The U.S. Department of Justice has requested detailed voter roll data — including Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers — from states to investigate alleged non-citizen voting.
West Virginia’s Secretary of State, Kris Warner, said no.
“West Virginians entrust me with their sensitive personal information. Turning it over to the federal government, which is contrary to state law, will simply not happen,” Warner said.
“State law is clear: voter lists are available in a redacted format from my office, but I’ll not be turning over any West Virginian’s protected information.”
The federal government has been seeking full voter registration lists including names, addresses, birthdates, driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
Warner said the federal government’s first request came last September from a lower level Department of Justice employee. The request was to “assess your state’s compliance with the statewide [voter registration list maintenance] provisions of the NVRA,” referring to the National Voting Registration Act of 1993.
The National Voting Registration Act is more commonly called the Motor Voter Act, requiring state governments to offer simplified voter registration processes for any eligible person who applies for or renews a driver’s license or applies for public assistance.
The state’s response was that it would turn over nothing beyond what would normally be available. Furthermore, the state concluded that “the demand included only a vague explanation of the basis and specific purpose of the request.”
Then this past Friday, Warner said, came an inquiry from the chief at the civil rights division of DOJ: “The response that you provided earlier, we’re giving you a chance to reconsider that.”
The West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office provided a response to the federal official, Eric Neff, acting director of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Voting Section.
Warner said the state’s response was, “Once again, we said no, you’re not going to get the personal information. You can have what everybody else is able to get, but we’re not turning over the list.”
“The demand that came on Friday was not from a lower level staff person, and we had to make it very clear that we were not turning over the personal and sensitive information of 1.1 million West Virginia voters.”
Letters have gone to states including Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Many states have refused to comply, arguing that the request exceeds federal authority over elections and compromises voter privacy.
West Virginia is the latest to say no.
“It’s pretty simple: It’s not the law in West Virginia,” Warner said on MetroNews Talkline. “The Legislature determined years ago that we would not share Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses. There’s other personal information — emails, cell phone numbers — so we’re here to carry out the law.”
Warner noted that West Virginia regularly works to clean up voter rolls to account for deaths or outbound migration.
“They say they want to enforce the law, the voter registration list laws. We’re already doing that. We’ve removed 408,000 names from our voting rolls in the last eight years. We’ve added 350,000 newly registered voters, so all told you’ve got over 750,000 voter files that are updated; they’re accurate,” Warner said.
The Constitution’s Article I, section 4 states that “The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.”
That article then goes on to prescribe a role for Congress, which “may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.” But the article does not lay out a role for the federal executive branch.
“The U.S. Constitution says the time, manner and place of elections is left to the states. This is not the federal government’s job. We’re not going to turn over sensitive personal information to the Department of Justice,” Warner said.