Feds overstep their bounds in demanding voter data

The federal government sent shock waves around the nation over the Fourth of July weekend when it demanded that states turn over a trove of your personal and voting information to be kept in a centralized database in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the demand is ostensibly to investigate voter fraud.

I don’t buy it. What the Feds want to do with all of your information is a mystery. If this sounds suspicious to you, it should.

Like millions of Americans, I was appalled to learn the federal “Election Integrity Commission” demanded our state officials turn over personal information about hundreds of thousands of Idaho voters. Already more than 20 states have either rejected the demand or pushed back on the Commission.

To give some insight as to how absurd this reckless obstruction is to our personal freedoms, here is a list of those demands from the Feds in a letter sent to all 50 states: the full first and last names of all registrants, middle names or initials, addresses, dates of birth, political party, the last four digits of their Social Security number, voter history from 2006 onward, active/inactive status, canceled status, information regarding any felony convictions, information regarding voter registration in another state, information regarding military status, and overseas citizen information.

Mississippi’s Secretary of State invited the Commission to go jump into the Gulf of Mexico. Our Secretary of State should send a similar message. Idaho certainly has plenty of lakes and rivers to choose from.

This demand from the federal government is problematic for several reasons. First, it’s a blatant federal intrusion into our state voting process and right to privacy. Idahoans value their state’s rights and they should.

Second, the demand is open-ended. The Feds won’t say what they intend to do with all of your private information, how they intend to use it, how long they plan to keep it or how it will be secured.

Finally, with all of the hacking going on in this country, the Feds want to create a centralized database with all of your personal information in one place. That’s not only bad policy, it puts every voter in Idaho at risk.

It’s ironic this federal privacy-grab comes during the long Fourth of July weekend when we celebrate our freedoms and independence more fiercely than at any other time of the year. I remain confident that when I step into the voting booth, my vote is my own. Now, apparently, the federal government wants to climb into the booth with everyone in Idaho and meddle with our future.

The federal government says it wants to come into Idaho and disregard our state’s rights, invade our personal privacy and collect not just our voting information, but a lot more. It shouldn’t matter if you’re a Democrat, Republican or non-partisan. We cannot stand by as a state and let that happen. I ask that you contact Idaho’s Secretary of State, Lawerence Denney, and urge him to defend our rights by standing up against this audacious request from the federal government.

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Rep. Paulette Jordan is in her second term as a member of the Idaho State House of Representatives from District Five. She lives in Plummer.