Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap (D), a member of President Donald Trump’s sketchy “election integrity” commission, on Wednesday said the panel “should have predicted” outrage at its request for states to turn over sensitive voter information.
“The fullness of experience being what it is, we should have predicted it,” Dunlap told Mic in an interview. “When I heard the news reports, you know, it sounded like the commission was going to propose rounding people up.”
He said “people are very very protective of” the way they participate in elections, which is something Dunlap said the panel’s request “deals with,” and that his office has received “hundreds and hundreds of e-mails.”
“People are very concerned,” he said. “That’s been borne out by the reaction that we’ve gotten, and I think that you’ve seen across the country on a very, very nonpartisan basis. Republicans and Democrats seem to feel the same way about it.”
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), the vice chair of the panel, on Wednesday said in a statement released by the White House that the commission has been hindered by “media distortions and obstruction by a handful of state politicians.”
Dunlap last week told Maine voters that he would not “release any data that is protected under Maine law, to the commission or any other requesting entity.”
