North Dakota Secretary of State Declines to Provide Voter Information to Trump’s Election Integrity Commission
TOM STROMME/Tribune Secretary of State Al Jaeger gestures while testifying on a bill to designate the capitol's Memorial Hall into state statute with that official name. Jaeger was testifying in front of the the House political subdivisions committee on Wednesday morning.
North Dakota Secretary of State Al Jaeger, a Republican, just sent out a press release providing two memos he sent to President Donald Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
That commission has stirred a lot of controversy from Democrats, among others, concerned that it’s request for data would violate the privacy of voters.
Jaeger, in his memo, notes that the information requested by the commission can’t be provided because of state law and also because North Dakota is the only state in the union without voter registration.
An excerpt (full letter below):
Again, full memo below.
There’s been a lot of heavy breathing from the left about this issue both in North Dakota and nationally. As you can see, a lot of the concerns simply aren’t based in fact. For instance, the Secretary of State doesn’t even have a record of how you might have voted in a given election which they could provide to the feds.
And, state law aside, I really don’t see what the controversy would have been in the feds getting a copy of the voter file. The candidates and political parties can access it anyway. The idea that it’s private is sort of ludicrous.
Jaeger’s office did provide answers to a series of seven questions sent by the commission which can be read in this separate memo.
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