Senators Press Social Security Administration for Details of Coordination with Trump Voter Fraud Commission

Washington, DC – Today, members of the Senate Finance and Judiciary Committees pressed the Social Security Administration (SSA) for details of its coordination with the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.  The Commission has sought sensitive voter roll data on the majority of the voting public and conducted highly partisan hearings based on discredited allegations of voter fraud, yet has refused to provide Congress even the most basic overview of its operations.  In a letter to the SSA’s Acting Commissioner today, Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Tom Carper (D-DE), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Al Franken (D-MN), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), and Mazie Hirono (D-HI) call on the SSA to turn over its communications with the Commission.

“We are deeply concerned that SSA is becoming a cog in this Administration’s machinery of voter suppression,” write the Senators.  “Full disclosure of any documents reflecting communication or coordination between SSA and the Commission is therefore necessary for Congress to provide appropriate oversight on this issue.”

The Senators point to evidence that strongly suggests the Commission is attempting to build a federal version of Commission Vice Chair Kris Kobach’s “Crosscheck” voter identification system, which Kobach spearheaded as Kansas Secretary of State.  Kobach, the Senators note, is “a leading propagator of false and unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud,” and non-partisan voting experts have roundly criticized his Crosscheck system for yielding wildly inaccurate results.

“Researchers from Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania found that Crosscheck’s methodology would wrongly identify 300 legitimate voters for every double voter that could be identified,” the Senators point out.  “In other words, Crosscheck ‘gets it wrong over 99 percent of the time.’  Mr. Kobach and the Commission, however, view Crosscheck’s inaccuracy not as a bug in the program but rather a feature that legitimatizes their efforts to purge eligible citizens from the voter rolls.”

The Senators’ letter adds to a growing list of Senate requests for information on the Commission.  To date, the Commission and the Trump administration have failed to respond to nine congressional oversight requests seeking a better understanding of the Commission’s work.

Full text of the Senators’ letter is below.  A PDF copy is available here.

November 9, 2017

The Honorable Nancy Berryhill

Acting Commissioner

Social Security Administration

1905 9^th St. NE

Washington, D.C. 20018

Dear Commissioner Berryhill:

We write to request information about the Social Security Administration’s (“SSA”) interaction with the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (“the Commission”).

On June 28, 2017, the Commission issued demands to forty-four states requesting information about state-level procedures for maintaining voter registration lists. Those demands were met with resistance from state election officials from both parties, and over forty states initially refused to provide the Commission with all of its requested data.

The Commission’s partisan motives have become increasingly clear.  It is vice-chaired by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a leading propagator of false and unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud.   Mr. Kobach was recently compelled to produce documents evidencing his intent to dismantle the National Voter Registration Act.[1]  And in February, another commissioner to-be, Hans von Spakovsky, decried the potential inclusion of Democrats and “mainstream Republicans” on the Commission, fearing they might stand in the way of his and Mr. Kobach’s goal of voter suppression.[2]

Mr. Kobach’s public statements and recent document productions as part of FOIA litigation suggest that SSA may be collaborating with the Commission.  In July, Mr. Kobach indicated his plans to “bounce the states’ voter rolls against the Social Security Administration’s own database to find out how many of those people are actually on the voter rolls.”[3]  And in private party litigation, the Commission recently released a Vaughn index confirming that, on August 17, 2017, the Commission had “email contact with SSA re: SSA data.”[4]

As our colleagues have recently noted,[5] the apparent motive behind these data collection efforts is to implement a national version of the controversial “Crosscheck” program used by Mr. Kobach in Kansas, which has longstanding and well-documented problems with accuracy. Researchers from Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania found that Crosscheck’s methodology would wrongly identify 300 legitimate voters for every double voter that could be identified.  In other words, Crosscheck “gets it wrong over 99 percent of the time.”[6]  Mr. Kobach and the Commission, however, view Crosscheck’s inaccuracy not as a bug in the program but rather a feature that legitimatizes their efforts to purge eligible citizens from the voter rolls.

We are deeply concerned that SSA is becoming a cog in this Administration’s machinery of voter suppression.  Full disclosure of any documents reflecting communication or coordination between SSA and the Commission is therefore necessary for Congress to provide appropriate oversight on this issue.  Accordingly, we respectfully ask that you provide responses to the following questions and requests by November 30, 2017:

1. What communications has the SSA or its employees or representatives had with the White House, the Office of the Vice President, or White House Counsel’s Office regarding the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, either before or after its formation?  Please include any relevant documents or records of any such communications in your response, and describe the process by which such documents were searched for and collected.
2. What communications has the SSA or its employees or representatives had with the Commission (including any individual commissioner or Commission representative), either before or after its formation?  Please include any relevant documents or records of any such communications in your response, and describe the process by which such documents were searched for and collected.
3. On June 28, 2017, the Commission sent requests to state election officials seeking an extensive set of state voter records.  Was SSA consulted or advised in any way about these requests? Please include any relevant documents or records of any such communications in your response, and describe the process by which such documents were searched for and collected.
4. What coordination or communications have there been between SSA and the Commission regarding state voter data or SSA data?  Please include any relevant documents or records of any such communications in your response, and describe the process by which such documents were searched for and collected.
5. What data or information, if any, has SSA shared with or made accessible to the Commission?  If SSA has shared any data with the Commission, what steps has SSA taken to ensure its security?

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