‘Fraud’ commission folds
President Trump has finally put his voter fraud commission out of its misery.
Of course, he created the Presidential Advisory Committee on Election Integrity last May in an ego-driven effort to prove he would have bested Hillary Clinton in the popular vote in the 2016 election — if only there wasn’t so much fraudulent voting out there.
“I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump insisted via a Twitter message several weeks after the election. There was no evidence of anything resembling fraud — and the fact that he pointed to places like New Hampshire — with its Republican governor — hinted at how ludicrous the charge actually was.
The commission managed to meet exactly twice (one of those meetings was in New Hampshire), but during its brief and contentious history was the subject of at least eight lawsuits — some aimed at halting its requests for intrusive data and others for its lack of transparency.
The panel had requested not just lists of registered voters from each state, but wanted those names and addresses to be accompanied by dates of birth, partial Social Security numbers and other data. And what a hackers’ delight that would have provided.
So while the rest of the nation was busy hunkering down for the blizzard to come or enjoying the death cage match between the president and his former chief strategist Steve Bannon, the White House press office took the opportunity Wednesday night to announce the long-overdue demise of the commission.
Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said — again without evidence — “Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide” the commission “with basic information relevant to its inquiry.”
She added that the president decided to dissolve the group “rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense.”
The task of looking for illegal voters has now been assigned to the Department of Homeland Security, which surely must have better things to do than to chase this white whale of a tale.