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 Trumps 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 commissions 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 states 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 Trumps 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 peoples confidence in the integrity of federal elections processes.
The commissions 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 isnt 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 Mississippis 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 voters 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 Hosemanns 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.
Who is this D-Bag? These damn #nevertrumpers are worse than Democrats.
Mr. niteowl77
Uniparty.
Mississippi Ping Onyx.
Part of the swamp.He knows what will happen when they find all the fake voters that have been on the rolls for years.I bet soldiers from WW 1 are still voting.
Every objection should automatically trigger a federal investigation of the individuals and states objecting.
This is ABSOLUTELY INSANE that basic due diligence on the voter rolls has to become a political fight. ALL of these people have a duty to make sure the voter rolls are legitimate.
ANY obstruction of this process by any person should be responded to with arrests.
Remember when Obama wanted to designate election systems as “critical infrastructure”, and the howl that arose from the right?
Now the Federal Government wants detail on voting rolls from each state.... and the political right (excluding this guy) is just fine and dandy with it.
I thought we were supposed to be AGAINST the Federal Government interfering with local and state elections? Its so confusing being a conservative sometimes....
Suggestion: Fedzilla should issue a passport to every US citizen over 18 who doesn’t already have one. Then states pass laws requiring voters to show up with their passports.
Show me where in the Constitution the Federal Government has the right to demand that states cough up voting rolls, and the prescribed penalty should they refuse?
I hope that asking politely is only the first course of action.
If the Democrat Party would have him, Hosemann would be a Democrat. At heart he is, but he had to run as a Republican to get elected.
Article IV, Section 4, Clause 1:
“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”
... which is impossible to do without integrity of elections, as they are essential to having a republican form of government.
How would you know? This is not a conservative/liberal issue as much as a legal one. Trump is doing this to see who howls the loudest. Anyone aiding and abetting illegal voting is a federal criminal...they can be conservative, "liberal", socialist, communist...fascist...
This guy has no authority over the Gulf of Mexico.
A big part of me firmly believes in Federalism. We as conservatives can’t pick and choose how the states should express their independence based on who is sitting in the White House.
At the same time Hosemann’s letter is OBNOXIOUS. It reeks of NeverTrump.
It reeks.
Is this the same thing?
The Left wanted to take control(the Left always does) of state elections.
This is to clean up voter rolls which have been intentionally kept dirty for political reasons, namely voter fraud.
Wow. Well thats a stretch. I have an idea. Since we’re going down that route, how about the Federal Government supply all voting equipment, therefore standardizing elections in each state? And, while we’re at it, to further simply things, why don’t we make voter registration a Federal responsibility instead of a State responsibility?
You down for those changes? Seems to fit your mindset.
I agree. It is confusing. I know something has to be done. Vote fraud cannot continue. This does seem to be too invasive. Hosemann is at least partly right even if he is a douche and is probably working for the Republican establishment.
Looks like not only the Dems are guilty, though I am sure 95% of the fraud volume is Democrat.
The feds have long got around that by simply withholding funds from the states.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.