N.J. won't share non-public voter info with Trump commission

New Jersey will not share any voter information with President Donald Trump's voting commission that is not already public, a state election official said Wednesday, making it one of the last states to refuse to fully comply with a request for detailed records.

"To date, no information has been released nor will any future information be released that is not publicly available or does not follow the appropriate legal process for information requests," Robert Giles, director of the New Jersey Division of Elections, said in a statement, although his office did not respond to questions about what information is public.

Before Giles' announcement Wednesday, CNN reported that 44 states and the District of Columbia have refused to provide at least some of the voter-roll data requested in a letter from the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The letter from Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who serves as vice chairman of the commission, asked all 50 states for information such as voters' political affiliation, voting history, criminal history, military status and the last four digits of their Social Security numbers "if publicly available under the laws of your state."

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Some states have cited privacy concerns in refusing to comply with part or all of the request, while others have suggested that the commission is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression. Trump created the commission to study the federal voting process in May after claiming, without evidence, that millions of fraudulent votes had been cast in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump won the Electoral College vote in November but lost the popular vote to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million.

"Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?" Trump wrote on Twitter over the weekend.

In a statement Wednesday, Kobach called reports of states rejecting the call for information "fake news" and said 20 have agreed to provide already public information and another 16 are reviewing what can legally be disclosed.

"Despite media distortions and obstruction by a handful of state politicians, this bipartisan commission on election integrity will continue its work to gather the facts through public records requests to ensure the integrity of each American's vote, because the public has a right to know," Kobach said.

A voter’s name, address, date of birth, political affiliation, voting history and active/inactive status, and whether the person has been criminally convicted or is a “federal voter” living overseas, are publicly available in New Jersey as long as the information is requested for "political use," Bergen County Elections Superintendent Patricia DiCostanzo said. Social Security numbers are not public.

Giles said in his statement that the request from the commission remains "under review."

"The commission requested a response by July 14, 2017," he said.

Lorraine Minnite, an associate professor of public policy at Rutgers-Camden, said Wednesday that the ultimate goal of the commission may be an attack on the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, also known as the federal "motor voter" law, that requires states to offer registration at public service agencies like motor vehicle offices and welfare agencies.

“In general, the National Voter Registration Act has expanded registration, and in general, when you make it easier for people to register and easier for people to vote, there is probably a benefit more to the Democrats than the Republicans today," Minnite said.

She said conservative operatives have been trying to get rid of the law for two decades because they think it has created bloated, inaccurate registration lists that benefit Democrats.

"They want to use the argument that it creates an opportunity for voter fraud," she said. "Now it’s coming to fruition in terms of them possibly being in a position to amend the act, to make it easier to purge people from voter registration lists.”

Adding to the mistrust over the intentions of the commission is the involvement of Kobach, a Republican who has earned a reputation as an immigration hawk and has defended Trump's unsubstantiated claims of massive voter fraud in the November election as "absolutely correct."

In Kansas, Kobach has championed the use of a multistate database of voter registration information called Crosscheck that seeks to determine whether voters are registered in more than one state, and he has said he also wants the federal government to compare state voter rolls with the data it has on millions of legal noncitizens who are ineligible to vote.

But researchers have found that Crosscheck generates 200 false positives for every instance of double-voting, a concern raised by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey in a Wednesday letter to the Division of Elections.

“New Jersey should not participate in a sham process that will be used to falsely justify attacks on voting rights,” ACLU-NJ senior staff attorney Alexander Shalom wrote. “We should be doing everything we can to encourage, rather than hinder, participation in our democracy.”

Providing authorities with more uniquely identifying personal information like dates of birth or Social Security numbers might increase the accuracy of systems like Crosscheck, Minnite said, but privacy laws typically restrict how such sensitive data are recorded and shared. And government-maintained lists themselves often contain errors or inconsistencies, making list-matching exercises especially prone to mistakes, she said.

Local election officials and experts readily admit that election fraud and mistakes with voter rolls do happen, but they dispute the notion such fraud could be carried out undetected on a large enough scale to affect a national or even statewide outcome.

Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a staunch Trump supporter, has said that while some improper votes are cast in elections, people overall have faith in the system.

Republican Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, who also serves as secretary of state and oversees New Jersey’s elections, said through a spokesman Wednesday that she had recused herself from matters that could affect this year’s governor’s race, in which she is running to replace Christie. 

But she suggested Sunday in a post on Facebook that she would have given the same response to Trump's voting commission that Giles did.

“Protecting the integrity of elections is a top priority, but it has been the policy of the Division of Elections to protect private personal information and only provide publicly available data to those who file a proper open public records request,” Guadagno said. “However, since I am recused from matters regarding the Division of Elections because I am also running for governor, I am not involved with handling the federal government's request for voter information.”

Several Democratic lawmakers also spoke out Wednesday against the commission's request.

Email: pugliese@northjersey.com