(Update: A day after this report was published, the White House said 20 states have agreed to provide the information, and 16 more are determining what information they can release under privacy laws. The White House said, in total, 36 states have agreed to participate or are “considering participating with the commission’s work.”)
Forty-one out of 50 states are reportedly refusing to give President Trump the information his administration has requested to investigate voter fraud in the U.S., which includes voters’ addresses, party affiliation and other identifying data, according to CNN.
In May, Trump signed an executive order commissioning Vice President Mike Pence to lead an investigation of vote fraud, and several independent groups are conducting their own probes. The White House investigation includes a look at outdated voter lists with names of dead people and multiple registrants.
But four out of every five states have flat-out refused to comply with administration requests for voter data, CNN reports. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, vice chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, requested the information from all 50 states last week. Kobach’s commission is seeking “publicly available” data to “fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting,” including names, addresses, dates of birth, party affiliations, voting history since 2006, felony convictions, military status, information on whether they’re registered to vote in other states and the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
In their refusals to comply, some states cited privacy laws as a reason they cannot provide Social Security numbers or birth dates and party affiliations. Others say they’ll only grant requests for information that’s considered public under state laws.
Florida, Idaho and Nebraska all say they are still reviewing the request, CNN reported. Hawaii, New Jersey and Wyoming have not responded to the network’s requests for comment. Four more states, New Mexico, Michigan, South Carolina and West Virginia, say they won’t give the administration the information.
Also, on Monday, a lawsuit was filed against the election integrity commission in federal district court in D.C. by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The group filed an emergency request to stop the Trump administration from obtaining the voter information. The Trump administration has a deadline of Wednesday to reply.
‘What are they trying to hide?’
President Trump has claimed more than 3 million illegal-alien voters may have cost him the nationwide popular vote last November. After states began to refuse to provide information for the voter-fraud probe, Trump blasted then on Twitter in a July 1 tweet: “Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?”
As WND reported June 20, a new study concluded that as many as 5.7 million noncitizens may have voted in the 2008 election won by Barack Obama. A research group in New Jersey, Just Facts, announced it found that after examining post-election polling data, the number of noncitizens voting illegally in U.S. elections is likely far greater than previous estimates.
Just Facts re-examined a Harvard/YouGov study of tens of thousands of voters that concluded zero noncitizens voted, the Washington Times reported. The Harvard data previously was examined in a widely publicized study by professors at Old Dominion University in Virginia, which concluded as few as 38,000 and as many as 2.8 million noncitizens voted. Establishment media has insisted the Old Dominion study has been “debunked,” but the authors stand by their findings. Just Facts’ analysis of the same Harvard polling data estimated that as many as 7.9 million noncitizens were illegally registered that year and 594,000 to 5.7 million voted. Polls show noncitizens vote overwhelmingly Democratic.
Only three states have applauded President Trump’s efforts to investigate voter fraud. Those include Colorado, Missouri and Tennessee.
“We are very glad they are asking for information before making decisions,” said Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams, CNN reported. “I wish more federal agencies would ask folks for their opinion and for information before they made decisions.”
In a statement Friday, Missouri Secretary of State John Ashcroft also expressed his support for the probe: “The commission’s questions are fair and we will be glad to assist in offering our thoughts on these important matters. I look forward to working with Sec. Kris Kobach and the commission on its findings and offer our support in the collective effort to enhance the American people’s confidence in the integrity of the elections process.”
Eighteen states publicly criticized the administration and its voter-fraud investigation.
“The President’s Commission has quickly politicized its work by asking states for an incredible amount of voter data that I have, time and time again, refused to release,” Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler said Monday afternoon. “My response to the Commission is, you’re not going to play politics with Louisiana’s voter data, and if you are, then you can purchase the limited public information available by law, to any candidate running for office. That’s it.”
Mississippi’s Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said Friday: “My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great state to launch from. Mississippi residents should celebrate Independence Day and our state’s right to protect the privacy of our citizens by conducting our own electoral processes.”
Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton ally, attacked Trump’s commission.
“This entire commission is based on the specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November,” McAuliffe said Thursday. “At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump’s alternative election facts, and at worst is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression.”
Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill accused Kobach of having a “lengthy record of illegally disenfranchising eligible voters in Kansas.”
“Given Sec. Kobach’s history we find it very difficult to have confidence in the work of this Commission,” she said Thursday.
Evidence of noncitizens voting
As WND reported, J. Christian Adams, who worked in the Justice Department’s Voting Rights Section under President George W. Bush and now heads the non-profit Public Interest Law Foundation, obtained voter-registration records from eight of Virginia’s 133 cities and counties, discovering 1,046 illegal aliens were illegally registered to vote. He’s also forced several counties to clean up their voter rolls in states such as Mississippi and Texas.
John Fund, the author of several books on election fraud, told WND in March the Obama administration created an environment for vote fraud to thrive.
“When it comes to illegal votes,” he said, “we need to end the Obama administration’s consistent refusal to cooperate with states on allowing access to records of legal foreigners, illegal aliens and the Justice Department’s refusal to require states to maintain clear voter lists if they accept federal funds for voting purposes.
Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of the Houston, Texas-based vote-monitoring nonprofit True the Vote, told WND “no one knows how many noncitizens are voting, because under the Obama administration, attempts to find answers were blocked at every turn.”
She noted states that attempted to pass voter ID legislation or ask for proof of citizenship were sued by the DOJ.
True the Vote itself, she said, “was targeted for takedown by the administration because of the work we do; researching illegal votes, calling out election fraud, empowering citizens.”
“We were asking questions they didn’t want answered,” she said.
“Now, with the leadership of the Trump administration, we finally have an opportunity to stop guessing at how big the problem is,” Engelbrecht told WND.
She said True the Vote is engaged in a “forensic audit” of the 2016 election to uncover illegal votes, election fraud and process deficiencies. The investigation “will be comparing data from state voter registries with data from scores of other available databases, including certain state agencies, national change of address, Social Security death index, and results from hundreds of FOIA requests.”
In March, Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced that his office has identified an additional 385 noncitizens registered to vote in Ohio, 82 of whom have been identified as having voted in at least one election. It brings the total number of noncitizens on Ohio’s voter rolls Husted has been able to identify using available resources to 821, with 126 having actually cast ballots.
