President Donald Trump’s Justice Division is suing 14 states, including Washington, in an attempt to get detailed personal information about every voter in those states.
In whole, 40 states have been requested to supply voter knowledge, however solely two super-red states, Wyoming and Indiana, have complied. Maybe considerably, the 14 being sued are all deep blue or, at the very least, blue-leaning, states.
Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs, like so lots of his friends across the nation, has refused the DOJ’s demand. Hobbs cites state legislation that shields private info from public disclosure – gadgets corresponding to driver’s license numbers and full dates of start. He’s providing up info that’s public, together with start years, addresses, names and voting historical past, however that isn’t sufficient for Lawyer Normal Pam Bondi.
“Correct voter rolls are the cornerstone of truthful and free elections, and too many states have fallen right into a sample of noncompliance with fundamental voter roll upkeep,” Bondi claims.
That sounds fairly cheap – if it have been true. The truth is, although, it’s a canard that fails to cover the actual impetus behind this seize for voter information. The one place the place there are troubling issues with how elections are performed in the US is within the fevered creativeness of the president of the US.
Trump has been ranting about rigged elections, lifeless individuals on voter rolls, noncitizens voting and the corruption of mail-in ballots ever since he misplaced his re-election bid in 2020. There isn’t any proof of any of his wild accusations, notably in a state like Washington that has had no trace of election scandal in fashionable occasions.
It’s no shock that, in submitting the lawsuit in opposition to Hobbs and the state, DOJ legal professionals didn’t comply with correct court docket procedures and have been ordered by a federal choose to scrub up their act. Related snafus are extra the rule than the exception now that the once-respected Justice Division has change into Trump’s private legislation agency.
But, regardless of what number of occasions DOJ legal professionals are embarrassed in court docket struggling to show Trump’s tirades into one thing near a authorized argument, the president will maintain demanding that the litigious clown present rolls on and on.
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