President Donald Trump’s controversial ‘Voter Fraud’ commission is no more.
Trump said on Wednesday that he is terminating the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, created in May to investigate voting fraud allegations. He explained the move by saying that “many states” were not complying with the commission’s requests for “basic information relevant to its inquiry.”
“Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the Commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action,” Trump said in a statement.
Although the commission has previously requested states to hand over information on its voters, several like California and New York refused to comply.
Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2017
Trump frequently claimed widespread voter fraud in the run up to his presidential campaign victory, but he failed to provide proof. Most state election officials scoffed at the idea, while Trump critics described his obsession as thinly veiled racism against Hispanic and African-American voters.
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, for example, said in June that the state would not provide information to Trump’s commission because he and other officials denied Trump’s claims of voter fraud, particularly related to the popular vote during the 2016 Presidential election in which he lost to Hilary Clinton.
“The President’s commission has requested the personal data and the voting history of every American voter—including Californians,” Padilla said at the time. “I will not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally.”
