State of Refusal

Why are so many US states are going to be missing today's deadline to turn over voter information to the Trump administration?

Back in May, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order establishing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The idea was to have Vice President Mike Pence chair the Commission, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach serving as the vice chair.

Since then, thousands of US voters have canceled their registrations since the Trump election integrity commission request. The withdrawals began in earnest earlier this month after a presidential advisory commission on election integrity requested publicly available voter information from all 50 states.

Any member of the public wishing to submit written comments for the Commission’s consideration could have done so via email to ElectionIntegrityStaff@ovp.eop.gov but today's deadline has fallen short of the commissions' decision and many states have opted for an omission.

Please note that the Commission may post such written comments publicly on our website, including names and contact information that are submitted.

After the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity asked all 50 states and Washington D.C., to turn over the data as part of the commission’s investigation into voter fraud, double digit states flat out refused.

The request could also impact legislation in many states, with countless numbers of bills introduced by state legislators to restrict access to registration and voting.

Many state election commissions are arguing that the full set of voter data contains high amounts of personal information and point to less-intrusive data sets are already publicly available.

A Trump commission requested voter data. Here's what every state is saying. http://to.pbs.org/2ugToUY