In yesterday’s Portland Press Herald, I wrote on how Maine’s secretary of state has reacted to the call by President Trump’s election fraud commission to turn over a vast array of voter registration data, from social security numbers to party affiliation.
All fifty states were asked — this appears an effort to create a federal voter database for the first time — but Maine’s case is particularly interesting because Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap is (a) a Democrat and (b) a member of Trump’s commission.
I spoke to Dunlap Friday morning to get his perspective and to explain why he’s providing a certain subset of voter roll information to his commission colleagues (while other states — including California, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Virginia — have told them to pound sand.)
Story herein.
I also wrote last week about Dunlap and the commission, on the occasion of his calling for it to also probe Russian infiltration of state electoral systems.
[Update: 6/5/17: Dunlap, on consideration and consultation with the state’s Attorney General, has reversed himself and will not supply the data.]
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author, historian and award-winning journalist. He is the author of seven books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at Maine's Portland Press Herald, he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a 2016 Pulitzer Prize. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.