Updated at 6:12 p.m.
Vermont Secretary of State Sarah Copeland Hanzas said Wednesday her office will not share personally identifiable information about voters in Vermont with President Donald Trump’s administration, if the federal government asks for those details.
The announcement, in a press release, comes as Trump’s Department of Justice has sought voter registration data from at least nine other states in recent months, according to Stateline. That data could include voters’ dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and social security numbers, among other identifying details, the news outlet reported.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Vermont has not received a formal request to share voter information with the federal government, Copeland Hanzas said in an interview.
The secretary’s office did receive an email from the Department of Justice asking for a meeting to discuss potential information-sharing, according to Bryan Mills, chief of staff to Copeland Hanzas. It then had “a brief phone call” with a justice department official in late July, Mills said, but the call did not result in any agreements or consensus.
The office expects to get a formal request for information from the justice department soon, Mills said in an interview Wednesday.
Asked Wednesday if her announcement was, also, partly a response to the recent decision by Gov. Phil Scott’s administration to share the personal data and shopping habits of thousands of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, recipients in Vermont with the Trump administration, Copeland Hanzas said: “yes.”
She said that “Vermonters were outraged” by news of that decision by the Republican governor, and she contrasted the decision with her office’s approach.
“I learned in second grade how to identify a bully on the playground. And by fifth grade, it had become very clear to me that when there’s a bully on the playground, you are not going to win by trying to duck. You might save your own skin, but you’re going to watch your friends get their lunch money taken or their nose bloodied,” she said.
“And so I will not be willing to duck in hopes that this kind of madness doesn’t come to us,” the secretary continued. “Because if somebody doesn’t stand up and say, ‘no, this is wrong,’ then it’s only a matter of time before they have whacked everyone else — and then, they come and whack you.”
Copeland Hanzas said she believes her office has firm legal backing for its decision. Existing Vermont law “specifically prohibits” the state and municipal governments from sharing voters’ personal details with the feds for certain uses, she said. That includes, per the law, handing over voters’ information so federal agencies can compare it to “personally identifying information contained in other federal or state databases.”
Any member of the public can access a basic list of all registered voters’ names and addresses in Vermont, she explained. But the secretary of state has more personal data than that on file, such as details on which elections someone has voted in. It’s the latter bucket of data her office is particularly concerned about protecting, she said.
Other secretaries of state have not received clear explanations as to why the Trump administration wants access to detailed voter information, Copeland Hanzas said. But part of the reason, she said, appears to be to follow through on Trump’s March executive order aimed — among other goals — at preventing non-U.S. citizens from voting in state and federal elections, a practice that’s nevertheless already illegal.
(A handful of municipalities around the country, including three in Vermont, allow non-citizens to vote only in their own municipal elections.)
There is no evidence, she said, that non-citizens illegally vote in state or federal elections in significant numbers — so plans to scour government data for cases where the practice happens are akin to looking for “a needle in a haystack.” The secretary said the administration’s efforts were exaggerating a problem for political purposes.
“You know, it’s boogey-monster scare tactics that the administration is using to continue what it’s been doing for eight years, which is to try to undermine people’s confidence in voting and in the democratic process,” Copeland Hanzas said Wednesday.
Some states have already declined requests to share voter information with the Trump administration, including Maine, where Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows told Trump to “go jump in the Gulf of Maine” in response late last month.
Others, meanwhile, have willingly shared such data, Stateline reported — including Indiana, where Republican Secretary of State Diego Morales inked an agreement with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services giving his state access to a federal database that would allow it to verify whether its registered voters were also U.S. citizens.
Within Vermont, state leaders have also adopted different tactics in response to the slew of controversial actions the Trump administration has taken since the start of the year.
Gov. Scott’s office said earlier this month that, in the case of SNAP recipients’ data, the federal government was well within its legal rights to ask for the information — and his administration was merely following the law by providing it. His office also said it was concerned that fighting against the request could put Vermonters’ benefits at risk.
But his decision faced sharp criticism from the state’s Democratic treasurer, Mike Pieciak, as well as the head of the Vermont Democratic Party. Meanwhile, Democratic Attorney General Charity Clark said the Scott administration’s actions stymied her office’s plans to join a federal lawsuit in which 20 other states are arguing that the request for SNAP data is, in fact, unlawful.
Scott’s office did not return a request for comment Wednesday on the secretary of state’s announcement.
Copeland Hanzas said her office was coordinating with Clark’s office on a potential need to defend in court the secretary’s position on voter data sharing. Clark, who’s a Democrat, has joined a separate multistate lawsuit challenging the legality of Trump’s March order aimed at non-citizen voting. A federal judge has temporarily blocked parts of the order from taking effect, though the case is ongoing.
“The Attorney General and I will also continue to coordinate with other states that are committed to protecting citizens’ private data and preserving the constitutional balance of power,” Copeland Hanzas said in Wednesday’s release.
