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Privacy Watchdog Sues Trump's Election Committee Over Voter Data (engadget.com)
From a report: When the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity sent a letter to all 50 states seeking personal, identifying information on all voters in the US, at least 44 states refused in some part. Trump signed an executive order last May to create this commission while claiming that millions of people had voted illegally. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has taken issue with this request, as well, and has filed a lawsuit accusing the Commission of violating the privacy of American voters. EPIC also asserts that the original request asks states to send the data to a non-secure website, making the data vulnerable to identity theft and financial fraud. Not to mention political agendas. EPIC is also seeking information about "the failure to conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment," and has filed for a temporary restraining order "to block the Commission's efforts."
I'm not as concerned about voter privacy (which I happen to think that voter records are something that a federal government could legitimately have reasons to demand accurate and unified data on) as the likelihood that whoever in this administration tasked to do it is some part time Republican committee-connected programmer bro (maybe not even that lowly skilled) who hacks together some shitty piece of analysis code that comes to wrong conclusions, is misused for political purposes, and is vulnerable to hacking.
This is the flavor of the week for the administration. It's one thing they are putting out there to see if it flies, and that's about how long their interest and dedication to doing the job right will last. There are people (secretaries of state, registrars, data scientists) whose entire lives are dedicated to maintaining and verifying and analyzig voter rolls. Who do you trust to handle and come to conclusions about this kind of data conscientiously?
As the Republicans say, when the Federal Government comes knocking with the line "I'm here to help" you should be scared. They're right in this case.
The Democrats raised the loudest stick about elections being hacked. The Green party even raised millions to go over votes to check for validity across a few states...
Well then lets check, lets check everywhere the full extent of votes really being hacked, of votes really being cast illegally. What is the issue with not checking this? They claim voter privacy but there is no such concern in regards to the federal government which owns all of the results of a national election anyway and is legally free and clear to demand any information it likes.
Pretty obviously there is a lot more voter fraud going on than many would care to admit, and they do not want it uncovered - and here I'm speaking for both parties. This is yet another glimpse of the Deep State disliking being exposed to sunlight.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No one is protecting anything except Trump's fragile ego. This whole Advisory Commission action was set into motion because Trump can't accept the fact that he lost the popular vote to Hillary. Total waste of time and money... plus it apparently jeopardizes voter privacy and security. So don't try to politicize Trump's grandiosity, malignant narcissism, impulsivity, maniacal insecurity, or hypersensitivity to slights & criticism.
RI found 150k+ illegal voters a week or so ago.
Um, no, no they didn't. They found inaccuracies in the registration lists and cleared them away (which happens when they didn't vote for the past 2 elections) or marked them inactive (when election mail is sent back as undeliverable). It's normal and part of maintaining accurate voter rolls. The names cleared didn't actually vote, by definition, you understand that, right?
You fucking losers just hate being wrong, so you lash out, call people names, threaten them and in some cases try to assassinate them. At some point you wankers will either grow up or being wiped off the map. Either way, everyone wins.
I don't know who you should contact for the hypocrite of the year awards, my apologies.
these are all issues that affect how each state is represented and are proper matters for a state to research (perhaps with support from the federal gov).
Why yes they are matters for the states to research.
However almost no states are doing so.
So the federal government has decided to do an audit. You know, like any non-crooked organization might have to do from time to time just to ensure things were on the level...
Why are people so resistant to a simple audit I wonder?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The voter rolls are public information that states may or may not make easy to get. They're normally available to anyone who follows the rules and pays the fee.
Or there's what California does.
Evidence...? ...crickets...
Also "hundreds"? That sounds like big problem which could seriously impact elections. In Tuvalu.
Someone had to do it.
What the hell does Trump think he's doing? Identifying all his 'enemies' within the 300,000,000 people in this country? What's next, Trump? Bringing back the McCarthy Committee? Loyalty tests? What a bunch of bullshit.
1. Put all of the data in a big Hadoop cluster.
2. Throw in social security records.
3. MapReduce/Spark
4. Nice big graphical charts that lay bare how absolutely cluster fucked our election system actually is in terms that even someone with an 80 IQ can understand.
My bet:
1. You'll find a lot of UMC voters double voting in different states where they have legal residences.
2. You'll find a lot of dead voters still voting.
3. You'll find a lot of immigrants.
If anything, I expect to find that felons are the least problematic group as most of them won't give two shits about voting if it steers them anywhere near a repeat offense that sends them back to prison.
The big problem with Voter ID is that many proposals violate the 24th Amendment against poll taxes. A voter ID would need to be free of any financial charge and also free of other logistical barriers, e.g. "you can only get them at the DMV next to the statehouse on odd Tuesdays between the hours of 10 and 11 AM, and you need to provide an in-state birth certificate, social security card, blood sample, passport, pass a citizenship test and submit to a DNA swab".
The New York Times published the exact responses of the elections officials here: https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2017/06/30/us/ap-us-voting-commission-state-responses.html
Almost all of them are along the lines of "we'll gladly turn over the information that our state considers public if the commission just fills out the standard paperwork for requesting it, but we aren't turning over the substantial amount of non-public data the commission is requesting without a court order".
http://www.npr.org/sections/th...
"The letter, sent Wednesday to all 50 states, requests that all publicly available voter roll data be sent to the White House..."
They're asking for otherwise-PUBLICLY AVAILABLE information. They're not asking for secret stuff (why would the states have that anyway?).
Isn't it getting a little tiresome to misinterpret everything Trump does as malignantly as possible?
-Styopa
In some states after passing such laws, they shut down most of their DMVs. Of course, that wasn't "planned" to disenfranchise in any way.
...which I happen to think that voter records are something that a federal government could legitimately have reasons to demand accurate and unified data on...
I'm not disagreeing with your overall comment, but some federal governments may legitimately ask for this, but the executive office of the United States of America cannot. The executive branch has no role whatsoever in elections.
Article I, Section 4 of the constitution states:
Section. 4.
Clause 1: The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.
It is up to the states to control elections, Congress can pass laws that can make and alter elections nation wide. The Executive office plays no role. Article 2:
Section. 1. ...
Clause 2: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
The states are also in charge of their electors in the electoral college for the President of the United States. The President is not involved. The President should not get involved in the sausage making of the office of the President, as it would be a conflict of interest and cross the boundaries of the balance of power.
The twelfth amendment altered the way the electoral college worked, but it left un-changed the fact that the States, and not the federal government, is in charge of elections.
So it is true that some federal governments may have an interest in this, the federal government of the United States has an extremely limited role. The executive branch has no role in this whatsoever.
Look, the problem is that we know at least 39 states were hacked, and voting machines in specific counties and precincts were disabled, and attempts were made to disenroll American voters, by Russia.
But the commission is correct that the Russian White House is trying to make it worse.
Expect new actions after Putin's lapdog gets his new marching orders from his master at the G-20.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"If you've done nothing wrong then you have nothing to fear"
- Words said before every dark chapter in history, ever.
Trump supporters are even dumber than we thought.
The problem is, this is being seen as a blatant attempt by the Trump administration to purge voter rolls of properly registered voters. Unlike Trump's claim of having won the popular vote, this doesn't come out of thin air.
Kris Kobach, the vice-chair of of the Commission of Election Integrity, tried to purge Kansas' voter rolls of 20,000 properly registered voters. He had to be threatened with Contempt of Court before he put them back on the voter rolls.
Then there's Ken Blackwell, another member of the Commission of Election Integrity. During his tenure as Ohio Secretary of State, his office fucked up TWICE, accidentally releasing private data on millions of Ohio voters, including SSNs.
Then there's Hans von Spakovsky, another member of the commission, who, while at the Justice Department promoted voter ID policies in Georgia that would disproportionately affect African-American voters. He had previously published a law review article supporting that policy under a pseudonym, and should have recused himself from the Justice Department decision. He also tried to inject partisan politics into FEC policy during his short time there. And he's no stranger to making wild claims about voter fraud either, claiming that 1400 votes were illegally cast during the 2008 Minnesota Senate election won by Al Franken. (No evidence of this was found.)
Not exactly a stellar cast of characters.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Except that some states cannot legally provide even that. Kansas (where Kobach is the Secretary of State) can't.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
They're asking for significantly more information than what is publicly available. The types of info they are asking for make it seem like the are attempting massive purges of people who are likely to vote against them.
Yes, but how will Trump make mountain out of molehill if his silly commission is only reporting from data that can be easily checked? Rather, they intended to get their "secret" data, report their Trumped up findings, and then fail to release any data because they'll argue it contains PII including SS numbers.
There are two rules of Trump: (1) he does everything only for himself, (2) he destroys everything he touches.
I particularly like Mississippi's response to the commission
Quoted in part: "They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great State to launch from."
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
848 documented criminal convictions [amazonaws.com], and this is just a sampling.
Only 6 of those are from the 2016 election.
Or perhaps you'd like to hear from the Pew Trusts and their finding of "Approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state." [pewtrusts.org], not to mention millions of dead still registered to vote... Is that enough evidence for you?
Steve Bannon, Tiffany Trump, Sean Spicer, Jared Kushner and Steven Mnuchin are all registered to vote in more than one state. Does that prove they committed voter fraud? Or could it be that being registered twice doesn't mean they tried to vote twice? How many of those 2.76 million registered in multiple states voted twice? Or even know they're registered twice? How many dead people voted? Given that records of who voted are publicly available it should be incredibly easy to show any massive voter fraud... <crickets>
You may want to actually read the links you post. I know the Heritage foundation thinks you are stupid enough to read the first few pages and think that they are all "dead people voting" but you should have more respect for yourself than they do.
These convictions run the gamut from idiots trying to run for office by pretending to live in a different district, people being payed to collect petition signatures or voter registrations who tried to scam their employers instead of doing the work, politicians outright buying votes, election officials tampering with ballots, and people on absentee voting drives improperly turning in ballots for other people which is a crime even though those other people filled the ballots out themselves. And other such technicalities:
XXX admitted to improperly assisting voters in
completing their absentee ballots in the 2005 Americus mayoral
election. XXX was a candidate in that election, and on at least six
occasions, he helped voters fill out information on their ballot mailers
without signing the requisite oath indicating he had provided the
assistance. He was ordered by the State Election Board to pay a
$600 fine
Your contention that it "only breaks one way" is also false. Plenty of news articles of Trumpkins trying to double vote.
Which is dumb. As the convictions show, it is very easy to catch you doing this. Only a few fools each year try it, the rest are dissuaded by us actually enforcing existing laws using existing precautionary mechanisms.
To start screwing around with people who *should* be allowed to vote for the sake of a teeny tiny number of people to are trying to defraud the system will get us less accurate results than doing nothing at all.
Someone had to do it.
Read the letter, it is very clear: In addition, in order for the Commission to fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting, I am requesting that you provide to the Commission the PUBLICLY AVAILABLE voter roll data for Alabama, including, if publicly available under the laws of your state, the full first and last names of all registrants, middle names or initials if available, addresses, dates of birth, political party (if recorded in your state), last four digits of social security number if available, voter history (elections voted in) from 2006 onward, active/inactive status, cancelled status, information regarding any felony convictions, information regarding voter registration in another state, information regarding military status, and overseas citizen information
Sorry, hit Post too soon. Correction/clarification:
If Trump didn't think the popular vote counted, he wouldn't be claiming that he would have won it if "millions" of illegal voters hadn't voted for Clinton. There is not, and there never has been, proof that "millions" of people vote illegally. Quite the contrary: voter fraud numbers are miniscule. It's just not a problem. Trump is trying to claim that it is, and the Pence commission is political cover for that narrative.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
No one is protecting anything except Trump's fragile ego. This whole Advisory Commission action was set into motion because Trump can't accept the fact that he lost the popular vote to Hillary. Total waste of time and money... .
I suppose you could look at it that way if you intended to keep up the partisan party line. Actually this whole thing makes good sense to me for a number of reasons.
First, Not comparing the various state's lists for duplicates allows for those who wish to commit voter fraud and vote multiple times in multiple states an easy way to do this.
Second, Some states do not have very good procedures to purge their voter rolls of various illegible voters including illegals, those who have moved out of state, people who have died and others who should not be voting. Having them on the rolls only makes vote fraud easier.
Now I'm not so sure that having some federal commission going though the voter rolls is a splendid idea, but it's not totally without reason or benefits.... Benefits? Yep....
1. Making some kinds of voter fraud harder to do and easier to detect.
2. Restoring public confidence in the voter registration process and the thus the election results.
So if we can put the partisan rhetoric aside a bit and discuss this, maybe we can come up with some kind of reasonable way to do this.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You obviously do not know what you are talking about. Most cases of "Fraudulent use of Absentee Ballots" result from amateur volunteers not knowing that there are very strict rules about how absentee ballots must be filled out and delivered. In fact a huge number of the cases in that document are against (n00b) candidates themselves and many in minor off-year elections because that is where idiots think they can get away with it and it might make a difference. Barely anyone bothers in large elections... there's no way to pull it off.
See, what happens is this: Since ballots are usually counted in precinct, one of the little old ladies making bingo money running the roles, counting absentee votes or serving as a judge for one of the parties, bless their gossipy souls, has a very high chance of having personally known the dead person you try to vote for. The more dead people you try to vote for, the greater the odds she'll call the policeman over from the corner to ask you a few questions, or send one to the address from which the absentee ballot was requested.
So you cannot hang your hat on the number "848", as puny as it is, especially when averaged out over a dozen election cycles.
D.C. political operatives trawling through a giant list of voters are going to make huge mistakes because they lack this local perspective. They'll claim a bunch of dead people voted, and we'll find them mowing their lawns, yet again. And since their only intent is to cause chaos in the first place, they'll care even less. They might as well just pretend they went and got the data themselves and go publish their results now, since they'll make up whatever shit they feel like anyway.
Someone had to do it.
Quite the contrary: voter fraud numbers are miniscule. It's just not a problem.
Successful voter fraud isn't detected. You can't state that it's rare or a "minuscule" problem without at least a basic investigation into the votes cast and counted. Such an investigation would require information the commission is seeking from states. People who like to downplay the possibility of voter fraud sure like to enable it by opposing such checks, opposing voter ID requirements (even if the ID is free and easy to obtain), opposing auditable and securable voting machines (i.e., paper ballots), etc.
Whether you suspect voter fraud or you expect no voter fraud, the best way to start figuring it out is to do what the commission is trying to do.
Registering fake voters, voting multiple times, voting for other people, voting for dead people, etc. is standard fucking procedure in this country at every level. It's such a cliche that it was the basis for a Simpsons episode, and when Lisa decided to prove it, the level of "who gives a shit" was so high that she was simply handed the entire vote record. "Vote early, vote often." isn't just something people say, it's something they do.
When every single step of the game leading up to the election is rigged, do you really think they'd grow a conscience and stop at the sacred polls? Do you really think elections at the national level are any more secure than at the local level? If so, why? The scale of the election doesn't help you here, it hurts you. And you only need to "influence" a handful of states to have an impact. Hell, you can often target a handful of polling places each in a dozen counties to swing the legislative branch.
Yeah, that doesn't wash.
First, every President for the last 40 years has released his tax returns as a matter of good faith.
Second, when Trumpkin was demanding Obama's Birth Certificate (his fucking BIRTH CERTIFICATE! Like someone could get that far in the election without anyone bothering to check that they're a citizen first?!?) he said - more than once - that he would release his tax returns if he got elected. For the last 6 months we've been waiting and he's been pretending he didn't say a thing. To boot, when he's demanding that other people pay "their fair share" he turns around and says, "I use the tax laws to my advantage". At BEST he's a hypocrite.
Third, as has been established many times in this thread, the EXECUTIVE BRANCH doesn't have a goddamned thing to do with elections - this is established in our Constitution (you should probably read it since your President can't be bothered to)
Fourth, the current administration has made no bones about taking personal action against someone that they simply don't like. Do I want my information given to these underhanded douchbags? No, the answer is (and will always be) NO.
Translation: "We have an open tab at the GSA to run this farce of a commission but we're too lazy to cross-collate the publicly available information with other non-election data sources, so you do it. Then upload it to the webserver we payed the cousin of some campaign contributor some insane amount of money to set up, which, by the way, has no security whatsoever."
To which the proper reply is "get stuffed".
Someone had to do it.
How many do you want to allow, each election?
Very few.
How many convictions are required before you are concerned about it?
Thousands, per state, minimum. Tens of thousands in high population states.
How much fraud do you accept?
Approximately 0.01% is perfectly acceptable. The actual rate is less than that, year in and year out. 6 out of 136,628,459 is 0.0000000439%. I'm perfectly fine with a rate 100,000 times worse than that. Fortunately I don't have to settle for that.
Existing voting controls are quite good, most places. The only precincts I'm suspicious of are those with purely electronic voting, and the only part of that I'm suspicious of is the vote results. The actual voting controls are still quite good, even in places like that.
I like my state's method best. Scantron sheets, so there's a paper record that's electronically tabulated, with the tabulation happening right in front of you. The scanner rejects your ballot if you screwed it up somehow. Much better than any paper punch system, and far better than any purely electronic system.
Why, when someone objects to blatantly obviously politically motivated bullshit, do you immediately conclude that a) the objector also objects to any voting controls at all; and b) that there are no existing voting controls? You are 100% wrong in both cases.
Successful voter fraud isn't detected.
That's a brilliant self-perpetuating delusion, worthy of the best conspiracy theorists. If a voter-fraud study turns up no evidence, it's not because there's no voter fraud, it's because the fraudsters are too good at it! And there are millions of them! Millions, I say!
You can't state that it's rare or a "minuscule" problem without at least a basic investigation into the votes cast and counted.
Well, you have a point there. Oh wait, you don't:
https://www.brennancenter.org/...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.politifact.com/flor...
http://www.scholarsstrategynet...
http://fortune.com/2016/10/18/...
http://www.projectvote.org/blo...
[Ignoring the remainder of your speculative, strawman-filled, fact-challenged rant.]
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
It uses the phrase "publicly available" then proceeds to list things that are generally not publicly available - varying by state of course. Its hard to believe that those who drafted the letter are unaware of that, or of the proper procedures to follow when making such a request - even with the incompetence of this administration. No, it seems more like the letter was sent specifically to capture this news cycle. The states, nearly all of them, predictably refused to comply. Now trump gets to paint the narrative exactly like he wants - "the states are helping to cover up millions of fraudulent votes". The rejection of this letter serves as a stand-in for actual evidence, which won't ever come. You can expect plenty more posturing like this throughout the commission. The entire point of the commission, after all, is to provide a propaganda counter-point to the Russia investigation. A smooth way to change the subject while appearing not to change the subject.
Sure thing. This is from Alabama. This is a list of acceptable photo voter ID that is acceptable. Here is an article about the closure of 29 different county DMV offices. Here is proof that the "mobile ID centers" on make a single stop in each county, and only for two hours at a time. A federal lawsuit will start in September of 2017.
Now, one could claim that it's all due to budget cuts, or such. That it's not some type of voter disenfranchisement plan. Perhaps if this wasn't in Alabama, that might be believable. I'll let you find the numerous citations on Alabama's long history of racism, segregation, and so on...shouldn't take you too long. Hanlon's Razor should always be considered...but when it comes to Alabama and racism, so should Heinlein's Razor:"...but don't rule out malice."