Voter fraud claims remain as panel shuts down work
ATLANTA — President Donald Trump hasn’t backed away from his unsubstantiated allegation that millions of illegally cast ballots cost him the popular vote in 2016, but his efforts to investigate it appear to have stalled.
He transferred the work of the commission investigating his allegation to the Department of Homeland Security. This week, the department’s top official made it clear that, when it comes to elections, her focus is on safeguarding state and local voting systems from cyberattacks and other manipulation.
While the U.S. Department of Justice has broad authority to investigate voter fraud claims, White House officials said previously that Homeland Security was the best agency to take over the work of the now-disbanded Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
A Justice Department official declined comment this week on whether the agency was conducting any reviews related to voter fraud, but confirmed that no voter data collected by the commission, nor analysis of the data, was given to the agency before the commission was disbanded.
The end of the commission is welcome news to voting rights advocates concerned that its goal was to promote voter-suppression efforts.
This past week, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testified that her agency views cybersecurity as its top election-related priority and is focused on working with state and local officials to secure their election systems from cyber threats and hackers.
She called voter fraud a “large topic” that covers various federal agencies.
“The part that DHS plays, we are looking at the integrity of the cyber systems,” Nielsen told U.S. senators at a hearing Tuesday on Capitol
Hill. “We will continue to work with states and localities on that.”