Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced this afternoon in a statement that he will not be providing the full voter information requested by Donald Trump’s Election Integrity Commission.
The request, which has been denied by at least 10 other states including North Carolina, California, Virginia, Indiana (whose SOS is on the freaking commission which is co-chaired by Mike Pence) and others, is a scary one. It sought the full name, last four digits of the social security number, party affiliation, driver’s license number, address and recent voting history of registered Ohioans. As many have pointed out, much of that information is already public but does not include the last four digits of socials. Here’s Husted’s statement on declining to turn over the confidential information not already available to the commission.
The commission, formed after the President’s repeated and wholly unsubstantiated claims that there was massive voter fraud and as many as 3 to 5 million illegal votes cast in the election, is led by Pence and Kansas hardliner Kris Kobach, who you can and should read more about here. The request for state voter info, made public this week, drew quick rebuke from both privacy as well as civil rights advocates, who feared the creation of a massive, nationwide voter roll could be used to suppress voting access and rights.
Husted, a Republican, is running for governor.
This article appears in Jun 28 – Jul 4, 2017.
It is always intriguingly hilarious when the right-wing zealots who lurk around The Swamp scream about the evils of big government…..until they need big government to work for them…..then their odd twists and turns are securely wrapped inside the red, white and blue.
Not sure what the guy above me is getting on about. Jon Husted has obviously made good on his claim to be fighting big government in this particular case. I would think we could all be happy about that.
It’s publicly available info already. So they will get it regardless of lack of cooperation.
When I called Cleveland to ask it said that all the info requested was not confidential. The only thing out of the long list that it won’t provide are the last for digits of our SSNs. It will tell them when we voted and our party, full names, addresses, etc.