By: Ridgeway Woulfe

         As PIAC’s own Voter Fraud Series has started detailing, the insistence of a voter fraud epidemic by President Trump (and others) has been drastically overblown.  With his decision to disband his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity early this year[1] after only 2 meetings, Trump is ending his first attempt to prove his unsupported claim that 3 to 5 million illegal voters led to him losing the popular vote.

         President Trump created the Commission, headed by Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State of Kansas Kris Kobach, shortly after he was sworn in as President to investigate allegations of voter fraud.  However, the Commission quickly learned that, per the Constitution, the states operate their own voting operations. The states almost unanimously refused to surrender voter data to an entity many, including Senator Chuck Schumer, viewed as a partisan attempt to suppress voters’ rights.  The President stated he would end the Commission rather than waste taxpayer funds in legal battles with states to attain the information.

         However, President Trump also stated that he was assigning the investigation to the Department of Homeland Security, which traditionally does not undertake investigations into political procedures such as voting procedures.  The move will allow for greater leverage in accessing the information, but will not avoid significant taxpayer funds being spent to reach a forgone conclusion.  It is worth noting that even as the investigations press forward in another form, White House officials have been quick to blame their new favorite scapegoat, Steve Bannon, for coming up with the idea in the first place.

         Stay tuned to PIAC’s 5-part series, with a new post every Thursday, to dive further into the truth about voter fraud.

[1] https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/03/trump-disbands-voter-fraud-commission-322621