| Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity | |
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_(2).jpg) 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 |
|---|---|
| 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]
- ^ "Presidential Executive Order on the Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity". whitehouse.gov. May 11, 2017. Archived from the original on May 11, 2017. Retrieved July 1, 2017.
- ^ Koerth-Baker, Maggie (July 7, 2017). "Trump's Voter Fraud Commission Is Facing A Tough Data Challenge". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
- ^ Lowry, Brian (May 11, 2017). "Civil rights groups fume about Trump's choice of Kris Kobach for voter fraud panel". The Kansas City Star. Retrieved May 15, 2017.
- ^ a b c d Cite error: The named reference
TrumpDisbandswas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Davis, Julie Hirschfeld (May 11, 2017). "Trump Picks Voter ID Advocate for Election Fraud Panel". The New York Times.
- ^ "Kris Kobach wants every U.S. voter's personal information for Trump's commission". The Kansas City Star. Retrieved July 4, 2017.
- ^ Liz Stark; Grace Hauck (July 5, 2017). "Forty-four states and DC have refused to give certain voter information to Trump commission". CNN. Retrieved July 11, 2017.
at worst [the Presidential Advisory Commission] is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression.
- ^ "A Trump commission requested voter data. Here's what every state is saying". PBS NewsHour. Retrieved July 4, 2017.
- ^ Allan J. Lichtman, The Embattled Vote in America: From the Founding to the Present (Harvard University Press, 2020), p. 223.
- ^ "Trump's voter-fraud commission itself is a fraud". The Washington Post. July 18, 2017. Retrieved July 19, 2017, "...In fact, the real fraud is the commission itself...."
- ^ Miles Rapoport on the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University (May 30, 2017): "President Trump's decision to establish a panel to study voter fraud and suppression, the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, has been roundly criticized by voter rights advocates and Democrats." ... [Miles Rapoport, Senior Democracy Practice Fellow Ash Center]: "There are a number of really serious problems with the Commission as it has been announced and conceptualized, which have led many people to say that its conclusions are pre-determined and that it will be used as an excuse for new efforts to restrict access to voting."
- ^ Michael Waldman, Donald Trump Tells His Voter Fraud Panel: Find Me 'Something', Brennan Center for Justice, New York University School of Law (July 20, 2017) (also republished at The Daily Beast): "The panel was created to justify one of the more outlandish presidential fibs ... After Trump was roundly mocked for his claim of 3 to 5 million illegal voters, the panel was launched in an effort to try to rustle up some evidence—any evidence—for the charge.... The purpose of the panel is not just to try to justify his laughable claims of millions of invisible illegal voters. It aims to stir fears, to lay the ground for new efforts to restrict voting. Trump's claims, after all, are just a cartoon version of the groundless arguments already used to justify restrictive voting laws."
- ^ Mark Berman & David Weigel, Trump’s voting commission asked states to hand over election data. Some are pushing back., Washington Post (June 30, 2017): "Experts described the request as ... a recipe for potential voter suppression.... 'This is an attempt on a grand scale to purport to match voter rolls with other information in an apparent effort to try and show that the voter rolls are inaccurate and use that as a pretext to pass legislation that will make it harder for people to register to vote,' said Rick Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California, Irvine. Hasen said he has "no confidence" in whatever results the committee produces. He said the commission and its request create a number of concerns, including that it is an election group created by one candidate for office—Trump, who already is campaigning for reelection—and headed by Pence, another political candidate. 'It's just a recipe for a biased and unfair report,' Hasen said. "And it's completely different from the way that every other post-election commission has been done."
- ^ Max Greenwood, Newspapers rip Trump voter fraud panel in July Fourth editorials, The Hill (July 4, 2017).
- ^ a b Williams, Joseph (January 10, 2018). "Trump Panel Finds No Voter Fraud". U.S. News & World Report. U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved November 9, 2020.
- ^ Williams, Joseph P. (January 5, 2018). "DHS to Continue to Look Into Voter Fraud". U.S. News & World Report. Retrieved January 10, 2018.