Illinois will not hand over voter roll data as requested by a Trump administration panel, the Board of Elections announced on Thursday, saying that it does not have a publicly available roll. After Trump’s newly created Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity issued a letter asking that states provide voter data—including names, addresses, birth dates, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and voting history, stretching back ten years—the Illinois office was met with an influx of calls urging the Board to deny the request. Kenneth Menzel, General Counsel of the State Board of Elections, wrote in a letter to Kris Kobach, Vice Chair of the PACEI, that the Commission’s stated intention to make public any submitted data prevents the Board from turning it over, per the state’s election-code safeguards.
The Code “protects the confidentiality and privacy of voter registration data, limiting its release to registered political committees for political purposes and to governmental entities for governmental purposes, subject to the restriction that voter data not be released to the public,” Menzel wrote. “Your letter indicates that any information and voter registration data provided to the Commission will be made available to the public.”
“In short, the State of Illinois does not have a publicly available voter roll,” he added. “Therefore, our agency does not have any material responsive to the Commission’s request.
Full Article: Board Says Illinois Will Not Turn Over Its Voter Data To Trump Administration: Chicagoist.