DENVER – More than 3,000 people in Colorado have withdrawn their voter registration and 182 people have become confidential voters over the past two weeks in response to the request from President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission for voter roll information from each U.S. state.
The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office on Thursday said 3,394 people withdrew their voter registrations from June 28 through July 13, and 182 people had become confidential voters. People can become confidential voters in Colorado by paying a fee and swearing under oath that they could be in danger if their personal information is public.
Last week, Denver, Arapahoe and Adams counties told Denver7 a combined 300+ people had withdrawn their registrations over the first week of July.
The withdrawals came mostly in response to Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams’ adherence with the commission’s request at the behest of state law.
The commission was only formed by President Trump after he claimed that millions of people voted illegally in last year's election -- a claim that has yet to be corroborated by anyone.
Williams has said since the day after the request first came in that he would only send the commission what was allowable under state law: a voter’s full name, address, party affiliation and date the person registered, phone number, gender identity, birth year, and information about if a person has voted in prior elections.
The commission and its vice chair, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, had also requested two things that Colorado won’t hand over: a voter’s Social Security number and a voter’s birth date—things that aren’t public record in Colorado.
The information Williams will send is already publicly available to anyone who requests it and pays a fee, though the state is expected to waive the fee for the commission, as it typically does for government entities.
But there are now questions as to whether the commission will ever receive any of this information at all, as it told all secretaries of state on Monday not to send any of the data over until a lawsuit about the commission and its request is settled in a federal court in Washington D.C.
Williams and other secretaries of state had originally been directed to send their respective states’ voter roll information over on Friday, but that won’t be happening for now, his office reasserted Thursday.
The office also noted Thursday that the 3,394 voters who have withdrawn their registrations so far represent just 0.09 percent of the state's total voting population of more than 3.3 million active registered voters.
Williams also said in a statement that he hopes people who have withdrawn their registration will again register to vote.
“It’s my hope that folks who withdrew their voter registration will reregister, particularly once they realize that no confidential information will be provided and that the parties and presidential candidates already have the same publicly available information from the 2016 election cycle,” Williams said.
He won’t send over the Colorado information on Friday, as there were new motions filed in that case Wednesday, and it has yet to be resolved. A new motion deadline has been set for July 17 in the case.
