Letter: State was right to push back on voter information

I applaud Washington Secretary of State, Kim Wyman, for referring the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to the state’s website of publicly available voter information.

The letter received by Wyman’s office requested “… 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.”

The letter was signed by Kris Kobach, Vice Chair and Kansas Secretary of State. Note that Kobach has pursued and enacted voter ID laws in Kansas claiming that he has identified hundreds of fraud cases, but has only successfully prosecuted six cases for voting twice in different states — the same fraudulent actions that members of the Trump administration and family committed in the last election.

This is nothing more than a Republican attempt to fabricate a crisis and pass federal-level voter ID laws to prevent minority citizens from voting. This is unconstitutional, illegal, and un-American.

This story was originally published July 27, 2017 at 1:23 PM with the headline "Letter: State was right to push back on voter information."