Letter: Is Secretary of State Hobbs really JUST protecting your voter information?

Camas resident Rick Vermeers says Hobbs’ refusal to comply with the DOJ demand is a weak and deceptive effort to cover his own failings at keeping voter rolls clean by following state and federal law

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are those of the author alone and may not reflect the editorial position of ClarkCountyToday.com

For those of you who are cheering Secretary of State Hobbs for protecting your data from the Department of Justice, you may want to consider the following:

The Secretary of State (SOS) is a willing participant in a contract to provide private voter data to the ELECTRONIC REGISTRATION INFORMATION CENTER, a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO). The Corporation provides information to the SOS regarding duplicate voting among participating States and other jurisdictions. Below are the ERIC data requirements taken directly from the ERIC Bylaws:

The above data is remarkably similar to what the SOS wishes to protect from the US Government. Note that what is provided to ERIC exceeds what Hobbs has offered to the DOJ (See Hobbs response under sources below.)

Following is a direct quote from the September 8th Department of Justice letter to Secretary Hobbs:

“The electronic copy of the statewide VRL should contain all fields, which means your state’s VRL must include the registrant’s full name, date of birth, residential address, his or her state driver’s license number, or the last four digits of the registrant’s social security number as required under HAVA1 to register individuals for federal elections. See 52 U.S.C. § 21083(a)(5)(A)(i).”

VRL is the Voter Registration List, HAVA is the HELP AMERICA VOTE ACT OF 2002.

Please note that ERIC is a corporation which is accountable to a Board of Directors and not to the citizens of the State of Washington. Public Document Requests are not applicable to a corporation and, therefore, citizens will never know how their data is really used.

ERIC has come under increased scrutiny in recent years. From its membership of 32, membership it is now at 25 states and the District of Columbia (50% of states is not a laudable percentage). Scrutiny is mainly centered around potential violations of the Help America Vote Act, the National Voter Registration Act, and the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act.

Conclusion:

Hobbs’ refusal to comply with the DOJ demand is a weak and deceptive effort to cover his own failings at keeping voter rolls clean by following state and federal law. Both require that voters be US Citizens and that they must be alive to vote! I am sure that Hobbs will tell you that voter rolls are squeaky clean. I say turn over the data and prove it. I also say be consistent in your stories about protecting voter privacy.

When, not if, he is finally forced to turn over the voter rolls by court order, he will likely have to resign in disgrace. However, complicity runs higher and wider than his office alone.

Rick Vermeers
Camas