Steve Burns
WMAL.com
ANNAPOLIS – (WMAL) Maryland is joining dozens of other states in refusing to supply personal voter information to the Trump administration.
The State Board of Elections, in a statement, said supplying the information, including addresses, voting histories, and partial Social Security Numbers to The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is against Maryland law, and possibly federal law.
It comes after Governor Larry Hogan’s office punted on the question, insisting the responsibility falls to the Board of Elections, not the Governor’s office.
Maryland Attorney General Brian Forsh, however, put out a strongly worded statement urging the Board to deny the request.
“(The request) appears designed only to intimidate voters and to indulge President Trump’s fantasy that he won the popular vote,” Frosh said. “Repeating incessantly a false story of expansive voter fraud, and then creating a commission to fuel that narrative, does not make it any more true.”
The state’s top Democrats also released a letter, calling the request a “witch hunt,” and accusing the co-chairman of the President’s commission, Kris Kobach, of participating in a long history of voter disenfranchisement.
“Regardless of the intent of the commission, however, a mass request by the federal government for records of millions of Marylanders is unprecedented and raises serious concerns about the security of that data and the uses to which they could be put,” the letter read.
Maryland joins nearly 30 other states in refusing to comply with the request, including traditionally conservative states like Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
