DEMOCRATIC HYSTERIA …
A week ago, we published a report on the federal government requesting voter data from states. The requests were sent from Kris Kobach, the vice chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
U.S. president Donald Trump established this commission back in March via executive order to “promote fair and honest federal elections.”
In the intervening days, this issue has erupted into a major partisan spitball fight. Democrats in particular have accused the Trump administration of seeking “a pretext for disenfranchisement.”
“The possession of such sensitive information by this disgraceful group endangers our civil liberties, threatens our voting rights, and undermines confidence in our elections,” S.C. Democratic Party (SCDP) chairman Trav Robertson said in a statement. “South Carolina Democrats, independents, and Republicans who put country over party will continue to fight so that all eligible South Carolinians can exercise their right to vote, which previous generations sacrificed so much to secure.”
Really?
That strikes us as hyperbolic. And hypocritical.
After all, this is the same data South Carolina Democrats routinely purchase and send off to their national leaders. Why is it suddenly wrong for Republicans to send it to Trump’s commission?
More to the point, voter data is public information. Meaning it is available to anyone who requests it.
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There is a bigger issue to consider here, though. The whole point of Trump’s election integrity commission is to “fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting.”
Given that Democrats have been screaming for months that “Russia rigged the election,” you’d think this would be the sort of inquiry they would welcome.
Any fraud against the integrity of an election is serious business – and should be taken as such.
In fact, we wonder just how the SCDP would have responded had this same voter data request been made as part of an effort to “fully analyze allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.”
Because our guess is in that case they would have praised it … perhaps even demanded GOP cooperation.
Speaking of cooperation, that’s what this website counseled in this matter.
“We hope states will cooperate with the commission’s efforts to identify and eradicate election fraud in this country,” we wrote last week.
Of course we did add that Trump’s commission needed to ensure that appropriate privacy safeguards were in place during its collection, and that the commission should “take care to only request data that is absolutely necessary in the fulfillment of its public mandate.”
Which is to stay public data …
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