Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity | |
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![]() President Donald Trump, joined by Vice President Mike Pence, displays his signed Executive Order for the Establishment of a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C. | |
![]() Executive Order 13799 in the Federal Register | |
Type | Executive order |
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Executive Order number | 13799 |
Signed by | Donald Trump on May 11, 2017 |
Federal Register details | |
Federal Register document number | 2017-10003 |
Publication date | May 16, 2017 |
Summary | |
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The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (PEIC or PACEI), also called the Voter Fraud Commission, was a Presidential Commission established by Donald Trump that ran from May 11, 2017, to January 3, 2018. [1] [2] The Trump administration said the commission would review claims of voter fraud, improper registration, and voter suppression. [3] The establishment of the commission followed Trump's false claim that millions of illegal immigrants had voted in the 2016 presidential election, costing him the popular vote. [4] [5] Vice President Mike Pence was chosen as chair of the commission and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was its vice chair and day-to-day administrator.
On June 28, 2017, Kobach, in conjunction with the Department of Justice, asked every state for personal voter information. [6] The request was met with significant bipartisan backlash; 44 states and the District of Columbia declined to supply some or all of the information, citing privacy concerns or state laws. [7] [8] [9]
Trump's creation of the commission was criticized by voting rights advocates, scholars and experts, and newspaper editorial boards as a pretext for, and prelude to, voter suppression. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [4] At least eight lawsuits were filed accusing the Commission of violating the law. [4]
On January 3, 2018, Trump abruptly disbanded the commission; he stated the claims of election fraud and cited many states' refusal to turn over information as well as the pending lawsuits. [4] The commission found no evidence of voter fraud. [15] At that time, Trump asked that the investigation be transferred to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which already holds much of the requested state voter data and oversees immigration records. [16] The acting DHS press secretary said that Kobach would not be advising or working with DHS, and the White House said it would destroy all the state voter data collected by the commission. [15]
During his campaign for President, Trump made numerous claims of voter fraud occurring in the United States.
In the weeks before the election, Trump urged his supporters to volunteer as poll watchers on Election Day, saying they were needed to guard against "voter fraud" and a "rigged" outcome. The rhetoric was seen by some as a call to intimidate minority voters or challenge their credentials to prevent them from voting. [17] [18] Numerous organizations, including the Democratic Party officials and affiliates sued Trump accusing him of voter intimidation, in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act. [19]
On November 8, 2016, Trump won the 2016 United States presidential election, but lost the popular vote to opponent Hillary Clinton by about 2.9 million votes. [4] [20] Trump falsely claimed that he won the popular vote "if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally" and that three to five million people voted illegally in the 2016 election. [4] [21] [22]
On November 22, 2016, Kobach met with then President-elect Trump in his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey in consideration for Secretary of Homeland Security position. The Associated Press photographed Kobach taking into his meeting with Trump a document entitled "Department of Homeland Security, Kobach Strategic Plan for First 365 Days" referencing a possible amendment to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993. [23] [24]
The American Civil Liberties Union, representing plaintiffs in a voting rights case, asked the federal judge to prevent Kobach from withholding from the public documents he presented to Trump by virtue of marking them "confidential". The plaintiffs demanded the public release of those documents that had been prepared with state funds, claiming Kobach "made statements to the public, the Court, and the President, suggesting that noncitizen registration fraud is a serious, widespread problem," while at the same time trying to hide those same documents that reject his claim, to prevent having to testify in open court about those materials. [25] In June 2017, the federal magistrate judge found that Kobach had made "patently misleading representations" to the court in the course of the document dispute. Kobach was fined $1,000 for "deceptive conduct and lack of candor" and ordered to submit to questioning under oath by the ACLU about the documents and about a draft amendment to the National Voter Registration Act "which would have added a line to the federal voter law that said states could request any information from voters they deem necessary." [26] [25] [27]
Only US citizens have the right to vote in federal elections. [28] While the United States Congress has jurisdiction over laws applying to federal elections, it has deferred the making of most aspects of election laws to the states. Therefore, the administration of voter registration requirements, voting requirements, and elections vary widely across jurisdictions.
Voter impersonation (also sometimes called in-person voter fraud) [29] is a form of electoral fraud in which a person who is eligible to vote in an election votes more than once, or a person who is not eligible to vote does so by voting under the name of an eligible voter. [29] In the United States, voter ID laws have been enacted in a number of states since 2010 with the aim of preventing voter impersonation. Research has shown that voter impersonation is extremely rare. [30] There is no evidence that in-person voter fraud has changed the result of any election. [31]
In a few cases, permanent residents ("green card" holders) have registered to vote and have cast ballots without realizing that doing so was illegal. Non-citizens convicted in criminal court of having made a false claim of citizenship for the purpose of registering to vote in a federal election can be fined and imprisoned for up to a year. Deportation and removal proceedings have resulted from several such cases. [32]
In an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law looked at 42 jurisdictions, focusing on ones with large population of noncitizens. Of 23.5 million votes surveyed, election officials referred an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation, or about 0.0001% of votes cast. Douglas Keith, the counsel in the Brennan Center's Democracy Program and co-author of the analysis, said, "President Trump has said repeatedly that millions of people voted illegally in 2016, but our interviews with local election administrators made clear that rampant noncitizen voting simply did not occur. Any claims to the contrary make their job harder and distract from progress toward needed improvements like automatic voter registration." [33]
Voter registration is the process of collecting applications to vote, adjudicating those applications, and maintaining the rolls of qualified voters. The process of voter registration is generally left to the states. In an effort to increase voter turnout, a state may adopt less restrictive policies, including motor voter registration and same day registration. In an effort to decrease in-person voter fraud, a state may adopt stricter policies for registration, including proof of citizenship at the time of registration. Federal elections do not require proof of citizenship, only a statement on the signed application. [34]
Voter rolls have high rates of inaccuracy. Voters move, die, and are incarcerated. Voter rolls may include erroneous superfluous entries as a result of fraudulent registration or failure to purge the roll when a voter dies, moves, or is sent to prison. A qualified voter may be legally registered in only one precinct. This is a matter of state law. In 2012, the Pew Trust estimated that 24 million voter records were inaccurate or invalid, including approximately 1.8 million records of deceased people who remained on voter rolls. [35] In October 2016, Trump conflated these irregularities with voter fraud and wrongly cited the Pew report as evidence that 1.8 million people were fraudulently voting against him. [36] Voting twice is a third degree felony in most states. [37] Superfluous entries on a voter roll do not affect elections. [n 1]
Erroneous deletions from a voter roll can potentially affect an election outcome by preventing qualified voters from casting ballots. In November 2016, the New York City Board of Elections was ordered by a federal judge to make affidavit ballots available to people who believed their registrations were improperly purged. [38] A computer analysis by The Palm Beach Post found that at least 1,100 eligible voters were wrongly purged from the Florida Central Voter File before the 2000 US presidential election, causing some eligible voters to be turned away at polling stations. [39] Some commentators and courts have concluded that improperly conducted purges affect political parties differently and disenfranchise racial minorities. [40] For instance, the 2000 Florida purge led to thousands of voters being wrongly disenfranchised, a disproportionate number of them black. [41]
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity was a temporary commission established by President Donald Trump's executive order (E.O. 13799, 82 FR 22389) on May 11, 2017. [1] White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the commission would provide the president with a report on their findings by 2018. [42]
Provisions: [1]
Vice President Pence has been described as the titular head of the Commission on Voter Integrity with Kris Kobach, who also serves on the elections committee of the National Secretaries of States Association (NSOS), as its operational leader. According to the executive order, the commission can have up to sixteen members. [1]
Dunlap and Gardner, the two Democratic secretaries of state on the commission, said they hoped the commission would look into Russian interference in the 2016 election, but Kobach said he did not think that the commission's investigation would go in that direction. [47] [48]
Unlike past presidential commissions on elections and voting (such as the Carter-Baker in 2001, Carter-Ford in 2004, and Bauer-Ginsburg in 2013), the leadership of the panel is not bipartisan [11] and the makeup of the panel is not evenly split. [12] Rather, Pence and Kobach, the chair and vice chair of the commission, are both Republicans, [11] [12] and Republicans hold a 7 to 5 (originally 8 to 5) advantage in membership for the commission as a whole. [49] The ratio favoring the Republicans increased to 7 to 4 when David K. Dunn died in October 2017. Also in October 2017, two of the four Democrats on the commission, Dunlap and King, sent separate letters to commission staff complaining that they are not being kept informed of commission activities. [50]
Commission member Hans von Spakovsky, director of The Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative, is said to have promoted "the myth that Democratic voter fraud is common, and that it helps Democrats win elections" according to a magazine article in The New Yorker. [51] He has supported his claims about the extent of voter fraud by citing a 2000 investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which purported to find 5400 instances of deceased people in Georgia voting in the last twenty years. [51] The Journal-Constitution later revised its findings, noting that it had no evidence of even a single ballot purportedly being cast by a deceased person and that the vast majority of the instances in question were due to clerical errors. [51] In an interview with the New Yorker, von Spakovsky cited two scholars who he said could substantiate that voter-impersonation fraud was rampant: Robert Pastor of American University and Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. Pastor and Sabato both said they would only support voter ID laws if those IDs were issued without cost to the voters, and acquired without substantial difficulty.
It is Sabato's belief that voter impersonation is "relatively rare today," [51] yet in a 2011 Heritage Foundation article, von Spakovsky referred to Sabato once more as a researcher whose studies established the existence of widespread voter fraud. He also has cited conservative columnist John Fund's Stealing Elections, a book whose assertions of election fraud have been extensively debunked. Fund also co-authored a book with von Spakovsky. [52] [53] In an email, von Spakovsky urged Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to appoint any Democrats, "moderate Republicans and/or academics" to the commission. [44] According to Richard L. Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California at Irvine, "there are number of people who have been active in promoting false and exaggerated claims of voter fraud and using that as a pretext to argue for stricter voting and registration rules. And von Spakovsky is at the top of the list." Hasen said that Trump's appointment of Spakovsky's was "a big middle finger" to people who are "serious about fixing problems with our elections." [54]
One of Trump's appointees to the commission, Ken Blackwell, was Ohio Secretary of State for two terms beset with controversy, lawsuits, and accusations that he had created impediments to voting. During the 2004 presidential election, Blackwell attempted to throw out voter registrations in Ohio that were not printed on "white, uncoated paper of not less than 80-pound text weight" (a heavy card-stock paper) and the 2004 election in the state was marred by "controversies over topics ranging from voting devices to long lines on Election Day." [55] [56] Blackwell revoked the order after county clerks said it was unnecessary, and voting rights advocates called in any attempt at voter suppression. [56] Also in 2004, Blackwell ordered clerks to toss out provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct, a policy criticized by voting rights advocates but ultimately permitted by a federal appeals court. [56] In March 2006, Blackwell's office also inadvertently released the Social Security numbers of 5.7 million voters. [56]
On June 28, 2017, Kris Kobach, in his capacity as vice chair of the commission, wrote a letter along with the Department of Justice to the top election official in every state requesting they turn over voter data ostensibly to aid a countrywide search for evidence of election irregularities. Besides information such as the names, addresses and party affiliations of all registered voters, Kobach sought birth dates, felony conviction records, voting histories for the past decade and the last four digits of all voters' Social Security numbers. [57] Many states' election officials claim they never received the request and some said they only forward the request from another state's secretary of state.
The letter was not made public, and it became publicly known only after Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, tweeted out an image of the letter the day after the letter was written. Along with the image of the letter, she wrote "Pence and Kobach are laying the groundwork for voter suppression, plain & simple." [58] A few hours after Gupta's tweet, Kobach confirmed to The Kansas City Star that the letter was authentic. [6]
Kobach provided an e-mail address and a website for the election official to electronically submit the personal voter data. The e-mail address lacked basic encryption technology and was found to be insecure. [59]
The request may have violated the federal Paperwork Reduction Act because it was not submitted to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) prior to being made to the states. The submission to the OIRA would have required a justification and an explanation of how the data would be used and protected. Additionally, the request did not come with an estimate of how many hours it would take the states to respond. Regulatory experts opined that the consequence of a violation would be that states would not be required to respond. [60]
In January 2018, it was reported that the commission had, in its requests for Texas voter data, specifically asked for data that identifies voters with Hispanic surnames. [61]
On July 25, 2017, Kobach told the Kansas City Star that he intended to send another request for voter data, after receiving a favorable ruling in a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The court had ruled against the center's motion to stop the commission from trying to collect the data, stating that the commission had only made a request, not a demand or an attempt to force. [57] The letter was sent the following day, and it differed from the first request by the addition "if state law allows [the] information to be public". The California Secretary of State announced that it would refuse to comply with the second request. [62]
There was an immediate bipartisan backlash and rejection of the inquiries with a majority of states quickly rejecting the requests. [7] [8] [10] [63] Notably, commissioners Kobach, Dunlap, and Lawson (who also serve as the secretaries of state for Kansas, Maine, and Indiana respectively, with Indiana being Mike Pence's home state) indicated that their state laws forbade them from complying. [64] [65] Some states offered to only provide information that is already made public or available for purchase. [8] No state has said they will fully comply with the list of demands. [66] In response, Trump made a statement on Twitter, "Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?" [67]
State | Officeholder | Party | Received request? | Official response | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Alabama | John Merrill | Republican | Yes | Will sell public information [68] | |
Alaska | Byron Mallott | Democratic | Yes | Will provide public information [69] | |
Arizona | Michele Reagan | Republican | Yes | Will not comply [70] | |
Arkansas | Mark Martin | Republican | Yes | Will provide public information [71] | |
California | Alex Padilla | Democratic | Yes | Will not comply [72] | |
Colorado | Wayne Williams | Republican | Yes | Will provide public information [73] | |
Connecticut | Denise Merrill | Democratic | Yes | Will not comply [74] | Initially planned to comply with state allowed public information. [75] |
Delaware | Jeffrey Bullock | Democratic | Yes | Will not comply [76] | |
District of Columbia | Lauren Vaughan | Democratic | Yes | Will not comply [77] | |
Florida | Ken Detzner | Republican | Yes | Will provide public information [78] | |
Georgia | Brian Kemp | Republican | Yes | Will sell public information [79] | $250 |
Hawaii | Shan Tsutsui | Democratic | No | — | |
Idaho | Lawerence Denney | Republican | Yes | In review [80] | |
Illinois | Jesse White | Democratic | Yes | Will not comply [81] | Will not provide private information [82] |
Indiana | Connie Lawson | Republican | Yes | Will provide public information [83] | Mike Pence's home state |
Iowa | Paul Pate | Republican | Yes | Will sell public information [84] | |
Kansas | Kris Kobach | Republican | Yes | Will provide public information [85] | Vice Chair of Commission |
Kentucky | Alison Grimes | Democratic | Yes | Will not comply [86] | |
Louisiana | Tom Schedler | Republican | Yes | Will sell public information [87] | |
Maine | Matthew Dunlap | Democratic | Yes | Will not comply [88] | Member of Commission. Initially planned to comply with state allowed public information. [89] |
Maryland | John Wobensmith | Republican | Yes | Will not comply [90] | Against state law. [91] |
Massachusetts | William Galvin | Democratic | Yes | Will not comply [92] | |
Michigan | Ruth Johnson | Republican | Yes | Will provide public information [93] | |
Minnesota | Steve Simon | Democratic | Yes | Will not comply [94] | |
Mississippi | Delbert Hosemann | Republican | No, but forwarded | Will not comply [95] | |
Missouri | Jay Ashcroft | Republican | Yes | Will provide public information [96] | |
Montana | Corey Stapleton | Republican | No | — | Plans to not comply [97] |
Nebraska | John Gale | Republican | Yes | Will not comply | Will not comply until more details are received. [98] |
Nevada | Barbara Cegavske | Republican | Yes | Will provide public information [99] | |
New Hampshire | Bill Gardner | Democratic | Yes | Will provide public information [100] | Commission member |
New Jersey | Kim Guadagno | Republican | Yes | In review [101] | |
New Mexico | Maggie Toulouse Oliver | Democratic | No, but forwarded | Will not comply [102] | |
New York | Cesar Perales | Democratic | Yes | Will not comply [103] | |
North Carolina | Elaine Marshall | Democratic | Yes | Will provide public information [104] | Governor Roy Cooper requested that the State Board of Elections not comply [105] |
North Dakota | Al Jaeger | Republican | Yes | Will not comply [106] | North Dakota is the only state without voter registration. |
Ohio | Jon Husted | Republican | Yes | Will provide public information [107] | |
Oklahoma | Dave Lopez | Republican | Yes | Will provide public information [108] | |
Oregon | Dennis Richardson | Republican | Yes | Will sell public information [109] | $500 purchase |
Pennsylvania | Pedro Cortés | Democratic | Yes | Will not "actively" comply [110] | Commission may make public purchase of $20 [111] |
Rhode Island | Nellie Gorbea | Democratic | Yes | Will provide public information [112] | Called Kris Kobach oversight over the Commission "deeply troubling" |
South Carolina | Mark Hammond | Republican | No, but forwarded | Will provide public information [113] | |
South Dakota | Shantel Krebs | Republican | Yes | Will not comply [114] | |
Tennessee | Tre Hargett | Republican | Yes | Will not comply [115] | |
Texas | Rolando Pablos | Republican | Yes | Will provide public information [116] | |
Utah | Spencer Cox | Republican | Yes | Will provide public information [117] | |
Vermont | Jim Condos | Democratic | Yes | Will not comply [118] | Initially planned to comply with state allowed public information, but wants to be assured data will be secured [119] |
Virginia | Kelly Thomasson | Democratic | Yes | Will not comply [120] | Governor Terry McAuliffe gave official answer. |
Washington | Kim Wyman | Republican | Yes | Will not "actively" comply [121] | Commission may access public portal |
West Virginia | Mac Warner | Republican | Yes | Will sell public information [122] | $1,000 |
Wisconsin | Doug La Follette | Democratic | Yes | Will sell public information [123] | $12,500 |
Wyoming | Ed Murray | Republican | Yes | Will not comply [124] |
In Colorado, the Secretary of State confirmed that 3,394 voters (0.09 percent of all registered voters in Colorado) cancelled their voter registration in response to the request for voter registration information sent out by Kris Kobach. [125] After receiving a few requests for voter registration cancellations, election officials in Flagler County, Florida published an open letter to voters urging voters not to cancel their registration in response to the commission's request for voter information. [126] In Arkansas, an alderwoman in Eureka Springs requested to cancel her voter registration, but then re-registered within 24 hours because the law requires her to be a registered voter in order to serve in an elected office. [127]
The committee held its first official meeting on July 19, 2017, in Washington D.C. Breaking with tradition of open meetings for such commissions, the meeting was not open to the public, but it was live streamed in lieu. Trump addressed the commission at its inaugural meeting and criticized states that did not comply with the request for data issued by Kobach (saying "One has to wonder what they're worried about"). [128] The committee members talked largely of voter fraud, [129] and mentioned themes included 'One Citizen, One Vote', anecdotes about specific incidents of election misconduct, and additional funding for voting equipment. [130]
On August 24, 2017, the White House announced that the commission would meet on September 12, 2017, at St. Anselm College near Manchester, New Hampshire. In February, Trump had told a meeting of senators that he lost New Hampshire because thousands of people had been brought in from Massachusetts on buses to vote, a claim disputed by the state's two senators, an FEC commissioner, and Bill Gardner, New Hampshire's secretary of state and later a member of the integrity commission. [131] On September 7, Kobach alleged in his Breitbart News column that voter fraud had "likely" swung the election in the New Hampshire 2016 presidential race and 2016 Senate race. Kobach wrote that while "anecdotally" it was well known that out-of-state voters take advantage of New Hampshire's same-day registration law to come in on Election Day and vote, "Now there's proof": of the 6,540 voters who had registered to vote on Election Day using out-of-state driver's licenses as identification, only 1,014 of those voters had obtained a New Hampshire driver's license by August 30, 2017. The rest never obtained a New Hampshire license and only a few had registered vehicles in the state, leaving 5,513, "a big number - more than enough to swing two very important elections." [132] [133] Kobach, calling all 5,513 of the votes "fraudulent votes", wrote that in the senate race, "if 59.2% or more of them went for Hassan, then the election was stolen by voter fraud" and "if 74.8% of the fraudulent votes were cast for Clinton, then the presidential election was tipped as well." [132] [133] Another commission member, J. Christian Adams, published a similar op-ed at PJ Media on the same day, stating that "the overwhelming majority of them [the 5,513 voters] can no longer be found in New Hampshire." [133] Kobach and Adams based the allegations on statistics reported by Shawn Jasper, Republican speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives. The statistics were released to Jasper by Secretary of State Gardner and the commissioner of the state department of safety in response to his request. [134] A spokesman for the speaker said that the statistics were raw data and that Jasper "did not know which states issued the 6,540 licenses and acknowledged that the numbers could include some college students." [135] The Washington Post , noting that Kobach apparently had not tried to contact voters with out-of-state ID for his Breitbart article, was able to quickly contact three voters who did not obtain New Hampshire driver's licenses. The three said that they were college students and had used the driver's licenses from their home states as their identification. [133] The day after Kobach's op-ed was published, the New Hampshire congressional delegation unanimously urged Gardner to resign, so as to deny the commission the appearance of credibility. Gardner said it was his civic duty to remain. [44] [136]
The meeting was hosted by Gardner and chaired by Vice Chair Kobach, since the chairman, Mike Pence, would not be in attendance. [137] At the meeting, both Gardner and fellow commissioner and Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap rejected the allegation that voter fraud affected the election in New Hampshire in 2016. [138] Dunlap called the charge "reckless" and pointed out that voters in New Hampshire need not be residents of the state to vote, as it is sufficient to be "domiciled" in the state. [139] Dunlap said, "I think it's really reckless to make an allegation like that based on how I know licenses are issued around the country and how elections are conducted. It's an amazing leap to make." [140]
The meeting continued for six hours, during which time Kobach answered questions for thirty minutes. He told reporters, "If you drive in and then drive out on the same day, that is fraudulent....My point is that among the 5,313, you can probably assume that at least one of those individuals" voted fraudulently. When reminded that he had written "Now there's proof", he said, "I think when you have 5,300 cases, it's virtual proof that at least one of those individuals probably didn't stay." He added, "Let's just get the numbers and see where the numbers take us, and I certainly don't have any preconceived notions about that issue or a whole host of issues." [141]
John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, made a presentation to the commission, proposing that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System be used for voter verification. Dunlap responded by saying the system "was never intended to be used as an elections tool" and using it as such would have "unintended consequences". [139]
Rick Hasen of the University of California, Irvine, an expert on election law, stated that the commission was "a pretext to pass legislation that will make it harder for people to register to vote" and that there could be no confidence in whatever the committee produced. [13] In a June 2017 editorial, Hasen ridiculed the commission as a "faux commission". [142]
At least eight lawsuits were filed challenging the commission, alleging that its activities violated the law. [4] Five of the plaintiffs in the different lawsuits were non-profit organizations that included: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU v. Trump and Pence and Joyner v. Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity), the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, NAACP ( NAACP v. Trump ), Public Citizen, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The lawsuits by the first two groups involved the lack of transparency of the commission's meetings, whereas the lawsuits by the last two groups involved the collection by the commission of personal private data. [143] In addition to the lawsuits, complaints have been filed with federal agencies against two of the commission's members. [128]
In response to the lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the commission abandoned plans to accept responses through the Department of Defense safe access file exchange website and announced plans to use an existing White House system. [144] The commission asked states to refrain from submitting data while the case was pending. [145] The commission also stated its intention of deleting voter information from Arkansas, the only state to officially submit voter data on the Department of Defense website. [146] On July 24, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly denied EPIC's request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against the commission, ruling that the commission was not required to conduct a privacy review before gathering data. [147] On August 29, the government's attorney told the judge that confusion at the Department of Justice had resulted in the failure to disclose relevant documents to the plaintiffs, and Kollar-Kotelly ordered the government to provide a list of documents it wanted to withhold, and how it would comply with disclosure rules. [148]
In November 2017, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democratic member of the commission, said that Kobach was refusing to share working documents and scheduling information with him and the other Democrats on the commission. [149] He filed suit, and in December a federal judge ordered the commission to hand over the documents. [150] Two weeks later, in January 2018, Trump disbanded the commission, and his administration informed Dunlap that it would not obey the court order to provide the documents because the commission no longer existed. [4] On August 3, 2018, Dunlap wrote that the documents available to him did not support claims of widespread voter fraud. He described the investigation as the "most bizarre thing I've ever been a part of....After reading this, I see that it wasn't just a matter of investigating President Trump's claims that three to five million people voted illegally, but the goal of the commission seems to have been to validate those claims." [151]
In January 2018, in the Joyner case, the Department of Justice disclosed that the White House would not be turning over any state voter data to the Department of Homeland Security, despite the White House's and Kris Kobach's earlier statements to the contrary. [152]
On June 22, 2017, Representative Marc Veasey of Texas's 33rd congressional district introduced H.R. 3029 to deny funding for the commission. [153] In August 2017, Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer wrote an editorial calling on Trump to disband the commission. He also threatened that if Trump did not disband the commission, he would try to deny the commission money in a funding bill. [154]
On January 3, 2018, two weeks after the court order instructing the commission to share its working documents with its Democratic members, the Trump administration disbanded the commission. The panel disbanded without making any findings of fraud. [15]
In announcing that he had dissolved the commission, Trump blamed states for not handing over requested voter information to the commission, and still maintained that there was "substantial evidence of voter fraud". [4] [155] Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that "rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense," Trump abolished the panel and turned the matter over to the Department of Homeland Security. [156] Election integrity experts argued that the commission was disbanded because of the lawsuits, which would have led to greater transparency and accountability in the commission and thus prevented the Republican members of the commission from producing a sham report to justify restrictions on voting rights, [150] and that oversight by a cabinet-level agency such as DHS could preclude open meetings and requests for compliance with public records laws. [16]
After Trump shut down the commission, Kobach pointed out in an interview that "DHS knows the identity of everyone who has green cards" and temporary visas, and that to compare those names to state voter rolls would be "immensely valuable." [16] He stated, "This is a tactical shift by the president who remains very committed to finding the scope of voter fraud." [157] He told several interviewers that he would "be working closely with the White House and DHS to ensure the investigations continue," but the acting DHS press secretary said that Kobach would not be advising or working with the department. [158] On January 9, the director of White House information technology stated, in a declaration appended to a motion in Commissioner Dunlap's suit against the commission, that the state voter data the commission had collected would not be sent to DHS or any other agency except the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), pursuant to federal law and pending the outcome of lawsuits, and that pursuant to federal law and upon consultation with NARA the White House intended to destroy all the state voter data held by the dissolved Commission. [159] [160] The DHS already has access to the state voter data the commission requested from the states. [16] Voting rights and civil rights advocates were alarmed at moves by the Trump administration to task the DHS with fighting "voter fraud" despite multiple studies showing that voter fraud is virtually nonexistent in the U.S., fearing that Trump's directive would give impetus to purges of eligible voters from the voter rolls. [16]
Voter suppression is a strategy used to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging or preventing specific groups of people from voting. It is distinguished from political campaigning in that campaigning attempts to change likely voting behavior by changing the opinions of potential voters through persuasion and organization, activating otherwise inactive voters, or registering new supporters. Voter suppression, instead, attempts to gain an advantage by reducing the turnout of certain voters. Suppression is an anti-democratic tactic associated with authoritarianism.
Bill Gardner is an American politician who was the New Hampshire Secretary of State from 1976 to 2022. In that role, he was in charge of the department that oversees all general elections, primary elections, voter registration and recounts within the state, including the New Hampshire primary. His tenure is the longest of any secretary of state in U.S. history. He is a member of the Democratic Party.
Kris William Kobach is an American lawyer and politician who has served as the attorney general of Kansas since 2023. He previously served as the 31st secretary of state of Kansas from 2011 to 2019. A former chairman of the Kansas Republican Party, Kobach rose to national prominence over his support for anti-immigration advocacy, including involvement in the implementation of high-profile anti-illegal immigration ordinances in various American cities. Kobach is also known for his calls for stronger voter ID laws in the United States. He has made claims about the extent of election fraud in the United States that some studies and media have said are unsubstantiated.
Hans Anatol von Spakovsky is an American attorney and a former member of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). He is the manager of The Heritage Foundation's Election Law Reform Initiative and a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation's Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. He is an advocate for stricter voting laws. He has been described as playing an influential role in making concern about voter fraud mainstream in the Republican Party.
The secretary of state of Kansas is one of the constitutional officers of the U.S. state of Kansas. The current secretary of state is the former speaker pro tempore of the Kansas House of Representatives, Scott Schwab, who was sworn in on January 14, 2019.
Jocelyn Benson is an American academic administrator, attorney, and politician serving as the 43rd Secretary of State of Michigan since 2019. A member of the Democratic Party, she is a former dean of Wayne State University Law School, a co-founder of the Military Spouses of Michigan, and a board member of the Ross Initiative in Sports for Equality. Benson is the author of State Secretaries of State: Guardians of the Democratic Process.
John Christian Adams is an American attorney and conservative activist formerly employed by the United States Department of Justice under the George W. Bush administration. Since leaving the DOJ, Adams has become notable for making alarmist and false claims about the extent of voter fraud in the United States. He has falsely accused a number of legitimate voters of being fraudulent, and has published information about them online, including Social Security numbers.
Voter ID laws in the United States are laws that require a person to provide some form of official identification before they are permitted to register to vote, receive a ballot for an election, or to actually vote in elections in the United States.
Voter suppression in the United States consists of various legal and illegal efforts to prevent eligible citizens from exercising their right to vote. Such voter suppression efforts vary by state, local government, precinct, and election. Voter suppression has historically been used for racial, economic, gender, age and disability discrimination. After the American Civil War, all African-American men were granted voting rights, but poll taxes or language tests were used to limit and suppress the ability to register or cast a ballot. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 improved voting access. Since the beginning of voter suppression efforts, proponents of these laws have cited concerns over electoral integrity as a justification for various restrictions and requirements, while opponents argue that these constitute bad faith given the lack of voter fraud evidence in the United States.
Voter impersonation, also sometimes called in-person voter fraud, is a form of electoral fraud in which a person who is eligible to vote in an election votes more than once, or a person who is not eligible to vote does so by voting under the name of an eligible voter. In the United States, voter ID laws have been enacted in a number of states by Republican legislatures and governors since 2010 with the purported aim of preventing voter impersonation. Existing research and evidence shows that voter impersonation is extremely rare. Between 2000 and 2014, there were only 31 documented instances of voter impersonation. There is no evidence that it has changed the result of any election. In April 2020, a voter fraud study covering 20 years by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found the level of mail-in ballot fraud "exceedingly rare" since it occurs only in "0.00006 percent" of individual votes nationally, and, in one state, "0.000004 percent — about five times less likely than getting hit by lightning in the United States."
The 2016 United States presidential election in New Hampshire was held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016, as part of the 2016 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. New Hampshire voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, businessman Donald Trump, and running mate Indiana Governor Mike Pence against Democratic Party nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and her running mate Virginia Senator Tim Kaine. New Hampshire has four electoral votes in the Electoral College.
John Robert "Jay" Ashcroft is an American attorney, engineer and politician serving as the 40th and current Secretary of State of Missouri since 2017. A member of the Republican Party, he is the son of former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck was a database in the United States which aggregated voter registration records from multiple states to identify voters who may have registered or voted in two or more states. Crosscheck was developed in 2005 by Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh in conjunction with Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska. In December 2019, the program was suspended indefinitely as part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas challenging Kansas' management of the program. Prior to Crosscheck's legally mandated suspension, a dozen states had withdrawn from the program citing the inaccurate data and risk of violating voters' privacy rights. Crosscheck was also accused of facilitating unlawful purges of voters in a racially discriminatory manner.
American Civil Liberties Union v. Trump and Pence, No. 1:17-cv-01351, is a case pending before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. The plaintiffs, the watchdog group American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), alleges that the defendants, President Donald Trump and the Vice President Michael Pence, are in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act by establishing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity for the purpose of supporting the President's "claim that he won the popular vote in the 2016 election—once millions of supposedly illegal votes are subtracted from the count."
NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. v. Trump, No. 1:17-cv-05427-ALC, was a lawsuit filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The plaintiffs, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, The Ordinary People Society, and a coalition of civil rights groups alleged that the defendants, President Donald Trump, the Vice President Michael Pence, and Kris Kobach were in violation of the Fifth and Fifteenth Amendments and the Federal Advisory Committee Act by establishing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (PEIC) for the purpose of intentionally discriminating against Black and Latino voters in violation of the Fifth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution and the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
Joyner v. Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is a federal case brought before the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The plaintiffs, including Arthenia Joyner, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, and others, sought to enjoin the State of Florida from transferring voter records to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
Fish v. Kobach was a 2018 bench trial in the United States District Court for the District of Kansas in which five Kansas residents and the League of Women Voters contested the legality of the Documentary Proof of Citizenship (DPOC) requirement of the Kansas Secure and Fair Elections (SAFE) Act, which was enacted in 2011 and took effect in 2013.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) is an American conservative legal group based in Alexandria, Virginia, which is known for suing states and local governments to purge voters from election rolls. The nonprofit was constituted in 2012.
The Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC) is a nonprofit organization in the United States whose goal is to improve electoral integrity by helping states improve the accuracy of voter rolls, increase access to voter registration, reduce election costs, and increase efficiencies in elections. ERIC is operated and financed by state election agencies and chief election officials.
Following the 2020 United States presidential election and the unsuccessful attempts by Donald Trump and various other Republican officials to overturn it, Republican lawmakers initiated a sweeping effort to make voting laws more restrictive within several states across the country. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, as of October 4, 2021, more than 425 bills that would restrict voting access have been introduced in 49 states—with 33 of these bills enacted across 19 states so far. The bills are largely centered around limiting mail-in voting, strengthening voter ID laws, shortening early voting, eliminating automatic and same-day voter registration, curbing the use of ballot drop boxes, and allowing for increased purging of voter rolls. Republicans in at least eight states have also introduced bills that would give lawmakers greater power over election administration after they were unsuccessful in their attempts to overturn election results in swing states won by Democratic candidate Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The efforts garnered press attention and public outrage from Democrats, and by 2023 Republicans had adopted a more "under the radar" approach to achieve their goals.
at worst [the Presidential Advisory Commission] is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression.
Voter fraud is 'the intentional corruption of the electoral process by voters. This covers knowingly and willingly giving false information to establish voter eligibility, and knowingly and willingly voting illegally or participating in a conspiracy to encourage illegal voting by others,' according to Lorraine Minnite, a professor at Rutgers and author of the book The Myth of Voter Fraud.
Intentionally voting more than once in a federal election is a third-degree felony in most states and probably also violates federal election-fraud laws. The punishment varies from state to state but is usually up to five or 10 years in jail and fine of up to $5,000 or $10,000.
Some commentators argue that voter purges are simply a variation of older, more overt methods of disenfranchisement intended to reduce minority participation. Courts have agreed: one court overturned the aforementioned Louisiana purge, finding it "massively discriminatory in purpose and effect," and another referred to a Texas statute requiring yearly re-registration as a "direct descendant of the poll tax" that unconstitutionally disenfranchised voters. Although other courts differ on the motivations of purges, they do not deny that their effect can be discriminatory
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