AUGUSTA — The state won’t comply with a request to hand over voter registration information to President Donald Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap and Attorney General Janet Mills determined Monday that the state couldn’t provide the data without violating its own laws protecting voter privacy.
“Maine citizens can be confident that our office will not release any data that is protected under Maine law, to the commission or any other requesting entity,” Dunlap said in a prepared statement.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the commission created to investigate allegations of voter fraud, requested last week that every state turn over records about its voter registration lists, including names, birthdays, political affiliations and more.
The documents would be made public by the federal panel under federal Freedom of Information statutes that are more lenient than Maine’s privacy-protecting laws.
Dunlap’s office said that due to the requirement that documents provided to the commission be public, he could not release Maine’s Central Voter Registration data for the federal probe.
State law specifically says that the information has to remain confidential and only accessible to municipal and state election officials for use in overseeing elections.
State Democratic Party Chairman Phil Bartlett hailed Dunlap’s decision for joining colleagues across the country who “refused to comply” with the request by Kobach and the commission’s chairman, Vice President Mike Pence.
Dunlap is among those serving on the commission, though he has often expressed doubt that there’s much fraud in American elections.
Bartlett said that Trump’s claims about voter fraud “have already been proven false. This so-called electoral integrity commission is laying the groundwork for voter suppression, plain and simple.”
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