Last week at a press conference, New Mexico Republican leaders claimed they had evidence of actual voter fraud and presented a sheaf of voter registration forms as evidence, saying that many registrants had the same Social Security numbers. Now the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico has sent a letter asking the state attorney general to initiate a criminal investigation into whether the Bernalillo County Clerk’s Office may have released confidential information to the Republican Party of New Mexico, and whether the party then publicly distributed that information in violation of state laws. But after a search of electronic records, the county clerk says that none of the 38 copies of voter registration forms she’s seen came from her office.

According to a press release from ACLUNM:

A press packet distributed by the GOP last week contained photocopies of 19 voter registration forms, and acknowledged that the Party obtained 92 voter registration forms in all.  Several of the forms displayed written notes in a space reserved for “office use only,” suggesting that they had been reviewed by County officials before arriving in the Party’s hands. New Mexico state law prohibits the County Clerk from releasing voter registration to anyone except registrants and it assesses a fourth degree felony upon any, “person who unlawfully copies, conveys, or uses information from a certificate of registration.”

Bernalillo County Clerk Maggie Toulouse Oliver says her office did not provide unredacted documents to anyone, and that all 33 New Mexico county clerks’ offices and the secretary of state’s office have access to the same database of information. A search of electronic records, which document which forms were printed by the Bernalillo County Clerk’s Office, revealed that none of the photocopies her office has seen were printed there. (Toulouse Oliver was able to check the names on 38 photocopies that came from the state GOP and were forwarded to her by NMI and other news outlets.)

“I don’t want to accuse any of them, but my office is not the only source of this information, and for the ACLU to single out my office is jumping to conclusions,” Toulouse Oliver said Wednesday morning. “An investigation is warranted into who did this, but the attorney general should expand the scope to include the rest of the sources.” She added, “I will cooperate 100 percent with an investigation because I’d like to know the answers, too.”

According to Toulouse Oliver, anyone can come in and ask to see voter registration forms, which are public records, but nobody is allowed to take notes while inspecting the original documents. Photocopies provided by her office are always redacted she said, with the Social Security numbers and month and day of birth blacked out.

Steven Robert Allen, the state director of Common Cause New Mexico, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization promoting open, honest and accountable government, says he’s also concerned about how the state GOP got access to unredacted forms. “Our nonpartisan election protection coalition is also deeply concerned about the issue that the ACLU has raised. We have asked the state GOP for clarification on where they got hold of the Social Security numbers because right now it’s not at all clear.”

A representative for the New Mexico Republican Party has not yet responded to NMI’s request for information on how and where it got the forms.