CONNIE LAWSON

Commission member of the PEIC/PACEI at the time of disbandment

Connie Lawson, Republican, Secretary of State of Indiana

2017 request for voter information

First request

On June 28, 2017, Kris Kobach, in his capacity as vice chair of the commission, wrote a letter along with the Department of Justice to the top election official in every state requesting they turn over voter data ostensibly to aid a countrywide search for evidence of election irregularities. Besides information such as the names, addresses and party affiliations of all registered voters, Kobach sought birth dates, felony conviction records, voting histories for the past decade and the last four digits of all voters' Social Security numbers.^[57] Many states' election officials claim they never received the request and some said they only forward the request from another state's secretary of state.

The letter was not made public, and it became publicly known only after Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, tweeted out an image of the letter the day after the letter was written. Along with the image of the letter, she wrote "Pence and Kobach are laying the groundwork for voter suppression, plain & simple."^[58] A few hours after Gupta's tweet, Kobach confirmed to The Kansas City Star that the letter was authentic.^[6]

Kobach provided an e-mail address and a website for the election official to electronically submit the personal voter data. The e-mail address lacked basic encryption technology and was found to be insecure.^[59]

The request may have violated the federal Paperwork Reduction Act because it was not submitted to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) prior to being made to the states. The submission to the OIRA would have required a justification and an explanation of how the data would be used and protected. Additionally, the request did not come with an estimate of how many hours it would take the states to respond. Regulatory experts opined that the consequence of a violation would be that states would not be required to respond.^[60]

In January 2018, it was reported that the commission had, in its requests for Texas voter data, specifically asked for data that identifies voters with Hispanic surnames.^[61]

Second request

On July 25, 2017, Kobach told the Kansas City Star that he intended to send another request for voter data, after receiving a favorable ruling in a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The court had ruled against the center's motion to stop the commission from trying to collect the data, stating that the commission had only made a request, not a demand or an attempt to force.^[57] The letter was sent the following day, and it differed from the first request by the addition "if state law allows [the] information to be public". The California Secretary of State announced that it would refuse to comply with the second request.^[62]

State responses

There was an immediate bipartisan backlash and rejection of the inquiries with a majority of states quickly rejecting the requests.^{[7][8][10][63}] Notably, commissioners Kobach, Dunlap, and Lawson (who also serve as the secretaries of state for Kansas, Maine, and Indiana respectively, with Indiana being Mike Pence's home state) indicated that their state laws forbade them from complying.^[64][65] Some states offered to only provide information that is already made public or available for purchase.^[8] No state has said they will fully comply with the list of demands.^[66] In response, Trump made a statement on Twitter, "Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?"^[67]

Responses by election officials of the various states hide| State | Officeholder | Party | Received request? | Official response | Notes |