Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh recently issued an opinion that Maryland cannot hand over voting records to President Donald Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity:

The assistant attorneys general representing the State Board of Elections have considered the request to the Board for the personal information of millions of voters and have determined that the requested disclosure is prohibited by law. These lawyers have advised the State Board of its obligations.

The original request for information asks for “publicly available voter roll data” that is “available under the laws of your state.” The request was also prefaced with the conditional “if,” making it clear that they only want information that can be provided and not information that cannot. The media has failed to make this conditional aspect clear.

Maryland Annotated Code Election Law 3-506 is the law in Maryland. It requires the Board of Election to hand over all public data upon request:

§ 3-506. Copies of list

(a) Providing — Registered voter. —

(1) A copy of a list of registered voters shall be provided to a Maryland registered voter on receipt of:

(i) a written application; and

(ii) a statement, signed under oath, that the list is not intended to be used for:

1. commercial solicitation; or

2. any other purpose not related to the electoral process.

An election review commission is related to the electoral process. There is no aspect of this law that allows Maryland to deny publicly available information to the Federal Government, especially when they have registered voters in Maryland to process even the strictest of reading. There is also no ability to deny for any philosophical purpose.

This is not “personal data” but public data that is made readily available for the purposes of campaigning and elections. Every candidate for office is rightfully allowed to obtain this information, just as President Trump was allowed to obtain it when he ran for office.

In addition, each party has copies of this list, and the Maryland GOP can hand over its list to the Federal Government.

Not only is Frosh violating the law, he is violating his oaths of office that he swore when he became Attorney General of Maryland.

To deny without legal right someone of an opposing party election information is to abuse the integrity of the office of Attorney General, violate election ethics rules, and to interfere with the democratic process.

Here is the request of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in full:

I am requesting that you provide to the Commission the publicly available voter roll data, including, if publicly available under the laws of your state, the full first and last names of all registrants, middle names or initials if available, addresses, dates of birth, political party (if recorded in your state), last four digits of social security number if available, voter history (elections voted in) from 2006 onward, active/inactive status, cancelled status, information regarding any felony convictions, information regarding voter registration in another state, information regarding military status, and overseas citizen information.

Update: WBAL 1090 has run an article that is practically a press release from the Attorney General without the most basic of research.

At no point does it acknowledge that the Attorney General blatantly and outright lied about the law or discuss the law at all. Instead, it attempts to smear the Trump Administration. This is a blatant disregard for journalistic ethics.

Additionally, their social media director has done whatever they can to block criticism of their failure to report and has made it clear that they do not believe in abiding by fair journalistic practices. Instead, they took a heavy-handed abusive approach to criticism. The editorial board documented the childish and abusive actions by WBAL 1090 here.