Update: More than half the states refusing to provide voter data to Trump election panel (Oregon and Washington added themselves to the list.)
At least 29 states are pushing back or outright refusing to comply with the Trump administration’s request for voter registration data.
From The Hill, 24 states refusing to provide voter data to Trump election panel:
At least 24 states are pushing back or outright refusing to comply with the Trump administration’s request for voter registration data.
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, formed by President Trump to investigate his widely debunked claim that millions of illegal votes cost him the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election, sent letters this week to the 50 secretaries of state across the country requesting information about voters.
The letter, signed by commission vice chairman and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), asked for names, addresses, birth dates and party affiliations of registered voters in each state. It also sought felony convictions, military statuses, the last four digits of Social Security numbers and voting records dating back to 2006, according to a copy of the letter obtained by The Hill.
Many states immediately raised concerns and voiced their opposition to providing the information.
Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) said that she does not intend to release the data.
"The president created his election commission based on the false notion that ‘voter fraud’ is a widespread issue — it is not,” Lundergan Grimes said. “I do not intend to release Kentuckians' sensitive personal data to the federal government.”
[…]
Trump has alleged that millions of illegal votes cost him the popular vote in November’s election, an assertion for which he has offered no evidence. Repeated academic and state studies of voter files show that only a handful of improper votes were cast in recent elections.
Chief election officials from both sides of the aisle expressed skepticism about Trump’s claim of voter fraud.
Zero Hedge's version of the story is here: Andrew Cuomo Refuses Federal Data Request Related To Trump's "Voter Fraud Myth".
Shortly after moving into the White House, President Trump promised a "major investigation into VOTER FRAUD" and vowed that any evidence of wrongdoing would be used to strengthen voting procedures. The following tweets undoubtedly 'triggered' millions of liberals across the country as visions of 'racist' voter ID laws danced in their heads.
I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and….
Then, just last month, that "major investigation" came in the form of an Executive Order entitled: "Presidential Executive Order on the Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity." The Commission was to be chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and it's mission was defined as follows:
The Commission shall, consistent with applicable law, study the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections. The Commission shall be solely advisory and shall submit a report to the President that identifies the following:(a) those laws, rules, policies, activities, strategies, and practices that enhance the American people's confidence in the integrity of the voting processes used in Federal elections;
(b) those laws, rules, policies, activities, strategies, and practices that undermine the American people's confidence in the integrity of the voting processes used in Federal elections; and
(c) those vulnerabilities in voting systems and practices used for Federal elections that could lead to improper voter registrations and improper voting, including fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting…
Enter New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Apparently Mr. Cuomo is so certain that voter fraud is nothing more than a right-wing "myth" that's he unwilling to even comply with a data request to make sure. We're sure he's just trying to save Vice President Pence from wasting his time.
Zero Hedge also posts this video:
And follows up with, "Alas, we assume that video is also just a 'myth'…"
Well, the video is close to a myth. I checked. Here's more on the video, and other Project Veritas’ Election 2016 ‘Rigging’ Videos:
The videos are, as is typical of O’Keefe’s, work somewhat of a gish gallop, comprising a constellation of allegations and assertions that is virtually impossible to fact check without complete clips of the involved conversations. Nearly all the videos used stitched-together, out-of-context remarks with no indication of what occurred or what was discussed just before and after the included portions.
The framing and style of videos created by James O’Keefe is well known due to his 2009 “sting” in which he and accomplice Hannah Giles visited ACORN offices and pretended to be seeking advice on how to run an illegal business that included the use of underage girls in the sex trade. The resulting videos — which were edited to create the impression that O’Keefe and Giles had spoken to ACORN representatives while dressed as a pimp and prostitute — dealt that organization a mortal blow before reports publicizing the deception in O’Keefe’s videos came to light:
How quickly things seem to fall apart when James O’Keefe is the person who put them together.
O’Keefe’s incriminating ACORN video was shown to have been heavily edited — neither he nor Hannah Giles were actually in pimp and prostitute get-up when they spoke to ACORN employees, for example — and no criminal prosecutions of ACORN followed. While not letting ACORN off the hook for showing “terrible judgment” in the video, California’s then-attorney general Jerry Brown noted after an investigation into the tapes and the organization that “sometimes a fuller truth is found on the cutting room floor.”
Those same words now seem applicable to the latest O’Keefe sting, which further tarnished NPR’s reputation and took down its CEO. As we noted, Glenn Beck’s conservative website, The Blaze, was first to report on discrepancies between the first edited eleven-and-a-half minute video released on the Project Veritas website and a later, unedited two-hour version … NPR media reporter David Folkenflik addressed the dubious editing on Morning Edition and in a written report for NPR’s website. Folkenflik reviewed the two tapes himself, along with some NPR colleagues and outsiders like The Blaze’s editor-in-chief Scott Baker and Poynter’s Al Tompkins. They home in on many of the same problems The Blaze pointed out. And they basically come to the same conclusion: the tape is still a problem, but the impression it leaves is different.
“I tell my children there are two ways to lie,” Tompkins said. “One is to tell me something that didn’t happen, and the other is not to tell me something that did happen. I think they employed both techniques in this.”
