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Secretary Williams' response to request for public voter files
DENVER, June 29, 2017 -- Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said today that his office will release voter-roll information that is public under state law to a presidential election commission that asked for "publicly-available roll data," but it will withhold data that is confidential.
Williams received a letter on Wednesday from the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity signed by vice chairman Kris Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state. The commission was created by President Donald Trump in 2017. The commission contacted secretaries of state and election officials nationally for publicly-available election information from their states to help the commission "fully analyze vulnerabilities and issues related to voter registration and voting." He also asked for publicly available voter histories, overseas voter histories and such. (The letter is attached to this release.)
"We will provide publicly available information on the voter file, which is all they have asked for," Williams said.
State law requires the office to provide a copy of the voter registration list upon request. The publicly available list includes the full name, address, year of birth, political party and vote history of persons registered to vote in the state. It does not contain personally identifiable information such as Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, or full dates of birth -- and that information will be withheld from the commission.
The commission also sought the "views and recommendations" from secretaries of state across the political spectrum on seven specific issues, including whether they have evidence of voter fraud or registration fraud in their state, how the commission can support election administrators with regard to information technology security and vulnerabilities, and how voters can be protected from intimidation or disenfranchisement.
"We are very glad they are asking for information before making decisions," Williams said. "I wish more federal agencies would ask folks for their opinion and for information before they made decisions."
