Donald Trump’s task of exposing voter fraud has run into some hurdles. Unsurprisingly, some states are simply unwilling to aid Trump’s effort, whereas legal concerns are barring another group of state officials from supplying unabridged voter data. Last week, the committee implored every state to make “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, [and] voter history from 2006 onward.”

As of Friday, half of the states had either scoffed at the request or declared that state law precludes unfiltered dissemination of voter data. Some of the more haughty responses came from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes and Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann. According to McAuliffe, “This entire commission is based on the specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November.” Lundergan Grimes complained, “This commission was formed to try to find basis for the lie that President Trump put forward that has no foundation.” Hosemann suggested, “They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from.” This is what “Resistance Summer” sounds like.

Many media outlets are making a big deal out of states’ refusal to dispense private information, but that’s their prerogative, and if state law forbids it, that’s not resistance. Even the committee letter clearly states that it is requesting only “publicly-available voter roll data.” What is resistance is the vindictiveness of states like California and New York, which are flatly and boldly saying, “No way,” even in regards to public data. The problem is that this takes a comprehensive examination off the table. Which was the entire point of the committee — to get a better, more complete view of voter issues. The committee is merely asking states to work with it as best they can. But some officials just won’t accept the possibility that voter fraud, which some research affirms could include millions of voters, has merit that’s worth investigating.