Firstly, everyone knows Trump’s so-called “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity” is a GOP vote suppression operation. That’s why he put his party’s leading vote suppressor, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, in charge of it.
Plus, there’s no real need for another voting fraud study, because there have been numerous such studies, and all show the same thing: Real-life voting fraud is almost non-existent. Very rarely, you get an outlier like the Scott Walker fan who cast 5 votes against Wisconsin governor’s recall (read that story here). But such cheating is a 1-in-a-million occurrence, and doesn’t change election outcomes.
This is all about making it harder for Democrats to vote. Texas’s voter ID law says a gun permit is acceptable identification for voting, but a University of Texas student ID card isn’t, because NRA members are more likely to vote Republican than college students. Even a kid can figure that out. Texas GOP legislators don’t want Hispanics or blacks to vote, either (read that story here).
But if any further evidence was needed that Trump’s vote suppression group is itself a fraud, here it is:
“Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) is defending using a personal email account to conduct business as the vice chair of a commission convened by President Donald Trump to investigate voter fraud, continuing a trend of shielding his communications from public view. In a statement provided to ProPublica ― which first reported Kobach’s use of private email ― last Friday, Kobach defended his practice, saying he was serving on the voter fraud probe not in his official capacity as Kansas secretary of state, but as a private citizen. … Kobach, who is running for governor of Kansas, is using that distinction between private citizen and public official to refuse to release commission messages to the public. When the Kansas City Star submitted a public records request for messages related to work on the commission, Kobach’s office denied the request saying ‘any communications that may exist are not communications in his official capacity as Secretary and thus not public records. Secretary Kobach is serving as Vice Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in his personal capacity.‘” [Italics added.]
So now Trump’s vote suppression committee is a private group? And its machinations are none of the public’s business? Even though it’s funded with taxpayer money and its purpose is to propose changes in voting laws?
And, private emails? Now Trump’s chief vote suppressor is channeling Hillary Clinton. Oh, the irony. Not to mention the hypocrisy.
Read the story here.