The new Election Integrity Commission run by vice-chairmen Kris Kobach and Vice President Mike Pence issued letters to secretaries of state across the country on Wednesday, requesting all their publicly available voter roll data — including names, addresses, dates of birth, party registration, military service, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and voting history.
So far, at least 27 states have publicly expressed concerns or outright rejected the call for information. And, the Washington Times reports Kobach’s reaction to the pushback was to call it “idiotic.”
Here in Arizona, Secretary of State Michele Reagan said how a person voted is not part of information collected by the state. She says she will provide the feds with information that’s publicly available.
Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes, on the other hand, tweeted Thursday that as far as he’s concerned, Kobach’s commission needs to “submit a public records request and pay the fees.”
For more on this, I spoke with Tomas Lopez with the Brennan Center for Justice, who says the request is pretty unprecedented.
