By terminating the ill-considered Presidential Advisory Commission on Electoral Integrity, the Trump administration has eliminated the only demonstrable fraud involving the 2016 election. Trump's statement gave no indication what could happen to the sensitive voter files in the commission's possession, which the GAO said number in the tens of millions. As Kansas's Secretary of State, Kobach five unconfirmed cases of non-citizens voting to effectively halt the applications of one-seventh of all voter registrations.
A White House statement is blaming the decision on numerous states that have refused to provide voter information to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
"It's telling that even in his announcement to its long overdue demise, President Trump continues the false narrative that there is 'substantial evidence of voter fraud", Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said January 3.
Trump convened the commission in May to investigate the 2016 presidential election after repeatedly making unsubstantiated claims that between 3 million and 5 million illegally cast ballots had cost him the popular vote. Critics believed the commission was part of a conservative campaign to strip minority voters and poor people from voter rolls. Before Trump took office, Kobach took a proposal into a meeting with the president-elect laying out ideas for changing federal laws to make it easier for states to impose such requirements.
"The obstacles and impediments used to hinder the work of the Commission is evidence that there are many politicians and activists who want to prevent the American people from finding out the truth", Von Spakovsky wrote. "Virginia conducts fair, honest, and democratic elections, and there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in Virginia".
"It's time to put an end to this useless exercise created to soothe his insecurities about losing the popular vote in 2016", she said.
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Most recently, the commission was sued by one of its own members, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democrat, who claimed he was blocked from getting information about the group's activities. "It was that scrutiny that was forced upon the commission that successfully led to the need for transparency which caused the commission to fail", he said, promising that the administration's new tactic won't go unchallenged by the civil rights community.
Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit advocacy group, also welcomed the news, calling the commission "a vehicle launched for the sole objective of laying the groundwork to promote voter suppression policies on a national scale".
On Thursday morning, Trump tweeted that the "system is rigged" and called for a move toward "voter ID".
Among her concerns is that DHS may try to get voter information from states.
"It is no surprise that a commission founded on a lie of widespread voter fraud proved to be a fraud itself", said California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat, who had refused to comply with the commission's request for voter data.
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