South Dakota Secretary of State Shantel Krebs is sending advice to the president’s ‘voter fraud’ commission to consider when the panel looks at closer at elections.
Late last month, Krebs denied the panel access to the state’s voter information.
She says state statute prohibits her from sharing that information.
After he was elected, President Donald Trump claimed his opponent, Hillary Clinton, received 3 million more votes than him due to fraudulent voting.
Late last month, secretaries of state across the country received letters from the chairman of a White House commission looking into fraudulent voting, which asked for all publicly available voter roll data.
That information includes names, addresses, birth date, party affiliation and last four digits of a voter’s social security number.
Secretary Krebs says two specific state statutes prevent her from releasing that data, which includes releasing personal identification information.
“The information that they were trying to gather for the commission would be election related, for election purposes, and that would apply in our state law," Krebs says. "However, the second state law would not allow me to do it because they’re saying the full data would be made available to the public.”
However, Krebs did send along suggestions to the commission for consideration.
“Quite frankly I think that President Trump should look to South Dakota in what we do here," Krebs says. "Because what we do here is very secure, we have strong—the integrity of our election process is in good hands with our county auditors.”
Krebs says she recommends the commission look at encouraging more poll watchers, voters providing photo IDs or signed affidavits, cross-checks of voter information and paper ballots.
Secretary Krebs is a Republican candidate for South Dakota’s lone US House seat.