Can the Trump Campaign use the voter data the Trump Administration received in 2017?

Question

In 2017 the Trump Administration requested and received 2016 voting data from the states. In some states this data can be used to determine how a person voted based on a code that was entered into the system before the person cast their ballot.

What happened to this investigation?

Could the Trump Campaign use this data in their 2020 run? Or is only the Trump Administration use this data for the sole purpose of the investigation?

I am asking if there are any protections of the data from the trump campaign using the data the trump administration received with this executive order.

EDIT: The link no longer works and another article can be found on the wayback machine here. I would like to leave the broken link for research and archival purposes.

Are you asking if he can legally use it? Or are you asking if it can be used in general? I would guess that if he can/will use this information that it already is being used. — Joe W, Jan 20 '20 at 01:01
Asking if there are any protections against the trump campaign using the data the trump administration received? — Gabriel Fair, Jan 20 '20 at 01:35
I would suggest editing that into the question so it is more clear. — Joe W, Jan 20 '20 at 04:50
Are you sure of the part of that code that allows to identify a voter's vote? It seems like a major design flaw, regardless of who controls the information. In any case, in your link for several states that the data provided was "publicly available data", so in those cases the Trump campaign should have no problems getting it by itself (although they probably should get it from the original source). — SJuan76, Jan 20 '20 at 09:11
Comments deleted. Please don't use comments to answer the question. If you would like to answer, please post a real answer which adheres to our quality standards. — Philipp, Jan 21 '20 at 13:00
For more about what happened to that I-cannot-put-enough-quotes-around "investigation", see my answer to Has Trump ever explained why he, as incumbent President, is unable to stop the alleged electoral fraud? — Schwern, Oct 27 '23 at 00:29

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 26 '23 at 03:35

[While this question references the 2020 presidential election, it could apply to the 2024 presidential election, as well.]

Q: Can the Trump Campaign use the voter data the Trump Administration received in 2017?

No, because the limited data supplied by the states is/was held by the government and was not released to the campaign.

Q: What happened to this investigation?

The commission conducting the investigation was terminated due to lawsuits and a lack of cooperation by the states. There was no finding of election fraud.

The archived article mentions the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The commission was established by Executive Order 13799 on May 11, 2017, and terminated by Executive Order 13820 on January 3, 2018.

By law, upon termination of the commission, any records created or collected by the commission were transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration.

On January 9, the director of White House information technology stated, in a declaration appended to a motion in Commissioner Dunlap's suit against the commission, that the state voter data the commission had collected would not be sent to DHS or any other agency except the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), pursuant to federal law and pending the outcome of lawsuits, and that pursuant to federal law and upon consultation with NARA the White House intended to destroy all the state voter data held by the dissolved Commission.

The data collected from the few states that sent records to the commission did not contain all the requested information.

No state has said they will fully comply with the list of demands.

Can the Trump Campaign use the voter data the Trump Administration received in 2017?

1 Answers1