State legislators discussed efforts to protect residents' personal and voter data from being requested or misused by the federal government. They highlighted recent legislation preventing counties from handing over sensitive voter information and emphasized that state agencies are strictly limiting federal data-sharing agreements in areas like healthcare, licensing, and education. These restrictions ensure the state only shares explicitly contracted information in order to protect vulnerable community members from targeted federal enforcement.
Cross_cutting
49th Legislative District Town Hall Meeting · Apr 11, 2026 · 1:06:12–1:06:34 · Watch on CVTV ↗
Keywords: data sharing
What was said
1:05:05 So first thing I just want to say is that there's not documented evidence that voter fraud is a problem in this state. So we need to be really careful about when we ask that question whether or not we're reinforcing something that's just simply not true. There was a case, I think, in Yakima Valley where there was, I think, you know, there was some concern about this. The system works. There was an investigation, and there were four voters whose ballots were double checked. There was no change to the outcome to the election, and it was a very kind of common error that is made in all types of documentation having nothing to do with voter fraud. And so I'm proud that we live in a state where people can vote by mail, and it is not questioned whether or not those votes are tallied and appropriately counted for the outcomes of our elections.
1:06:01 And then just specifically about protecting information, you know, we're doing that in licensing. We're doing that in health care. We're doing that in school enrollment. We're doing that in a number of places to make sure that when there's a data sharing agreement with the federal government, we are only sharing what we are contracted to for the purposes of that governmental relationship and not oversharing information that puts our community members at risk. And, you know, I'm a little surprised we got this far into the morning without talking about the immigration impacts from ICE and that we've seen in our community here. But that's a reality that we're living with now, and the legislature has, I think, addressed to the extent that we can any issues that we learn about as they are coming up. Unfortunately, we were given an opportunity to get started on this work years ago under the last Trump administration, so we're not going to go further along this time, but we still keep finding areas where we need to improve.
1:07:00 I'd just like to add that data privacy has been a long-time concern in our state, and oftentimes we're the model for other states. A few years -- a couple of years ago, I helped sponsor and pass a bill that we came up with because we found out that the tech companies can put a whole lot of different information together, as we are well aware, and get very specific and reveal people's health care privacy and then sell it.
Evidence (1 match)
cross_cutting keyword 1:06:12–1:06:34 data sharing
ctions. And then just specifically about protecting information, you know, we're doing that in licensing. We're doing that in health care. We're doing that in school enrollment. We're doing that in a number of places to make sure that when there's a data sharing agreement with the federal government, we are only sharing what we are contracted to for the purposes of that governmental relationship and not oversharing information that puts our community members at risk. And, you know, I'm a little