President Donald Trump on July 16 delivered a nationally televised, primetime address highlighting security gaps in U.S. voter registration databases and other election infrastructure. Figuring prominently in the president’s speech was newly declassified information on China’s acquisition of millions of U.S. voter registration records.As reported in the Washington Examiner: “A cache of declassified intelligence documents released by the Trump administration Thursday night offered bold new details on China’s acquisition of U.S. voter information since 2016 … Trump said during his primetime address on Thursday that the People’s Republic of China acquired 220 million U.S. voter files containing names, addresses, phone numbers, political party preferences, and other sensitive information.”In reporting on this, many media outlets obscured the fact that, depending on the state, obtaining these data would have required illegitimate activity. NPR, for example, simply observed that “many states make their voter information publicly available.” CBS News, without naming any of the states identified in the declassified material, observed that: “voter data is accessible across all 50 states … Twenty states and Washington, D.C., will provide voter data with a simple public request, purchase or online download.”