A group with ties to a billionaire donor who backs former President Donald Trump is suing Pennsylvania for denying access to voter lists.
The Ohio-based Voter Reference Foundation says Secretary of State Al Schmidt refuses to release the lists even though the National Voter Registration Act law says they’re public records.
Refusing to release the lists also violates the foundation’s right to free speech because it wants to share the data online, according to the lawsuit.
The voter lists include names, gender, dates of birth, party affiliation, home and mailing addresses, polling places and each time a voter voted.
The foundation publishes voter lists online so the public can scrutinize them for illegal voters. It has done that in many other states.
The state Department of State, which oversees Pennsylvania elections, declined to make Schmidt available for an interview, but issued a statement.
The statement called the suit “without merit” and says the department takes “its duty to protect the private information of voters” seriously.
“We do not believe that Pennsylvanians should be required to sacrifice their right to privacy in order to exercise their fundamental right to vote,” the statement says.
Normally, the state sells the data to anyone who wants it online. The state refused the foundation’s request because the foundation asked for the same data before and published it online. The department says publishing violated state law.
The matter went to state Commonwealth Court. The court agreed the Department of State could deny the foundation the lists.
The foundation says the federal law trumps state law. It wants a federal judge to order the lists turned over.
Voter Reference Foundation is a subsidiary company of Restoration of America, a nonprofit, right-wing social welfare organization.
Two years ago, the journalism site, ProPublica, reported Restoration PAC, an affiliate of Restoration of America, had received at least $44 million from billionaire Richard Uihlein, a conservative and major funder of Trump’s presidential campaigns.
Uihlein and his wife, Elizabeth, founded and co-own Uline, the Wisconsin-based manufacturer of cardboard boxes and other packaging supplies.
