President Donald Trump followed through on a pledge to set up a federal panel to "promote fair and honest Federal elections", as backers praised his efforts to rein in voter fraud, while Democratic Party critics said it was nothing more than an effort at voter suppression.
Pence, who will head the commission, reportedly told Republicans at a policy retreat in January he expected the administration would "initiate a full evaluation of voting rolls in the country, the overall integrity of our voting system in the wake of this past election".
During the White House press briefing on Thursday, deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the commission would include about a dozen members and would review polices that allow for improper voter registrations.
The executive action followed Trump's remarks that voter fraud was found in the presidential election a year ago and that "3 million" had cast illegal votes for his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a statement yet to be backed by evidence. "They are accessories after the fact to voter fraud". 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. Schneiderman said his office found no substantiated claims of voter fraud in NY past year.
North Korea wants South Korea to extradite spy chief
Moon expressed his hope to visit Trump and Xi in the near future, pledging cooperation with both in denuclearizing North Korea. Only a few middle and high schools in South Korea have said that they would pick the books the state has issued.
However, since 2016, there have been cases of voter fraud in North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Illinois, Colorado and Wyoming, said Logan Churchwell, spokesman for the Public Interest Legal Foundation, a voter integrity group. Trump won the presidency with an Electoral College victory even though Clinton received nearly 3 million more votes. He noted that it came in the aftermath of Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice, which is made up of five civil rights organizations, voiced concerns about this executive order. The executive order instructs the group to look at processes that enhance or undermine the confidence in American elections, and also look for any vulnerabilities that could lead to voter fraud.
But state election officials throughout the country have uniformly said there was no massive voter fraud in the November 8 election, although there were reports of a relative handful of individual instances of illegal voting, such as voting twice in different locations. Kobach advised Trump's transition team and has been a leading GOP proponent of tighter voting regulations.
Kobach has been the driving force behind a Kansas law requiring new voters to produce a passport, a birth certificate or naturalization papers as proof of citizenship or be denied the ability to cast ballots.
Comments