Thursday, January 4, 2018

Trump dissolves voter fraud commission

President Trump has dissolved the White House commission meant to investigate alleged voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election. It was established months after Trump claimed, without citing evidence, that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election, depriving him of a popular-vote victory against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

"Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order to dissolve the Commission, and he has asked the Department of Homeland Security to review its initial findings and determine next courses of action," White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement.

The commission, led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, had asked all 50 states and the District of Columbia to hand over reams of personal voter data, including voters' names, voting histories and party affiliations.

Multiple states -- including Virginia, Kentucky, and California -- as well as D.C. declined to comply with the commission's requests.

"Many mostly Democrat States refused to hand over data from the 2016 Election to the Commission On Voter Fraud. They fought hard that the Commission not see their records or methods because they know that many people are voting illegally. System is rigged, must go to Voter I.D.," Trump said in a Thursday morning tweet.


Voter advocacy groups and Democrats applauded Wednesday's decision.

"The commission never had anything to do with election integrity," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement. "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.

"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. "No taxpayer dollars should have been wasted on Mr. Trump's voter suppression crusade."

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