Mississippi Advisory Opinions December 05, 1997: AGO 000012355 (December 5, 1997)

AGO 000012355.

Dear Mr. Evans:

Attorney General Mike Moore has received your request for an official opinion and has assigned it to me for research and reply. In your letter you express some concerns as to the meaning and scope of a new exception to the Public Records Act passed in the 1997 Session of the Mississippi Legislature. You have enclosed a memorandum distributed by the Secretary of State's Office regarding this legislation.

The memorandum from the Secretary of State's Office states, in pertinent part:

However, when voter lists, poll books or other documents are provided to the public or to other persons who are not election officials, you must now ensure that voter's social security numbers, telephone numbers and date of birth and age information are removed or blocked out.

You further state in your letter:

This statement [from the Secretary of State's memorandum] seems to go way beyond the plain English reading of the new statute. Section 2(3) states in part that Social security numbers, telephone numbers, and date of birth and age information retained in ... county ... voter registration files shall be exempt from and shall not be subject to inspection, examination, copying or reproduction under the Mississippi Public Records Act of 1983.' Section 3 provides the definition of voter registration files': The voter registration files shall contain copies of the applications for registration completed by electors, which applications shall show the date of registration and signature of elector, and such files shall be known as registration books.'

And so my first question is, even though Section 2(3) exempts voter registration files from the Mississippi Public Records Act, can you point me to the statute that prohibits me from making those files available to the public at my discretion?

Secondly, my office maintains the voter registration files precisely as prescribed by law: the original documents, consisting of registration forms of all types, and change of address information, are placed in registration books. However, my staff also enters the information from the paper forms into a computer to compile a voter list. This voter list, which exists in a database, does not contain a digital representation or image of the elector's signature. Thus, the computerized voter list compiled in my office is not a voter registration file' as defined by this statute.

Poll books in Leflore County are prepared by printing out the voter list in a format appropriate for use on election day.

What is the basis in law, if any, for the assertion by the Secretary of State's office in its memorandum that my office may not provide to the public unredacted copies of poll books and the computerized voter list, since these are not voter registration files' and therefore are not currently exempted from mandatory disclosure under the Mississippi Public Records Act of 1983?

House Bill 1470, Miss. Laws 1997, established the statewide voter registration laws, codified at Sections 23-15-139 et seq., Miss. Code Ann., Section 23-15-140 sets forth the form of the statewide voter registration data and states, in pertinent part:

(3) Social security numbers, telephone numbers, and date of birth and age information retained in statewide, district, county and municipal voter registration files shall be exempt from and shall not be subject to inspection, examination, copying or reproduction under the Mississippi Public Records Act of 1983. Copies of statewide, district, county or municipal voter registration files, excluding social security numbers, telephone numbers, and dates of birth and age information, shall be provided to any person in the order of requests received, in accordance with the Public Records Act of 1983 at a cost not to exceed the actual cost of reproduction.

Section 23-15-11 of the Mississippi Public Records Act of 1983 states:

The provisions of this chapter shall not be construed to conflict with, amend, repeal or supersede any constitutional or statutory law or decision of a court of this state or the United States which at the time of this chapter is effective or thereafter specifically declares a public record to be confidential or privileged, or provides that a public record shall be exempt from the provisions of this chapter.

In response to your first question, the language in Section 23-15-140(3) prohibits a circuit clerk, or any other public official, from providing the enumerated exempted information to anyone, whether requested under the Public Records Act or not the intent of the legislature in enacting this statute was clearly to make such information confidential. To allow a public official the discretion to provide certain exempted information to whomever he or she determines would make the protection afforded such information meaningless. The Mississippi Legislature determined that certain information obtained for purposes of the statewide voter registration records would not be accessible to the public.

Your second question presumes that because your computerized voter list does not have the electors' signatures on it, such list is not exempt. Again, that presumption would render the law meaningless. You obtained the information from the exempted records. The information is exempted regardless of the form to which you transfer it.

Finally, this Office does not comment on the basis of memoranda issued by other state agencies.

If this office can be of any further assistance, please let us know.

Very truly yours,

Sandra M. Shelson

Special Assistant Attorney General