Trump forms probe body on vote fraud
In suspicious move, President sticks to cheating yarn without evidence
Bernie Sanders, a Democrat senator, sees nothing in US President Donald Trump’s order to form a commission to investigate Trump’s unsubstantiated claim of voter fraud except an attempt to “propagate a myth.” But Trump is undeterred, claiming he, instead of Hillary Clinton, could have won the popular vote if not for cheating committed mostly by immigrants.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday launching a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression, building upon his unsubstantiated claims that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election.
The White House said the president’s “Advisory Commission on Election Integrity” would examine allegations of improper voting and fraudulent voter registration in states and across the nation.
Vice President Mike Pence will chair the panel and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will be vice chair of the commission, which will report back to Trump by 2018.
“We can’t take for granted the integrity of the vote,” Pence said in a statement. He said the commission would “review ways to strengthen the integrity of elections in order to protect and preserve the principle of one person, one vote.”
No evidence
Trump had alleged, without evidence, that 3 million to 5 million people voted illegally in his 2016 election against Democrat Hillary Clinton. He had vowed since the start of his administration to investigate voter fraud, a process that has been delayed for months.
In November, Kobach said he supported Trump’s assertions that he would have won the popular vote if “millions” of people hadn’t voted illegally.
Democrats and voting rights groups called the panel a sham, arguing there are few, if any, credible allegations of sig- nificant voter fraud. They warned that the panel would be used to lay the groundwork for stricter voting requirements that could make it more difficult for poor and minority voters to access the ballot box.
“The sole purpose of this commission is to propagate a myth and to give encouragement to Republican governors and state legislators to increase voter suppression,” said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Sinister plot
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said it was a “clear front for constricting the access to vote to poor Americans, older Americans, and—above all—African-Americans and Latinos.”
White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the commission would be bipartisan and composed of about a dozen members, including current and former state election officials and experts.
Trump repeatedly alleged that the election system was “rigged” during his campaign and later argued that massive, widespread fraud kept him from winning the popular vote. Trump won the presidency with an Electoral College victory even though Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes.
Voting experts and many lawmakers, including House Oversight Committee chair Jason Chaffetz, have said they haven’t seen anything to suggest that millions of people voted illegally.