Pennsylvania Republicans voted Wednesday to subpoena Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration for records of every registered voter in the state, including personal information like the last four digits of their Social Security numbers. Democrats said they will challenge the subpoena in court, raising concerns about sharing millions of voters’ personal information with an outside vendor to be named later.
Brianna Keilar and Sarah Murray talked about the data grab on CNN's New Day this morning:
"Republican lawmakers in Pennsylvania have voted to subpoena millions of voters' personal information and voting histories in an apparent attempt to relitigate the 2020 presidential election. This has to do with two past election dates, the primary and the general. Democrats are slamming it as another step to undermine democracy and CNN's Sarah Murray is with us now on this story. It's pretty stunning what they're trying to get all of this information," Keilar said.
"It is kind of amazing when you think there are seven Republicans on this committee and essentially what they voted to do is, they voted to subpoena the Pennsylvania Department of State, not just for everyone who voted in the 2020 presidential election but for the roughly 9 million registered voters in the state of Pennsylvania," Murray said.
"They want information including the names, the addresses, the driver's license numbers, the last four numbers of these people's Social Security number, as well as when they most recently voted. This is a lot of personal identifying information that you are handing over to these Republicans. They say they want to use this to do a post election audit but they haven't chosen the vendor yet to do that.
"When the top Republican, the senator who is leading this effort was asked, you know, can you tell us how much this would cost? he couldn't say. When he was asked to reassure the Democrats, are you going to choose a firm that's not connected to Sydney Powell, Trump's former lawyer, he couldn't assure he would do that. Will they choose a firm that is not related to any of these previous presidential candidates, anyone who ran last November? He couldn't assure them of that. What they're trying to do is get personal information for millions and millions of voters and say trust us, we'll keep this safe and secure."
What are Democrats going to do about it?
"Democrats, as you imagine in Pennsylvania, are livid about this," Murray said. "They think there's no reason to do another post election audit and a huge security concern. The governor will do everything he can to stop it but so far it's not clear what action they'll be able to take. We don't know if the Pennsylvania Department of State will comply with this subpoena. We don't know what they may might try to challenge it. The governor might try to challenge it. we know democrats in the Pennsylvania Senate are planning to file a lawsuit this week, so we'll see how this plays out."
Of course! Because the Republicans are incompetents who will no doubt hire incompetents, they're going to put our information out there, where it will inevitably be leaked to the dark web and we will spend countless hours trying to convince credit companies that no, we didn't actually order a plane ticket to Singapore. What fun.
If you live in Pennsylvania, you should call your representatives and let them know what you think of this. Contact state senators here or find your state representatives here.
