Whoops!

Several county clerks in Colorado said they’ve seen hundreds of people withdraw their voter registrations following the state’s announcement that it would comply with President Trump’s voter fraud commission. In Denver, a spokesperson for the Denver Elections Division said 180 people have withdrawn their registrations in the county since Monday, according to a Denver Channel report. In Arapahoe County, which contains the city of Aurora, at least 160 people have withdrawn their registrations since July 1. The counties normally see fewer than 10 withdrawn registrations in similar time frames. Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams said last week he would submit the registrations requested by the Trump administration.

The Trump administration is an object lesson in willpower. Just the hint of a crackdown — on illegal immigration, on voter fraud — gets almost immediate results. It’s human nature to take advantage of a sucker’s game for as long as the taking is good, but once the force of law rears its head, most folks think better of it.

Most folks, not all:

Numerous states have said they won’t comply with the request for voter registrations, which include the last four digits of Social Security numbers and other identifying information. CNN reported earlier this week that 44 states refused to comply with the request by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who serves as vice chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

Now ask yourself: what good reason does any honest person have to be against the release of already largely available information?

In a Wednesday letter, Kobach asked the Connecticut secretary of state’s office to provide the commission with all publicly available voter roll data, including the full names of all registered voters along with their addresses, dates of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, voting history and other personal information. Kobach said in a phone call that he sent similar letters to election officials in every state and that as Kansas’ top election official he will be providing the commission with all of the information for Kansas voters. The request faced backlash from election officials in some other states, including California, the most populous state in the nation. The state’s Democratic secretary of state plans to buck the request. Kobach clarified that the personal data would be hosted on a secure server run by the federal government and not disclosed to the public. He said that the request for the Social Security digits was meant “to prevent false positives,” such as when two people share the same name and birthday. Kobach said the commission would cross-reference the data provided by states against federal databases to determine the number of non-citizens registered in each state, dead people still on the voter rolls and people registered in more than one jurisdiction.

Naturally, the rogue state of California — which is just begging for the feds to bring it to heel — is against the idea:

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said in a statement that he will “not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally.” “California’s participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud made by the President, the Vice President, and Mr. Kobach. The President’s Commission is a waste of taxpayer money and a distraction from the real threats to the integrity of our elections today: aging voting systems and documented Russian interference in our elections,” Padilla said.

Let’s get on with it and find out whether Hillary really did carry the Golden State by a couple of million legal votes.