Posted on 07/01/2017 8:36:37 AM PDT by Drew68
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.”
All 50 secretaries of state received a request for the information in a letter this week from Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who serves as vice chairman for Trump’s new Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
The letter seeks the information to “study the registration and voting processes used in federal elections” that may “undermine the American people’s confidence in the integrity of federal elections processes.”
The commission’s request asks for the full names of registered voters, their dates of birth, registered addresses, voting history, and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers – all dating back to 2006.
Kobach was fined $1,000 by a federal judge last week for making “patently misleading representations” about documents he took to a November meeting with Trump that relate to federal voting law.
He told the Kansas City Star on Thursday that the personal data would be hosted on a secure server run by the federal government, and that the request for Social Security numbers was meant to ensure one person isn’t registered more than once.
Hosemann successfully won a 2014 federal case on the argument that state voter file information should be kept private and not shared with the federal government. He has gone to great lengths since the November presidential election to assure the public that there was no voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election.
Twenty-two Mississippians sponsored by Texas-based True the Vote filed a federal lawsuit against Hosemann and the state of Mississippi in 2014, seeking birth dates of Mississippi’s 1.8 million registered voters. Many of those 22 plaintiffs were supporters of state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who narrowly lost the Republican primary runoff to U.S. Senator Thad Cochran. McDaniel earned more votes than Cochran in the primary.
In court and in public, Hosemann pushed back, calling the lawsuit “ill conceived, incoherent, misguided, poorly drafted, filed in the wrong court and probably politically motivated,” saying all voter file information was available to anyone after properly redacting the voter’s birth date and social security numbers.
“The Mississippi Legislature enacted a law to protect your birth date and social security number from public dissemination,” Hosemann said in a statement in July 2014. “This out-of-state company (True the Vote) wants your birth date or wants you, the taxpayer, to pay the redacting and copying for them. Your locally elected circuit clerks are following the law.”
The federal district court ruled in Hosemann’s favor, tossing the case and stating the state restrictions on providing voter identification did not violate the federal voting rights act.
Hosemann touted the smooth election process last fall.
Sounds like a bit of ‘bipartisanship’ in the voting fraud area.
You make my point exactly. The Feds getting involved in State Elections is a very slippery slope. And exactly what the left wants.
The next Democrat President (and yes, there will be one), will be even further left than Obama was. Bank on it. Thats the direction their party is going in. And imagine him (or more likely, her) having this as a precedent.....
I don’t reflexively should rah rah just because my side is doing it. Sometimes my side is wrong.
“I thought we were supposed to be AGAINST the Federal Government interfering with local and state elections? Its so confusing being a conservative sometimes....”
We consider VOTER FRAUD in federal election to be more important than asking for (mostly) public information related to federal election.
OK well you are obviously passionate about the limits of federal power and I deeply respect that, as believe it or not I too share it.
If you can find an alternate means of actually and effectively enforcing this unambiguous clause of the Constitution (and explicit delegation of power to the federal government, unlike most of the feds’ claims to power), then I very much welcome your ideas.
I expect Elizabeth Warren or Maxine Waters to tell Trump to go jump in the Gulf, not officials with an (R) after their name.
GOP leaders need to get this crap under control, particularly when I'm getting letters in the mail from Ronna Romney McDaniel asking for $$$. You don't undermine OUR President with this childish nonsense.
“The Feds getting involved in State Elections is a very slippery slope.”
We’re already there...why do you think that not even conservative states can have a decent Voter ID method?
I’m MUCH MORE WORRIED about losing elections, and the country, due to fraud, because that’s the slippery slope WE ARE ON.
That actually mandates that the federal government ensures the integrity of the vote in each and every state. Right there in the Constitution. The states have no legal grounds on which to refuse this request because of it.
Afraid of a little sunlight?
Wicker and Cochran are Cheap Labor Express stooges and they want to make sure they stay in office.
The Swamp has no (D) or (R) after it.
It is a swamp.
This isn’t taking control.
Guarantee that SoS (does NOT stand for Secretary of State) would have turned himself inside out to provide this information to Obama.
Looks like a primary opportunity. Get to work, Mississippi FReepers.
In GA, our SoS (R) is running for governor. I don’t think he can turn down this request.
Having access to the physical and logical infrastructure for elections is quite a different thing from knowing who is and has been registered to vote and is voting.
If you like your Deep State corrupt election system and elections stolen by the in-crowd you can keep your Deep State corrupt election system and elections stolen by the in-crowd
Did you read the request?
“If publically available under the laws of the state....”
In other words, if the voter rolls are public records, (as they usually are) they asked for copies.
By definition, public records are PUBLIC and available to anyone, including the federal government. Refusing to provide them is clearly obstruction....and probably because the state officials know their voter rolls are filthy with fraud.
“I thought we were supposed to be AGAINST the Federal Government interfering with local and state elections? Its so confusing being a conservative sometimes....”
I wouldn’t call cleaning up the voter rolls so that only valid Voters actually vote only 1 time as interfering with local elections.
Honest elections shouldn’t scare anyone. At least those who are honest and wish the best for our country.
so if they are “publically available”, then why ask? Why not just go get them?
“so if they are “publically available”, then why ask? Why not just go get them?”
EXACTLY!!! They wanted to find out which states they needed to dig into first.
Why are Republican governors resisting a process that promises to shake out all the illegal and fake votes in the system? Is it because they think they are benefiting from all that?
Consider how wonderful it would be if the voting rolls in the whole country could be cleaned out in ine operation. the effect would be salutary even if only temporary as the newly cleaned rolls would clog up over the years. it could probably only be done once as the precedent would set the Establishment to conniving to use the process in later iterations for, instead, stacking the voter rolls.
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