Oregon’s senior U.S. senator on Friday urged federal officials to uphold their duty to protect Social Security data despite demands from President Donald Trump to use that information to create a national voter database.
In a letter to U.S. Social Security Administration Commissioner Frank Bisignano, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, said using Social Security data as a basis for who is eligible to vote would give President Donald Trump the sole power to say who can vote in elections, undermining the rights of states to hold their own elections and manage their own voter lists.
The letter comes two days after Trump issued an executive order directing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration to compile a list of voting-age American citizens in each state and share it with election officials. The order also requires the U.S. Postal Service to only send and receive ballots that include tracking barcodes.
“If left to stand, this executive order could disqualify tens of millions of eligible voters and upend American democracy just months before key nationwide elections,” Wyden wrote.
Democratic groups sued over the order Tuesday, and Oregon’s Democratic secretary of state and attorney general have vowed to fight it.
Oregon was the first state in the nation to adopt all-mail elections, and Wyden in 1996 was the first U.S. senator elected entirely by mail ballots. Oregon is now one of eight states that allows all elections to be conducted entirely by mail.
Wyden, a ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee which has jurisdiction over the Social Security Administration, said he is especially concerned that private data could be used for unconstitutional purposes, including tracking individuals’ immigration status or affecting the voting rights of recently naturalized citizens.
In his letter, Wyden asked Bisignano to explain the legal basis for allowing Social Security information to be shared with the federal immigration agency, how the agency will prevent Americans from being disenfranchised and how it wouldn’t violate federal privacy laws.
Oregon Capital Chronicle
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