SoS Kemp: It’s Only Federal Overreach When a Democrat is President
Atlanta, GA –
“Brian Kemp has consistently stonewalled efforts that would ensure the integrity of our elections system. Now, just a little over a year after he handed out our private information unprovoked, he’s being asked by a panel of the nation’s leading voter suppression experts to willingly hand out that information once again and more. This move by the Trump administration is a blatant, partisan trick to suppress votes. With hostile foreign governments subverting American elections, we do not need to make our elections even more vulnerable. Georgia Democrats call on Brian Kemp to reject the Trump Administration’s demands, just as he most certainly would with the previous administration.” – DuBose Porter, Chair
From The Hill:
The vice chairman of President Trump’s commission on election integrity sent a letter to all 50 states Wednesday requesting information on their voter rolls.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is seeking several pieces of information about voters, including their names, birthdays, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers and their voting history dating back to 2006.
The letter, sent to the secretaries of state of all 50 states and obtained by The Hill, directs states to turn over “publicly-available voter roll data 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, [and] voter history from 2006 onward.”
So, will Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp comply?
Last year, when the Department of Homeland Security and the Intelligence Community warned Secretaries of State of a series of high-profile elections system breaches and offered a series of proactive scans and evaluations, Kemp scoffed at the idea. Initially, Kemp accused the government of “federal overreach” and labeled the IC’s offer as an attempt to “subvert the Constitution to achieve the goal of federalizing elections under the guise of security.”
In November of 2015, Brian Kemp’s office released the Social Security numbers and private data of more than 6 million Georgia voters. Not only did Kemp’s breach endanger the economic security of millions of Georgians, his mistake cost taxpayers well into the seven figures.
Despite multiple warnings from the IC and security experts, and despite black and white evidence of Russian interference in our elections (and evidence of Donald Trump’s interference in the Russia investigation), Kemp remains in the minority of skeptics. According to the Washington Post, “Kemp said in a recent interview, adding that he remains unconvinced that Russia waged a campaign to disrupt the 2016 race. ‘I don’t necessarily believe that,’ he said.”
Further information, including a timeline of events, can be found here.