Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity

Executive Order 13799

Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity
File:President Trump is joined by Vice President Pence for an Executive Order signing (33803971533) (2).jpg President Donald J. Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence, displays his signed Executive Order for the Establishment of a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C.
File:Executive Order 13799.pdf Executive Order 13799 in the Federal Register
Type	Executive order
Executive Order number	13799
Signed by	Donald Trump on May 11, 2017 (2017-05-11)
Federal Register details
Federal Register document number	2017-10003
Publication date	May 16, 2017 (2017-05-16)
Document citation	{{#property:P1031}}
Summary
Identify rules and laws that enhance and undermine the integrity of the election process Vice President chairs the Commission Up to fifteen additional members Other provisions

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (PEIC or PACEI), also called the Voter Fraud Commission, is a temporary commission established in May 2017 by United States President Donald Trump's Executive Order 13799 (E.O. 13799, 82 FR 22389) on May 11, 2017. The Trump administration has said the commission would review claims of voter fraud, improper registration, and voter suppression. The establishment of the commission followed through on previous unsubstantiated claims by Trump that millions of illegal immigrants had voted in the 2016 United States presidential election. Vice President Mike Pence serves as Chair of the Commission, with Kansas Secretary of State, Kris Kobach, serving as Vice Chair.

On June 28, 2017 Kobach wrote a letter in conjunction with the Department of Justice requesting personal voter information from every state. The request was met with significant bipartisan backlash.

Trump's creation of the commission has been criticized by voting rights advocates, scholars and experts, and newspaper editorial boards as a pretext for, and prelude to, voter suppression.

Background

2016 campaign

During his campaign for President Donald Trump made numerous claims of voter fraud occurring in the United States.

In the weeks before the election, Trump urged his supporters to volunteer as poll watchers on Election Day, saying they were needed to guard against "voter fraud" and a "rigged" outcome. The rhetoric was seen as a call to intimidate minority voters or challenge their credentials to prevent them from voting. Numerous organizations, including the Democratic Party officials and affiliates sued Trump accusing him of voter intimidation, in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act.

Post-election

On November 8, 2016 Donald Trump won the 2016 United States presidential election, but lost the popular vote to opponent Hillary Clinton. Trump is the fifth person in U.S. history to become president while losing the nationwide popular vote. On November 28, 2016 Trump stated in a tweet, "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." Trump has repeatedly stated and inferred that three to five million people voted illegally in the 2016 election.

On January 25, 2017 President Trump tweeted a statement,"I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and....even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!"

Kris Kobach proposal

On November 22, 2016 Kobach met with then President-elect Trump in his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey in consideration for Secretary of Homeland Security position. The Associated Press photographed Kobach taking into his meeting with Trump a document entitled "Department of Homeland Security, Kobach Strategic Plan for First 365 Days" referencing a possible amendment to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing plaintiffs in a voting rights case, asked the presiding federal judge to prevent Kobach from withholding from the public documents he presented to Trump by virtue of marking them "confidential." The plaintiffs demanded the public release of those documents they have received, that had been prepared with state funds, claiming Kobach "made statements to the public, the Court, and the President, suggesting that noncitizen registration fraud is a serious, widespread problem," at the same time he tried to hide those same documents that reject his claim, to prevent having to testify in open court about those materials. In June 2017, the federal magistrate judge found that Kobach had made "patently misleading representations" to the court in the course of the document dispute. Kobach was fined $1,000 for "deceptive conduct and lack of candor" and ordered to submit to questioning by the ACLU about the documents.

Voter irregularities in the United States

Voter impersonation

Main article: Voter impersonation (United States)

Only US citizens have the right to vote in federal elections. While the United States Congress has jurisdiction over laws applying to federal elections, it has deferred the making of most aspects of election laws to the states. Therefore the administration of voter registration requirements, voting requirements, and elections vary widely across jurisdictions.

Voter impersonation (also sometimes called in-person voter fraud) is a form of electoral fraud in which one person who is not eligible to vote in an election does so by voting under the name of another eligible voter or by otherwise pretending to be eligible. In the United States, voter ID laws have been enacted in a number of states since 2010 with the aim of preventing voter impersonation. Research and evidence show that voter impersonation is extremely rare. There is no evidence that in-person voter fraud has changed the result of any election.

In a few cases, permanent residents ("green card" holders) have registered to vote and have cast ballots without realizing that doing so was illegal. Non-citizens convicted in criminal court of having made a false claim of citizenship for the purpose of registering to vote in a federal election can be fined and imprisoned for up to a year. Deportation and removal proceedings have resulted from several such cases.

In an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law looked at 42 jurisdictions, focusing on one's with large population of noncitizens. Of 23.5 million votes surveyed, election officials referred an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation, or about 0.0001% of votes cast. Douglas Keith, the counsel in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program and co-author of the analysis, said, “President Trump has said repeatedly that millions of people voted illegally in 2016, but our interviews with local election administrators made clear that rampant noncitizen voting simply did not occur. Any claims to the contrary make their job harder and distract from progress toward needed improvements like automatic voter registration.”

Voter registration irregularities

See also: Voter suppression in the United States

Voter registration is the process of collecting applications to vote, adjudicating those applications, and maintaining the rolls of qualified voters. The process of voter registration is generally left to the states. In an effort to increase voter turnout, a state may adopt less restrictive policies, including motor voter registration and same day registration. In an effort to decrease in-person voter fraud, a state may adopt more strict policies for registration, including proof of citizenship at the time of registration. Federal elections do not require proof of citizenship, only a statement on the signed application.

Voter rolls have high rates of inaccuracy. Voters move, die, and are incarcerated. Voter rolls may include erroneous superfluous entries as a result of fraudulent registration or failure to purge the roll when a voter dies, moves, or is sent to prison. A qualified voter may be legally registered in only one precinct. This is a matter of state law. In 2012, the Pew Trust estimated that 24 million voter records were inaccurate or invalid, including approximately 1.8 million records of deceased people who remained on voter rolls. In October 2016, Trump conflated these irregularities with voter fraud and wrongly cited the Pew report as evidence that 1.8 million people were fraudulently voting against him. Voting twice is a third degree felony in most states. Erroneous superfluous entries on a voter roll cannot affect an election if nobody fraudulently votes using the superfluous registration entry.

Erroneous deletions from a voter roll can potentially affect an election outcome by preventing qualified voters from casting ballots. In November 2016, the New York City Board of Elections was ordered by a federal judge to make affidavit ballots available to people who believed their registrations were improperly purged. A computer analysis by The Palm Beach Post found that at least 1,100 eligible voters were wrongly purged from the Florida Central Voter File before the 2000 US presidential election, causing some eligible voters to be turned away at polling stations. Some commentators and courts have concluded that improperly conducted purges affect political parties differently and disenfranchise racial minorities. For instance, the 2000 Florida purge led to thousands of voters being wrongly disenfranchised, a disproportionate number of them black.

Commission

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is a temporary commission established by President Donald Trump's executive order (E.O. 13799, 82 FR 22389) on May 11, 2017. Fulfilling Trump's campaign and post-election promises of investigating fraudulent and improper voting registration and voting. White House spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the commission will provide the president with a report on their findings by 2018. The Office of Management and Budget said the executive order would have a de minimis impact on the costs and revenues of the federal government.

Provisions:

• Vice President shall chair the Commission
• President appoints members to the Commission, the Vice President may select the Vice Chair
• The Commission will report on laws, rules, policies, activities, strategies, and practices that enhance and undermine people's confidence in the integrity of the voting processes used in Federal elections
• The report should also identify voting systems and practices used for Federal elections that could lead to improper voter registrations and improper voting, including fraudulent voter registrations and fraudulent voting
• The Commission will terminate 30 days after it submits its report to the President

Members

Current Commission membership

• Chair: Mike Pence, Republican, Vice President of the United States, former Governor of Indiana
• Vice Chair: Kris Kobach, Republican, Secretary of State of Kansas, Of Counsel, Immigration Reform Law Institute
• J. Christian Adams, Republican, former Department of Justice Civil Rights Division attorney
• Ken Blackwell, Republican, former Ohio Secretary of State and previously state Treasurer
• Matthew Dunlap, Democrat, Secretary of State of Maine
• Bill Gardner, Democrat, New Hampshire Secretary of State
• Alan Lamar King, Democrat, probate judge of Jefferson County, Alabama
• Connie Lawson, Republican, Secretary of State of Indiana
• Christy McCormick, Republican, Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission
• Mark Rhodes, Democrat, Wood County, West Virginia county clerk
• Hans von Spakovsky, Republican, former member Federal Election Commission, Senior Legal Fellow - Heritage Foundation

Former Commission members

• Luis Borunda, Republican, Maryland deputy secretary of state, resigned July 3, 2017 (prior to the commission's first meeting, but after the controversial letter by Kris Kobach to election officials in the different states)
• David K. Dunn, Democrat, former Arkansas state representative, died October 17, 2017

Vice President Pence has been described as the titular head of the Commission on Voter Integrity with Kris Kobach, who also serves on the elections committee of the National Secretaries of States Association (NSOS), as its operational leader. According to the executive order, the commission can have up to sixteen members.

Dunlap and Gardner, the two Democratic Secretaries of State on the commission, said they hoped the commission would look into Russian interference in the 2016 election, but Kobach said he does not think that the commission's investigation will go in that direction. However, the New Hampshire congressional delegation unanimously urged Gardner to resign, so as to deny it the appearance of credibility. In October 2017

Unlike past presidential commissions on elections and voting (such as the Carter-Baker in 2001, Carter-Ford in 2004, and Bauer-Ginsburg in 2013), the leadership of the panel is not bipartisan and the makeup of the panel is not evenly split. Rather, Pence and Kobach, the chair and vice chair of the commission, are both Republicans, and Republicans hold a 7 to 5 (originally 8 to 5) advantage in membership for the commission as a whole. The ratio favoring the Republicans increased to 7 to 4 when David K. Dunn died in October 2017. Also in October 2017, two of the four Democrats on the commission, Dunlap and King, sent separate letters to commission staff complaining that they are not being kept informed of commission activities.

Commission member Hans von Spakovsky, the director of the Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative, is said to have promoted "the myth that Democratic voter fraud is common, and that it helps Democrats win elections". He has supported his claims about the extent of voter fraud by citing a 2000 investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which purported to find 5400 instances of deceased people in Georgia voting in the last twenty years. The Journal-Constitution later revised its findings, noting that it had no evidence of even a single ballot purportedly being cast by a deceased person and that the vast majority of the instances in question were due to clerical errors. In an interview with the New Yorker, von Spakovsky cited two scholars whom he said could substantiate that voter-impersonation fraud was rampant: Robert Pastor of American University and Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. Pastor and Sabato both said they would only support voter ID laws if those IDs were issued without cost to the voters, and acquired without substantial difficulty. It is Sabato's belief that voter impersonation is "relatively rare today," yet in a 2011 Heritage Foundation article, von Spakovsky referred to Sabato once more as a researcher whose studies established the existence of widespread voter fraud. He also has cited conservative columnist John Fund's "Stealing Elections," a book whose assertions of election fraud have been extensively debunked. Fund also co-authored a book with von Spakovsky. Von Spakovsky describes the efforts of Kobach, who is his colleague at the Heritage Foundation as well, to expose the alleged existence of extensive voter fraud as, "carefully described research," though Kobach's claims have also been found to have little substance. In an email, von Spakovsky urged United States Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to appoint any Democrats, "moderate Republicans and/or academics" to the Commission. According to Richard L. Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California at Irvine, "there are number of people who have been active in promoting false and exaggerated claims of voter fraud and using that as a pretext to argue for stricter voting and registration rules. And von Spakovsky’s at the top of the list." Professor Hasen characterized Spakovsky's appointment to Donald Trump's Commission on Election Integrity as a “a big middle finger” from the president to those individuals who are, “serious about fixing problems with our elections.”

Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio State Treasurer and two-term Secretary of State, is another controversial appointment to the Commission. His tenure in the latter position was beset with regular controversy including having many lawsuits filed against him, accusations of conflicts of interest and his creating impediments to voting, especially for minorities, though he is black himself. A suit brought for violations of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in the 2004 presidential contests was perhaps the most controversial. Blackwell also stated he would enforce a state law decreeing that anyone appearing at a polling place intending to vote, but whose registration could not be confirmed, would just be given a provisional ballot. If it were ascertained afterward that such persons had attempted to cast ballots in the wrong precinct, their provisional ballot would not be tabulated. He ordered poll workers to refuse to distribute provisional ballots unless they were satisfied as to the voter's residence. The Democratic party quickly filed suit, claiming his actions were deliberately "intended to disenfranchise minority voters," in violation of section 302 of HAVA. On October 21, 2004, the Chief Judge U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, James G. Carr, issued an order rejecting Blackwell's policy.

Commission activity

2017 request for voter information

First request

On June 28, 2017, Kris Kobach, in his capacity as vice chair of the Commission, wrote a letter along with the Department of Justice to the top election official in every state requesting they turn over voter data ostensibly to aid a countrywide search for evidence of election irregularities. Besides information such as the names and party affiliations of all registered voters, Kobach sought birth dates, felony conviction records, voting histories for the past decade and the last four digits of all voters’ Social Security numbers. Many states' election officials claim they never received the request and some said they only forward the request from another state's secretary of state.

The letter was not made public, and it became publicly known only after Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, tweeted out an image of the letter the day after the letter was written. Along with the image of the letter, she wrote "Pence and Kobach are laying the groundwork for voter suppression, plain & simple." A few hours after Gupta's tweet, Kobach confirmed to The Kansas City Star that the letter was authentic.

Kobach provided an e-mail address and a website for the election official to electronically submit the personal voter data. The e-mail address lacked basic encryption technology and was found to be insecure.

The request may have violated the federal Paperwork Reduction Act because it was not submitted to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) prior to being made to the states. The submission to the OIRA would have required a justification and an explanation of how the data would be used and protected. Additionally, the request did not come with an estimate of how many hours it would take the states to respond. Regulatory experts opined that the consequence of a violation would be that states would not be required to respond.

Second request

On July 25, Kobach told the Kansas City Star that he intends to send another request for voter data, after receiving a favorable ruling in a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The letter was sent the following day, and it differed from the first request by the addition "if state law allows [the] information to be public". The California Secretary of State announced that it will refuse to comply with the second request.

State responses

There was an immediate bipartisan backlash and rejection of the inquiries with a majority of states quickly rejecting the requests. Notably, commissioners Kobach, Dunlap, and Lawson (who also serve as the secretaries of state for Kansas, Maine, and Indiana respectively, with Indiana being Mike Pence's home state) indicated that their state laws forbade them from complying. Some states offered to only provide information that is already made public or available for purchase. No state has said they will fully comply with the list of demands. In response, President Trump made a statement on Twitter, "Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?"

Responses by election officials of the various states
State	Officeholder	Party	Received Request?	Official Response	Notes
Alabama	John Merrill	Republican	Yes	Will sell public information
Alaska	Byron Mallott	Democratic	Yes	Will provide public information
Arizona	Michele Reagan	Republican	Yes	Will not comply
Arkansas	Mark Martin	Republican	Yes	Will provide public information
California	Alex Padilla	Democratic	Yes	Will not comply
Colorado	Wayne Williams	Republican	Yes	Will provide public information
Connecticut	Denise Merrill	Democratic	Yes	Will not comply	Initially planned to comply with state allowed public information.
Delaware	Jeffrey Bullock	Democratic	Yes	Will not comply
District of Columbia	Lauren Vaughan	Democratic	Yes	Will not comply
Florida	Ken Detzner	Republican	Yes	Will provide public information
Georgia	Brian Kemp	Republican	Yes	Will sell public information	$250
Hawaii	Shan Tsutsui	Democratic	No	N/A
Idaho	Lawerence Denney	Republican	Yes	In review
Illinois	Jesse White	Democratic	Yes	Will not comply	Will not provide private information
Indiana	Connie Lawson	Republican	Yes	Will provide public information	Mike Pence's home state
Iowa	Paul Pate	Republican	Yes	Will sell public information
Kansas	Kris Kobach	Republican	Yes	Will provide public information	Vice Chair of Commission
Kentucky	Alison Grimes	Democratic	Yes	Will not comply
Louisiana	Tom Schedler	Republican	Yes	Will sell public information
Maine	Matthew Dunlap	Democratic	Yes	Will not comply	Member of Commission. Initially planned to comply with state allowed public information.
Maryland	John Wobensmith	Republican	Yes	Will not comply	Against state law.
Massachusetts	William Galvin	Democratic	Yes	Will not comply
Michigan	Ruth Johnson	Republican	Yes	Will provide public information
Minnesota	Steve Simon	Democratic	Yes	Will not comply
Mississippi	Delbert Hosemann	Republican	No, but forwarded	Will not comply
Missouri	Jay Ashcroft	Republican	Yes	Will provide public information
Montana	Corey Stapleton	Republican	No	N/A	Plans to not comply
Nebraska	John Gale	Republican	Yes	Will not comply	Will not comply until more details are received.
Nevada	Barbara Cegavske	Republican	Yes	Will provide public information
New Hampshire	Bill Gardner	Democratic	Yes	Will provide public information	Commission member
New Jersey	Kim Guadagno	Republican	Yes	In review
New Mexico	Maggie Toulouse Oliver	Democratic	No, but forwarded	Will not comply
New York	Cesar Perales	Democratic	Yes	Will not comply
North Carolina	Elaine Marshall	Democratic	Yes	Will provide public information	Governor Roy Cooper requested that the State Board of Elections not comply
North Dakota	Al Jaeger	Republican	Yes	Will not comply	North Dakota is the only state without voter registration.
Ohio	Jon Husted	Republican	Yes	Will provide public information
Oklahoma	Dave Lopez	Republican	Yes	Will provide public information
Oregon	Dennis Richardson	Republican	Yes	Will sell public information	$500 purchase
Pennsylvania	Pedro Cortés	Democratic	Yes	Will not "actively" comply	Commission may make public purchase of $20
Rhode Island	Nellie Gorbea	Democratic	Yes	Will provide public information	Called Kris Kobach oversight over the Commission "deeply troubling"
South Carolina	Mark Hammond	Republican	No, but forwarded	Will provide public information
South Dakota	Shantel Krebs	Republican	Yes	Will not comply
Tennessee	Tre Hargett	Republican	Yes	Will not comply
Texas	Rolando Pablos	Republican	Yes	Will provide public information
Utah	Spencer Cox	Republican	Yes	Will provide public information
Vermont	Jim Condos	Democratic	Yes	Will not comply	Initially planned to comply with state allowed public information, but wants to be assured data will be secured
Virginia	Kelly Thomasson	Democratic	Yes	Will not comply	Governor Terry McAuliffe gave official answer.
Washington	Kim Wyman	Republican	Yes	Will not "actively" comply	Commission may access public portal
West Virginia	Mac Warner	Republican	Yes	Will sell public information	$1,000
Wisconsin	Doug La Follette	Democratic	Yes	Will sell public information	$12,500
Wyoming	Ed Murray	Republican	Yes	Will not comply

Impact on voter registration

In Colorado, the Secretary of State confirmed that 3,394 voters (0.09 percent of all registered voters in Colorado) cancelled their voter registration in response to the request for voter registration information sent out by Kris Kobach. After receiving a few requests for voter registration cancellations, election officials in Flagler County, Florida published an open letter to voters urging voters not to cancel their registration in response to the commission's request for voter information. In Arkansas, an alderwoman in Eureka Springs requested to cancel her voter registration, but then re-registered within 24 hours because the law requires her to be a registered voter in order to serve in an elected office.

First official meeting, 19 July 2017

The committee held its first official meeting on 19 July 2017 in a secure federal building in Washington D.C. Breaking with tradition of open meetings for such commissions, the meeting was not open to the public, but it was live streamed in lieu. President Donald Trump addressed the commission at its inaugural meeting, stating that the commission's work should "fairly and objectively follow the facts wherever they may lead". He then criticized states that did not want to comply with the request for data issued by Kris Kobach, saying "One has to wonder what they’re worried about". The committee members talked largely of voter fraud, and mentioned themes included 'One Citizen, One Vote', anecdotes about specific incidents of election misconduct, and additional funding for voting equipment.

New Hampshire Meeting, 12 Sept 2017

On August 24, 2017 the Whitehouse announced that the commission will meet at St. Anselm College near Manchester, NH, on Sept. 12, 2017. The meeting was hosted by New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner and chaired by Vice Chair Kobach, since the chairman, Mike Pence, was not be in attendance. On September 7, Kobach alleged that voter fraud swung the election in the 2016 presidential race and the 2016 Senate race in the state. He made the allegations based on a report by the New Hampshire House of Representatives saying that of the 6,540 voters who had registered to vote on Election Day, only 1,014 of those voters had obtained a New Hampshire drivers license by August 30 of the following year. The Washington Post was able to quickly contact 3 voters who did not obtain a NH drivers license. The three said that they were college students and kept the drivers license from their home state.

At the meeting, both Gardner and fellow commissioner and Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap rejected the allegation that voter fraud had an impact on the election in New Hampshire in 2016. Dunlap called the charge "reckless" and pointed out that voters in New Hampishre need not be residents of the state, as it is sufficient to be "domiciled" in the state.

John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, made a presentation to the commission, proposing that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System be used for voter verification. Dunlap responded to the proposal saying that the system "was never intended to be used as an elections tool", and using it as such would have "unintended consequences".

Response

Rick Hasen of the University of California, Irvine, an expert on election law, stated that the commission was "a pretext to pass legislation that will make it harder for people to register to vote" and that there could be no confidence in whatever the committee produced. In a June 2017 editorial, Hasen ridiculed the commission as a "faux commission".

Lawsuits

Seven lawsuits had been filed against the commission by July 2017. Five of the plaintiffs in the different lawsuits were non-profit organizations that included: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU v. Trump and Pence), the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, NAACP (NAACP v. Trump), Public Citizen, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The lawsuits by the first two groups involved the lack of transparency of the commission’s meetings, whereas the lawsuits by the last two groups involved the collection by the commission of personal private data. In addition to the lawsuits, complaints have been filed with federal agencies against two of the commission's members.

In response to the lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the commission abandoned plans to accept responses through the Department of Defense safe access file exchange website and announced plans to use an existing White House system. The commission asked states to refrain from submitting data while the case was pending. The commission also stated its intention of deleting voter information from Arkansas, the only state to officially submit voter data on the Department of Defense website. On July 24, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly denied EPIC's request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against the commission, ruling that the commission was not required to conduct a privacy review before gathering data. On August 29, the government's attorney told the judge that confusion at the Department of Justice had resulted in the failure to disclose relevant documents to the plaintiffs, and Kollar-Kotelly ordered the government to provide a list of documents it wanted to withhold, and how it would comply with disclosure rules.

Calls for defunding and disbandment

On June 22, 2017, Representative Marc Veasey of Texas's 33rd congressional district introduced H.R. 3029 to deny funding for the commission. In August 2017, Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer wrote an editorial calling on Trump to disband the commission. He also threatened that if Trump does not disband the commission, he will try to deny the commission money in a funding bill.

See also

• Election Assistance Commission, United States government agency to assist implementing the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA).
• Voter registration in the United States
• Voting rights in the United States
• Voter suppression in the United States
• VoteRiders, a non-profit supporting voter registration

External links

• Presidential Executive Order on the Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity
• PACEI Resources, whitehouse.gov meeting materials and references
• Remarks by Vice President Pence and Elected Officials at the First Meeting

• "Trump's voter-fraud commission itself is a fraud". The Washington Post. July 18, 2017. Retrieved July 19, 2017, "...In fact, the real fraud is the commission itself...."
• Miles Rapoport on the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (May 30, 2017): "President Trump’s decision to establish a panel to study voter fraud and suppression, the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, has been roundly criticized by voter rights advocates and Democrats." ... [Miles Rapoport, Senior Democracy Practice Fellow Ash Center]: "There are a number of really serious problems with the Commission as it has been announced and conceptualized, which have led many people to say that its conclusions are pre-determined and that it will be used as an excuse for new efforts to restrict access to voting."
• Michael Waldman, Donald Trump Tells His Voter Fraud Panel: Find Me 'Something', Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law (July 20, 2017) (also republished at The Daily Beast): "The panel was created to justify one of the more outlandish presidential fibs ... After Trump was roundly mocked for his claim of 3 to 5 million illegal voters, the panel was launched in an effort to try to rustle up some evidence—any evidence—for the charge.... The purpose of the panel is not just to try to justify his laughable claims of millions of invisible illegal voters. It aims to stir fears, to lay the ground for new efforts to restrict voting. Trump’s claims, after all, are just a cartoon version of the groundless arguments already used to justify restrictive voting laws."
• Mark Berman & David Weigel, Trump’s voting commission asked states to hand over election data. Some are pushing back., Washington Post (June 30, 2017): "Experts described the request as ... a recipe for potential voter suppression.... 'This is an attempt on a grand scale to purport to match voter rolls with other information in an apparent effort to try and show that the voter rolls are inaccurate and use that as a pretext to pass legislation that will make it harder for people to register to vote,' said Rick Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California, Irvine. Hasen said he has "no confidence" in whatever results the committee produces. He said the commission and its request create a number of concerns, including that it is an election group created by one candidate for office—Trump, who already is campaigning for reelection—and headed by Pence, another political candidate. 'It's just a recipe for a biased and unfair report,' Hasen said. "And it's completely different from the way that every other post-election commission has been done."
• Max Greenwood, Newspapers rip Trump voter fraud panel in July Fourth editorials, The Hill (July 4, 2017).
• Civil rights advocates: ‘Confidential’ documents undercut Kobach’s voting fraud claim, Lawrence Journal World, Associated Press, June 21, 2017; retrieved June 22, 2017.
• Kirk Semple, ""Immigrants Find Voting Can Come At a Cost". New York Times, 15 October 2010.
• Democrats on Voter Fraud Panel Join Those Criticizing It, New York Times, Michael Wines, September 12, 2017. Retrieved September 14, 2017.
• Kenneth P. Doyle, Trump Calls for Election Commission to Focus on Voter Fraud, Bloomberg BNA (July 19, 2017).
• Jane Mayer,"The Voter Fraud Myth". The New Yorker. October 25, 2012. Retrieved September 13, 2017.
• Fund's book on voter fraud, is a fraud, Media Matters for America, Nicole Casta, October 31, 2004. Retrieved September 13, 2017.
• Counting on the Indian Vote, Rapid City Journal, Denise Ross, May 25, 2005. Retrieved September 13, 2017.
• New Myths on Voter ID, Heritage Foundation, Hans von Spakovsky, October 13, 2011. Retrieved September 13, 2017.
• Berman, Ari (July 5, 2017). "The Trump Administration’s Voter-Suppression Plans Are Backfiring Badly". The Nation.
• Asked for Voters’ Data, States Give Trump Panel a Bipartisan ‘No’, New York Times, Michael Wines, June 30, 2017. Retrieved 1 July 2017.
• Kris Kobach says he can’t comply with Kris Kobach’s voter data request, Washington Post, Christopher Ingraham, June 30, 2017. Retrieved 1 July 2017.
• After Disclosure Failure, DC Judge Wants List of Trump Voter Commission Docs, The National Law Journal, Cogan Schneier, August 30, 2017. Retrieved September 3, 2017.