Red state elections chief accused of breaking state law to satisfy Trump

Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray has been hit with a misconduct complaint alleging that he violated state elections law to hand over voter data to the Trump administration's Justice Department.

According to the liberal election outlet Democracy Docket, "Wyoming is one of 17 states that have complied with DOJ’s demands for full, unredacted state voter rolls, which include addresses, driver’s license numbers, and social security numbers. Enter George Powers, who spent 40 years practicing law in the state. In a complaint to Attorney General Keith Kautz (R), he is alleging that Gray’s decision to hand that data over was illegal."

In a statement to the local paper Cowboy News Daily, Powers said, “When Secretary Gray released the unredacted [voter rolls] to DOJ, he willingly and knowingly released information that was confidential under Wyoming law. He released these confidential records in response to a mere request.”

Fremont County clerk Julie Freese concurred that this was not aboveboard, telling the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in Chicago, “We have statutes that say we cannot give out the private information of anybody, and our secretary of state just gave it out without [a memorandum of understanding] or anything.” Violation of these statutes is a misdemeanor in general, and a felony if committed by a state official.

A majority of states, including several states controlled by Republicans, have rejected the Trump administration's demand to hand over unredacted voter roll data, with many GOP officials, like West Virginia Secretary of State Kris Warner, saying the requests are violations of various state laws.

The administration has responded by filing a blitz of lawsuits against the noncompliant states, but these suits have mostly been running into dead ends in court — and some experts think President Donald Trump's executive order on voting, facing separate legal challenges, may have undermined the arguments in his suits for state voter rolls.