Trump abandons his fraudulent ‘voter fraud commission’ after states refuse to cooperate

Last year in May, President Trump set a voter fraud commission to investigate his unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that “millions” of people cast fraudulent votes in the 2016 election. This Wednesday, Trump dissolved the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity after several states refused to hand over voter information.

“Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry,” a statement from White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said. “Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the Commission.”

The panel was assembled months after Trump claimed — without evidence — that “millions of people” voted illegally in 2016, causing him to lose the popular-vote victory against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

From The Hill:

The panel met twice, but was quickly bogged down amid states’ unwillingness to comply with its requests and lawsuits alleging it did not follow federal record-keeping laws.

The Government Accountability Office announced last October it was opening an investigation into the commission at the request of three Democratic senators who said the panel did not properly disclose its work.

Democrats and civil-rights groups described the commission as part of a broader conservative effort to deprive minorities of voting rights and a cover to back up the president’s claims.

“The commission never had anything to do with election integrity,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement according to POLITICO. “It was instead a front to suppress the vote, perpetrate dangerous and baseless claims, and was ridiculed from one end of the country to the other. This shows that ill-founded proposals that just appeal to a narrow group of people won’t work, and we hope they’ll learn this lesson elsewhere.”

As POLITICO points out, Trump’s dissolving of the commission was likely due to a “flood of litigation” that plagued the panel. The lawsuits were triggered by a request issued for all states to provide their voter rolls along with information on citizens’ personal information. The Trump administration claimed that it was seeking only public records, “but the broad call for data drew an angry reaction from some state officials and raised concerns about how the personal information would be stored and safeguarded.”

Featured image via Michael Vadon (Flickr)

Sky Palma

Before launching DeadState back in 2012, Sky Palma has been blogging about politics, social issues and religion for over a decade. He lives in Los Angeles and also enjoys Brazilian jiu jitsu, chess, music and art.