(CN) – Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach faces increasing heat in the week since he sent letters to all 50 states asking for extensive information of registered voters, in the form of a lawsuit fighting his request and claims by a lawyers’ group that he violated a federal campaigning law.
Filed on July 3 by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, or EPIC, the lawsuit comes just days after all secretaries of state received a June 28 letter from the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, asking them to submit publicly available state voter data.
All the letters are signed by Kobach, whom Trump appointed as vice chair of the commission he established in May by executive order. They ask for full names, addresses, dates of birth, political party affiliation, partial Social Security numbers, elections voted in since 2006, voter status, felony convictions, military status, overseas information and multistate voter registration.
Kobach also wants the states to produce any evidence and information related to documented cases of voter fraud since the November 2000 federal election.
He has indicated that all of the data collected would be made publicly available, but EPIC claims that the commission failed to conduct a privacy assessment first.
"More than 50 experts in voting technology and twenty privacy organizations wrote to state election officials to warn that '[t]here is no indication how the information will be used, who will have access to it, or what safeguards will be established,’” the complaint states.
EPIC notes that the E-Government Act of 2002 requires any agency that initiates new information collection using information technology to assess what information will be collected and why, who it will be shared with, what notice will be provided to individuals whose data is shared, and how the information will be secured.
On the latter point, the lawsuit calls into question the security of one of two methods by which the letters ask state election officials to submit the information.
"The 'SAFE' URL, recommended by the commission for the submission of voter data, leads election officials to a non-secure site," the complaint states.
As of press time Wednesday, this URL brings up a warning that "attackers might be trying to steal your information."
To date, 44 states have refused to comply with the request, with some secretaries of state, including Alex Padilla of California, saying that compliance would only pay lip service to Trump’s already debunked claims of large-scale voter fraud.
As noted in the lawsuit, Padilla said he would "not provide sensitive voter information to a committee that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally."
Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes, who likewise refused to provide the data, echoed the sentiments of the NAACP that the commission would "attempt to legitimize voter-suppression efforts across the country."