“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions who voted illegally,” tweeted Donald Trump on November 27, following his win. Perhaps in an effort to prove social media blather correct, Trump has issued an executive order creating the Presidential Advisory Committee on Election Integrity. The goals of the committee include “studying vulnerabilities in the voting systems that could lead to voter fraud,” which requires collecting a large amount of personal voter information from the states. After facing serious legal pushback, even his supporters are wondering about its legitimacy. While the purity of the democratic process should be every citizen’s concern, the committee’s latest crusade, in violating privacy, has gone too far.
… Many Democrats argue that these policies amount to voter suppression and directly affect Democratic turnout, in addition to being discriminatory, since these policies disproportionately affect minority voters.
But Republicans also have raised concerns over voter privacy rights. After the committee chair and Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, sent out initial data requests to each state, 44 refused to cooperate fully in the interest of protecting their citizens’ rights to privacy. Most of the uncooperative states consider some or all of the data requested––including voter birthdates and partial social security numbers––too sensitive to release. Among the state officials who were not compliant with the data collection was Mississippi’s Republican Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, who responded to the request by inviting the committee to “jump in the Gulf of Mexico.”
Full Article: Trump’s Attack on Voter Privacy | The American Conservative.