The day after the White House’s bogus “election integrity” commission asked states to turn over data from their voter rolls, none other than a Republican secretary of state who was named to the commission itself joined a chorus of states declining to comply with the request.
Several states with Democratic secretaries of state, like California and Kentucky, quickly rejected the ask, decrying it as an attempt to bolster voter suppression attempts. The request came in the form of a letter from Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state notorious for supporting restrictions on voting who is the vice chair of the commission.
But notably, Connie Lawson, Indiana’s Republican secretary of state, also declined to fulfill the request on Friday, citing state law that bars her from sharing voters’ personal information. The commission had requested “publicly-available voter roll data,” but specified that it was interested in information including the last four digits of voters’ social security numbers and birth dates.
My statement on the CEI's request for voter information: pic.twitter.com/46vECNBtkf
— Connie Lawson (@SecretaryLawson) June 30, 2017
Lawson was named to the commission, which is headed up by Vice President Mike Pence, the former governor of Indiana, in May.
Under Lawson, the Indiana State Police raided a voter registration office late last year, and she subsequently removed about half a million names from the voter rolls. As a state senator, Lawson also introduced a voter ID bill.
