A commission on voter fraud or suppression?

President Trump is doubling down on his false claims of voter fraud, fulfilling his promise to appoint a commission to study election integrity. It’s a ploy to play into the misperceptions of his base, regardless of the evidence.

Voter fraud, while existing occasionally in local races, is rare. Instead, we need to study why we make it far too hard for many people in this country to vote.

The name of the commission, the “Presidential Commission on Election Integrity,” makes clear it is misdirected. The focus should be on the more pernicious problem of voter suppression, but none of the people on the commission has expressed much concern for making it easier to vote.

Vice President Pence is the chairman, yet as governor of Indiana he oversaw a police raid of a voter registration organization’s office that came a month before the 2016 election. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is the vice chair, yet for years he has pushed strict laws, such as proofof-registration requirements, that harm voters. Courts have struck down these measures as unlawful.

Measures such as strict voter ID requirements — which can only root out in- person voter impersonation — can prevent registered voters from voting. This commission has one simple goal: to provide justification for evermore restrictive, yet unnecessary, voting laws.

A bipartisan commission would do better to instead study how to improve our elections. That is exactly what President Obama’s bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration did after the 2012 election. The commission, co- chaired by Obama’s top election lawyer and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s top election lawyer, produced a useful report providing actual solutions. Among the ideas were that states should adopt online voter registration, create more early voting opportunities, and ensure that people would not wait over 30 minutes in line to vote.

Just look at some of the advances in states and cities around the country. Several states have adopted automatic voter registration, putting the onus on the state to update the registration lists by using DMV records. This reform helped increase turnout in Oregon. San Francisco passed a ballot initiative that will let legal noncitizens vote in school board elections, and towns in Maryland have lowered the voting age to 16 for local elections. Because voting is habit- forming, these voter expansions will likely help to increase turnout in future years.

States are improving the voting process for individuals with disabilities. Localities are creating independent redistricting commissions to take the process out of the hands of politicians. Towns are adopting public financing for their local elections to root out the influence of wealthy donors.

Improving the voting process is a goal worthy of a presidential commission. Trying to bolster the credibility of already- debunked theories of voter fraud is not.