The most consequential political story of the week might not have been in the headlines about the Senate health care bill, President Trump’s tweets, or a new 90-day travel ban that went into effect Thursday night.
Instead, it might be the under the radar moves the White House has made on voting.
This week, a presidential commission — formed in the wake of President Trump’s unfounded claims of mass voter fraud — asked states to turn over detailed data about every voter in their system. That included requests for addresses, voting histories since 2006, party registrations, and the last four digits of voters’ Social Security numbers.
In some states, much of this information is already public. In others, such as Massachusetts, that data is only publicly available to certain groups, like political parties, and only then for a fee. Within 24 hours of the letter being sent to states this week, officials in 10 of them said they would refuse to comply with the request. In other states, like Vermont, Minnesota, and Washington state, officials have expressed concern.
Their primary questions center around what the commission will do with this information and how it will protect the data from scammers and, well, the Russian government, which has already tried to hack its way into these state voter databases.
Massachusetts Secretary of State Bill Galvin said Thursday that he would not hand over voter data. The Connecticut Secretary of State also responded, saying she would hand over some, but not all of the data, omitting sensitive information. In New Hampshire, Secretary of State Bill Gardner, who is a member of the Trump administration’s commission, said he would submit his state’s data but is unsure whether he will charge money for it.
Under federal law, each state must compile a statewide voter database. But what specific information each one keeps, and for how long, is up to them. The Trump administration’s reasons for wanting to compile this information in a national database is so it can double check that voters are not casting ballots in two places, or that noncitizens are registering. The person who now runs the commission, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, has long wanted such a central database so as to help prevent what the administration calls widespread voter fraud.
Here’s the rub: In Kansas, Kobach has created a minidatabase of the sort he wants to see on a larger scale. As a result, he has been repeatedly sued under the premise that instead of rooting out voter fraud, he has instead kicked innocent people off the voting rolls. In one case, he was even fined $1,000 by a judge for “presenting misleading arguments in a voting-related lawsuit.”
Given that elections can be decided by a handful of votes, any action the federal commission takes could ultimately influence who wins and who loses.
With so much flashy news out there this week (let’s be honest, every week lately), it’s tempting to focus on those stories, and not on the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of a commission that hasn’t even met yet. But if voting is among the most sacred of constitutional rights, then this one is worth watching in the days ahead.
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