How the Failed Trump Effort to Create a ‘National Voter Database’ Could Actually Help the GOP Dominate in Future Elections

The following article by Steven Rosenfeld was posted on the AlterNet website July 5, 2017:

Looking beyond the buffoonish politics of the moment exposes the darker reality of what Kobach is really up to.

Many people who believe in expanding voting rights are marveling at the clumsy bid by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach for doing the one thing that was guaranteed to deeply offend almost every top state election official—demanding they fork over their detailed statewide voter files to create a national voter database.

Before Kobach’s attempted data grab—which as of Thursday, 41 states said no way to—he was already known throughout the small world of state election administrators and lawyers as an unabashed vote suppressor and white nativist, helping groups to file numerous anti-immigrant lawsuits and author anti-immigrant laws. So it didn’t surprise many election insiders when he sent out a letter, as chair of Trump’s “election integrity” commission, demanding copies of their statewide voter databases, post-haste, including data that’s protected, like Social Security numbers. Continue reading “How the Failed Trump Effort to Create a ‘National Voter Database’ Could Actually Help the GOP Dominate in Future Elections”