HARRISBURG — Attorney General Josh Shapiro is renewing his commitment to protecting Pennsylvanian’s private voter information, filing a brief to request that Commonwealth Court strike down a subpoena issued by State Senators Cris Dush and Jake Corman that seeks the private personal information — including the partial social security number — of every registered voter in Pennsylvania.
“It’s been almost two months since the vote to issue the subpoena and the Senators still have no plan for securing the private information of nine million Pennsylvanians, and have given no plausible reason for the need to access this sensitive information” said AG Shapiro. “These Senate Republicans continue to be more interested in using this sham investigation to attack the traditions of our free and fair elections than protecting the privacy of the people they are supposed to represent.”
The Office of Attorney General previously filed a motion seeking to quash the subpoena because, among other reasons, it violates Article I, Section I of the Pennsylvania Constitution, which provides individuals the right to “control access to, or the dissemination of, personal information about himself or herself.”
The Senators plan to take the collected private data and turn it over to an unidentified third party, and have yet to supply any details regarding the vendor they will hire or what, if any, security protocols the vendor will follow.
The Senators have also given shifting explanations as to why their “investigation” is necessary, none of which has any reasonable relationship to the subpoena. At times, they have claimed to be examining the Department of State’s election guidance, while other times they have said they were auditing who voted in the 2020 election or that they were considering the impact of Act 77.
Argument is scheduled for December 15, 2021.
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