The White House on Wednesday requested that every state surrender a laundry list of voter data, including partial social security numbers, using an insecure email address unprotected by even basic encryption technology.
Encouraging state election officials to transmit voter data insecurely belies the White House’s stated goal of improving the security and integrity of federal election systems.
Wasn't this exactly the reason why Trump and the Republicans kept attacking Hillary Clinton over her private email server?
That data can be used for identity theft. Specially if we consider it asks for names, addresses, last four digits of the social security number, date of birth, and other such personal data.
That in itself is a huge problem, as it puts millions of people's privacy at risk. The second BIG problem with this is the fact that the Trump admonistration is asking for the voter data because Trump created a "comission" to investigate phoney voter fraud allegations that Trump himself fabricated. In other words, Trump lied about illegal votes in 2016 costing him the popular vote. Then he created a comission to investigate that lie. And now, as a result, voter data could be at risk.
By the way: the one in charge of asking for the information is Kris Kobach, the same man who came up with Arizona's anti-immigrant laws and the current anti-immigrant policy for the Trump administration.
That's a big problem. It means a racist is in charge of looking at voter data. That means a lot of Hispanics and other immigrants could be thrown off the voter rolls using a bullshit excuse.
Perhaps that's the reason why Connecticut told Kobach to partially go fuck himself. From the Gizmodo article:
“In the spirit of transparency we intend to share publicly-available information with the Kobach Commission while ensuring that the privacy of voters is honored by withholding protected data. In the same spirit of transparency, we will request that the Commission share any memos, meeting minutes or additional information as state officials have not been told precisely what the Commission is looking for. This lack of openness is all the more concerning, considering that the Vice Chair of the Commission, Kris Kobach, has a lengthy record of illegally disenfranchising eligible voters in Kansas. (See, for example, Fish v. Kobach, No. 16-3147, 10th Cir. 2016). The courts have repudiated his methods on multiple occasions but often after the damage has been done to voters. Given Secretary Kobach’s history we find it very difficult to have confidence in the work of this Commission.”
California just plain told Kobach, Mike Pence and Donald Trump to go fuck themselves. Well, with other words:
“California’s participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud made by the President, the Vice President, and Mr. Kobach. The President’s Commission is a waste of taxpayer money and a distraction from the real threats to the integrity of our elections today: aging voting systems and documented Russian interference in our elections.”
Which means that as we get close to six months of Donald Trump in office, the country is starting to really look like Nazi Germany.
UPDATE: Mississippi has also told Kobach to go fuck himself with a pretty similar expression. From Mississippi Today:
Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann will not comply with a request from President Donald Trump’s administration asking for detailed voter file information, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers and birthdates.
Hosemann, a Republican who did not endorse Trump during the presidential campaign, said his office has not yet received a letter from the administration. But he said if and when he does receive one, he will reject it outright. Hosemann is the one of the first Republican secretaries of state in the country to publicly reject the commission’s request, joining several Democratic colleagues in bucking the request.
“They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from,” Hosemann said in a statement on Friday. “Mississippi residents should celebrate Independence Day and our state’s right to protect the privacy of our citizens by conducting our own electoral processes.”
So that's three. Let's see how many more states tell Trump and Kobach to go fuck themselves.
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