Bennet wants election integrity group disbanded

U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet has asked the Trump administration to disband its election integrity commission and “reverse the damage that it has already caused,” citing the thousands of people in Colorado who have withdrawn their voter registrations.

“The stated purpose of the commission is ‘to increase the American people’s confidence in the integrity of our election systems,’ ” the Colorado Democrat wrote Friday in a letter to Vice President Mike Pence and the commission’s vice-chair, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. “But it is having a very real and dramatically chilling effect on voter participation.”

Through Friday, nearly 4,000 Coloradans had canceled their voter registrations since the commission made a blanket request for voter information from all 50 states. On July 10 alone, 1,237 Colorado voters withdrew their registrations.

Another 200 Colorado voters have signed up to become “confidential voters,” a designation that allows their information to be withheld.

Bennet wrote that Colorado has “led the nation in adopting early voting, mailin ballots and same-day registration. This commission is working directly counter to those efforts.”

The Washington Post reported Monday that the day after Donald Trump was elected president, Kobach told his transition team of a proposal to change federal law to tighten voter-registration requirements.

Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams, along with dozens of other secretaries of state across the country, has said he will provide the commission only considered public under Colorado law — a category that includes voters’ names, addresses, party affiliations, birth years and which elections they have participated in.

The commission’s request is on hold while a legal challenge plays out in court.