programs and activities conducted for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy and currency of official lists of eligible voters…" I asked von Spakovsky if that rather convoluted phrase covered voter rolls and information. "Yes," he answered.

There is one thing that Kobach asked states for — and it is important to note that Kobach's letter is a request, specifically asking only for information that is publicly available under state law — that is not for sale, and that is the request for the last four digits of a voter's Social Security number. Even though having the last four digits might be useful to researchers trying to distinguish between voters with the same names, it might be that states could reasonably refuse to give the commission that one bit of information. But that doesn't account for the across-the-board denials from so many states.

Of course, the big reason many state officials, particularly Democrats, are refusing to provide information is that they simply do not believe voter fraud exists, or exists in anything other than the tiniest numbers. But von Spakovsky points out that there are respected studies pointing to problems with the nation's voter rolls that deserve further study.

In 2012, for example, Pew Research published a study on the nation's voter registration system, which it concluded was "inaccurate, costly, and inefficient." Pew found that:

Approximately 24 million — one of every eight — voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate.

More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters.

Approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state.

The problem with the Pew study, as von Spakovsky sees it, is that Pew did not study whether those registration problems actually resulted in voting problems. "We know for a fact that people who aren't U.S. citizens are registering and voting in U.S. elections," he said. "How extensive is that problem? I don't know because no one has ever done the work to find that out."

Now the Trump commission is seeking answers. To do so, it needs the information that, until now, many states routinely gave out to interested parties. Now, however, the states appear to be spoiling for a fight. Given the amount of public posturing involved so far, it's not at all clear the commission can succeed.

Maryland Election Officials Afraid to Prove Trump Wrong

from the Baltimore Sun

Maryland elections officials on Monday denied the Trump administration’s request for personal information about the state’s voters as part of a new federal investigation into alleged voter fraud.

Linda H. Lamone, Maryland’s elections administrator, rejected the request for information after receiving an opinion from Attorney General Brian E. Frosh, who called President Donald J. Trump’s investigation “repugnant.”

“The assistant attorneys general representing the State Board of Elections have considered the request to the Board for the personal information of millions of voters and have determined that the requested disclosure is prohibited by law,” Frosh said in a statement. “I find this request for the personal information of millions of Marylanders repugnant; it appears designed only to intimidate voters and to indulge President Trump’s fantasy that he won the popular vote.”

Also on Monday, Maryland Deputy Secretary of State Luis E. Borunda resigned from the panel Trump convened to conduct the investigation. Borunda, a former Baltimore County school board member with little elections experience, was appointed to the commission last week.

Doug Mayer, a spokesman for Gov. Larry Hogan, said Borunda joined Trump’s 15-member bipartisan panel “on his own” and was not appointed by the Republican governor.

“He informed our office he has resigned from the commission,” Mayer said. Borunda did not respond to a request for comment.

Rep. Andy Harris, Maryland’s only Republican in Congress, suggested the Trump administration should withhold money from the state if elections officials won’t comply.

“I’m not surprised that Democrats are worried about investigations into voter fraud,” Harris said. “Why not cooperate? Most of this information is publicly available. There is no reason why not to cooperate with a federal investigation into the extent that voter fraud occurs in Maryland and whether some states are more lax than others.”

Harris cited the example of his former political opponent, Wendy W. Rosen, who pleaded guilty in 2013 to illegally voting in two elections.

“Clearly voter fraud happens in Maryland,” he said.

Last week, Trump administration officials sent requests to all 50 states for publicly available information as part of an investigation into the integrity of elections. More than two dozen other states have partially or fully denied the administration’s request.

Trump tweeted over the weekend that uncooperative states must have something to hide.

“Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?” he wrote.

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity asked for voter data including names, addresses, party affiliation, voting history and partial social security numbers.

The commission was created after Trump claimed on Twitter in November that he “won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.” Trump won the Electoral College vote, but Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by nearly 2.9 million votes.

The president has never offered evidence to back up his claim.

“Repeating incessantly a false story of expansive voter fraud, and then creating a commission to fuel that narrative, does not make it any more true,” Frosh said. “There is no evidence that the integrity of the 2016 election in Maryland — or any other state — was compromised by voter fraud.”

Frosh urged Hogan and the State Board of Elections to speak out and “reject any further attempt to intimidate voters and obtain their personal information.”

Much of the requested information is public under Maryland law but must be requested by a registered voter of the state and cannot be used for commercial purposes. Many political campaigns, for instance, obtain such information for purposes of advertising and door-knocking.

Mayer said the state elections board should comply with state law, but not give out private information.

“As for any such request, the state Board of Elections should supply no more information than is required of them under the law,” he said.

The request came in a letter from Kris Kobach, vice chair of the presidential commission and the Kansas secretary of state. The letter does not ask for private information, but rather public voter-roll information.

“In order for the Commission to fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting, I am requesting that you provide to the Commission the publicly-available voter roll data for Maryland,” Kobach wrote in the letter.

State law also says a Maryland voter must submit to the State Board of Elections a statement signed under oath that the requested voter information will not be used for purposes unrelated to the electoral process.

In Maryland, leading Democrats, including Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamentez and nearly 50 members of the General Assembly, condemned the commission’s work.

Former NAACP President Ben Jealous, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in the 2018 gubernatorial race, held a news conference Monday morning calling for the state board of elections to refuse to cooperate with the election integrity commission.

“If the secretary of state of Mississippi can tell this commission and Trump to go jump in the gulf,” Jealous said during a Monday news conference, “we should be telling them to take a flying leap off the Bay Bridge.”

Jealous used the issue as an opportunity to accuse Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of “silently playing footsie with President Trump.” He noted that several other state leaders already have rebuffed the commission’s request.

“We’re calling on Hogan to have the courage to let the people of Maryland know what he thinks, to step out of silence, to stop playing footsie with Trump and join the other states in saying, ‘No, no thank you, no way, no how,’” Jealous said.

Frosh said in a letter to Congress this year that voter fraud is not a significant problem in Maryland.

“To date, there are no cases in which it has been determined that an individual who cast a vote in the federal elections held in November 2016 was legally prohibited from doing so...,” Frosh wrote. “With only two instances of confirmed voter fraud from the total voter turnout of 2,734,176 in the 2012 Presidential General Election, we can safely say that there is no evidence of coordinated or systematic voter fraud in Maryland."

Maryland Argues Republicans not Harmed in Redistricting Case

Before Redistricting

After Redistrictingfrom the Baltimore Sun

Attorney General Brian E. Frosh asked a federal court Friday to dismiss a lawsuit that claims state lawmakers violated Republicans' constitutional rights when they redrew Maryland's congressional boundaries six years ago.

The state's response in the redistricting case — the first since the litigation forced several state Democrats to explain under oath the motivation behind Maryland's contorted congressional districts — asserts the plaintiffs have offered no evidence voters were targeted simply because they are registered Republicans.

Brought by a group of GOP voters in the 6th Congressional District, the case is one of several pending in federal courts that rely on new legal arguments to challenge the constitutionality of political gerrymandering. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear one of those lawsuits this fall — and that litigation, which comes out of Wisconsin, could play into the Maryland suit.

The Maryland lawsuit, filed in 2013, is focused on how the redrawn 6th District in Western Maryland led to the election of a Democratic congressman for the first time there in more than two decades. The plaintiffs contend the map violated the First Amendment by retaliating against people who voted Republican.

Frosh, a Democrat, countered Friday that there is no evidence the General Assembly targeted individual Republicans for retribution. He also noted that a voter isn't entitled to be represented in Congress by someone of like mind.

"All of plaintiffs' arguments hinge on a single false premise: That individuals who affiliate with a party have a right to maintain electoral successes gained by their party under prior redistricting maps," Frosh wrote. "Plaintiffs have produced no evidence that any decision maker 'specifically intended to burden the representational rights of certain citizens.'"

An attorney for the voters declined to comment.

Dirk Haire, chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, dismissed the idea that the redistricting didn't hurt the GOP. The state party is not involved in the lawsuit.

"That's a total joke," Haire said. "Everyone in the state knows that the entire purpose behind the redistricting was to harm Republicans."

Gerrymandering, the practice of drawing boundaries for political advantage, often results in bizarre-shaped districts. Some studies have found that Maryland has one of the most gerrymandered congressional maps in the nation.

While politicians have long drawn districts for political advantage, computers have made the process an exact science. Carefully drawn maps can all but assure the party in power will retain its grip on the state legislature and congressional delegation for years.

No matter how the lawsuit turns out, it has refocused attention on the state's districts at a time when the issue is once again at the fore. Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, has advocated for a nonpartisan redistricting commission, ostensibly to curb partisan gerrymandering. Such a commission would likely result in Maryland sending more Republican lawmakers to Congress.

Under the current system, maps are drawn by the governor and approved by the General Assembly.

Democrats in Maryland have a two-to-one advantage in voter registration, but they control seven of the state's eight House seats.

In 2011, after adding heavily Democratic portions of Montgomery County to the Western Maryland-based 6th District, Democratic Rep. John Delaney ousted incumbent Republican Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett. Delaney barely won reelection in 2014 — a point Frosh noted to underscore the competitiveness of the district.

But Delaney won with a 16-point margin in 2016, a presidential election year, and growth in the district suggests it will become more Democratic over time.

Lawyers deposed former Gov. Martin O'Malley, Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and House Speaker Michael E. Busch as part of the lawsuit this year. In transcripts of those interviews, made public this month, O'Malley acknowledged that part of his goal was to make the 6th District more friendly to Democratic candidates.

Though that was not a surprise — O'Malley was the leader of the state Democratic Party at the time, as well as governor — it was the first time an elected official involved in the process acknowledged what was widely believed. Miller and Busch both continued to say partisan politics had nothing to do with the redistricting.

In his motion, Frosh wrote that an effort to draw a better map for Democrats did not represent a violation of the Constitution.

"The only evidence produced proves merely that the mapdrawers intended to create a more competitive district, one that slightly advantaged Democrats without considering any particular citizen's political conduct," he wrote.

The Supreme Court has often lamented partisan mapmaking, but the justices have failed to agree on a legal standard to decide when an effort to draw political advantage into a district crosses the line. The Wisconsin and Maryland cases are proposing different standards for how to determine whether a map is unconstitutional.

The Maryland case is being heard by a three judge panel. The court set a hearing in the case for July 14, and the judges asked both sides to prepare to argue whether the litigation should be put on hold until the Supreme Court rules in the Wisconsin case.

Every noon-time NPR talk show at the time was about how the redistricting would help Democrats win elections. It was ALL about giving the DNC one more Congressional seat by moving Republicans to heavily Democratic districts (Like the 7th & 8th) and transferring urban Democrats into the rural Republican 6th to create a "slim" but electable majority. That Frosh claims there's no "evidence" of political bias in the redistricting is LAUGHABLE. The defacto result was to flip political representation from a 10-term incumbent Republican (Bartlett) to a Democrat (Delaney)

from Wikipedia:

After redistricting, Delaney decided to run for the newly redrawn 6th District against 10-term Republican incumbent Roscoe Bartlett. The district had long been a Republican stronghold, but it had been significantly reconfigured. The Maryland General Assembly shifted heavily Republican Carroll County and a mostly Republican section of Frederick County to the heavily Democratic 8th district. It shifted Republican-tilting sections of Harford and Baltimore counties into the already heavily Republican 1st district. Taking their place was a heavily Democratic section of Montgomery County. The shifts were quite controversial, as Republicans accused Democrats of shifting district boundaries in their favor, while Democrats, led by Governor Martin O'Malley, insist the redrawn districts are fair and accurate representations of the state's population trends. During the primary, Delaney was endorsed by former President Bill Clinton, U.S. Congresswoman Donna Edwards, Comptroller Peter Franchot, the Washington Post, and the Gazette. On April 3, 2012, Delaney won the five-candidate Democratic primary field with 54% of the vote. The next closest opponent, State Senator Robert J. Garagiola, received 29% of the vote, 25 points behind Delaney. In the November 6, 2012 general election, Delaney defeated Bartlett by 59%-38%, a 21-point margin. He won mostly on the strength of a nearly 56,000-vote margin in Montgomery County, which accounted for almost all of the overall margin of 58,900 votes.

I wonder if Frosh would also argue that "no Democrats would be harmed" if we undid all the Democrat gerrymandering performed in 2012...and THEY subsequently lost a few seats in the U.S. Congress?
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