Trump shuts down Commission on voter fraud, ‘no evidence’ found, calls for Voter ID
President Donald Trump has signed an order Wednesday to collapse the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, a White House commission he had charged with investigating voter fraud, ending a brief quest for evidence of election theft that generated lawsuits, outrage and some scholarly testimony.
Vote sign photo/ Leslie Andrachuk via pixabay
In a statement, the White House said, “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. Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the Commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action.”
Only Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Ohio and Washington State had complied with all of the commission’s requests.
California, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico and South Carolina had all signaled their unwillingness to cooperate.
EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, has declared victory in the commission’s demise, being the first to sue the Trump administration over the issue, noting that it has a pending Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the US Department of Homeland Security “for records concerning the federal government’s collection of personal data on voters.”
On Thursday, Trump called for requiring voter identification in a pair of Twitter posts because the voting system “is rigged.” “Push hard for Voter Identification!” Trump wrote.
Trump did not acknowledge the commission’s inability to find evidence of fraud, but cast the closing as a result of continuing legal challenges.
screenshot WEWS-TV report
“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,” Trump said in a White House statement on Wednesday.
“Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action,” he said.
In fact, even recounts in the wake of the 2016 election to “prove” Trump stole the election from Hillary Clinton found voter fraud issues in Democrat controlled cities (Detroit) and miscounts that benefited the President.
“The commission’s entire purpose was to legitimize voter suppression,” said Vanita Gupta, the president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and former head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
“The abrupt abandonment of the commission makes clear that it had become a thoroughly discredited body that could not find evidence of mass voter fraud,” Gupta said. “The commission itself was unable to justify its existence as a result.”
