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It turns out that in government, there are rules—laws, even—and Donald Trump’s voter suppression commission may have broken one with its demand for state voter data.
Experts say the failure to submit the request to states through the Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) violates a 1980 law known as the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). They also say the failure could be significant, since states could argue it means they are under no obligation to respond.
“If the commission gets heavy-handed with them, it seems to me that the states are within their right to say, 'No, we don’t have to respond because you didn’t go through [OIRA],'” said Susan Dudley, a former OIRA administrator who is now director of the GW Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University.
If you read that and thought “I bet Trump’s people have an explanation for why this law does not apply to them,” pat yourself on the back. According to a Mike Pence spokesperson, “The Paperwork Reduction Act only applies to information collections by agencies” and the voter suppression commission is not an agency, so nyah nyah nyah. However:
There are some exemptions from the Paperwork Act’s requirements, but Richard Belzer, a former OIRA economist, said in an email to The Hill that he didn’t recall Trump’s executive order including any provision that would exempt the commission from following the requirements.
Belzer said it would not be unprecedented for OIRA to wave through an approval or issue an exemption at the request of the White House, but he argued this would be “legally dubious” in this case.
The Paperwork Reduction Act defines “agency” very broadly and exempts only requests for information from the Government Accountability Office and the Federal Election Commission from having to follow the requirements of the law. So the voter commission and the type of information it is requesting would be covered.
Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney would have to enforce this, so the complaint is unlikely to go anywhere at that level. But, as Susan Dudley indicates above, states that want to resist should be keeping this very much in mind.