National: How Trump’s new ‘election integrity’ appointee has unleashed chaos on elections in the South | Facing South

President Trump signed an executive order last week creating the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to promote “fair and honest Federal elections,” following up on his unproven claims that he lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton because of widespread voter fraud. The commission will be chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, and its vice chair will be Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, also a Republican. Kobach’s appointment has alarmed voting rights advocates, who point to his record of making unsubstantiated claims about the extent of voter fraud — which study after study has found to be negligible — and using them to promote strict voter ID laws and other policies that make it harder to vote.

National: ACLU files Right-to-Know request with Secretary of State over election commission | New Hampshire Union Leader

The American Civil Liberties Union of New Hampshire has filed a Right-to-Know request with Secretary of State Bill Gardner, seeking information about his participation in the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The commission is headed up by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. The Right-to-Know request in New Hampshire is part of a national campaign targeting commission members who currently serve as secretaries of state.

Editorials: Donald Trump voter fraud commission ignores real problem | Joshua A. Douglas/USA Today

President Trump is doubling down on his false claims of voter fraud, fulfilling his promise to appoint a commission to study election integrity. We should see this move for what it is: a simple ploy to play into the misperceptions of his base, regardless of the evidence. More significant, if the focus of the commission is on election integrity, than it will be asking the wrong questions. We do not need a commission to tell us what we already know: Voter fraud, while existing occasionally in local races, is rare. Instead, we need to study why we make it far too hard for many people in this country to vote and what we can do to promote positive voting reforms. We need a commission on voter enhancements, not voter fraud.

National: How big of a threat is Trump’s voter fraud commission? | Slate

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to step in and potentially overturn a lower court ruling that North Carolina’s restrictive voter-identification law is unconstitutional, specifically for how it targets black Americans. While this decision counts as a win for voting rights, it comes on the heels of last week’s announcement that Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will lead President Trump’s new Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity. Trump, of course, claims that millions of people voted illegally in the last election; Kobach supports that claim.

National: Experts say Trump’s voter fraud commission is a solution in need of a problem | Sinclair Broadcast Group

On Thursday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to create a new commission to investigate his claims of widespread voter fraud, reigniting the storm of skepticism that has surrounded his past allegations of election interference and rigging. … Fact-checkers, state election authorities and lawmakers from both political parties have largely dismissed Trump’s claims that of election fraud since November 8. Immediately after the announcement of the new commission, some suggested that the administration will be using taxpayer resources to solve a problem that doesn’t really exist. Other critics suspect even more nefarious motives, suggesting that the panel’s leadership and its mission may actually be an effort to justify stricter voting laws that could suppress the vote.

Editorials: Trump’s Fraudulent Voter-Fraud Commission | The New York Times

President Trump’s repeated claim that “millions” of noncitizens voted illegally in the 2016 election has always been transparently self-serving — a desperate attempt to soothe his damaged ego and explain how he could have lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost three million votes. It also lined up nicely with a yearslong crusade by Republican officials to convince Americans that “voter fraud” is an actual problem. As Mr. Trump’s own lawyers have pointed out, it’s not. But that hasn’t stopped the president from trying, as he so often does, to commandeer the machinery of the federal government to justify his own falsehoods. The most recent example was his creation last week of an advisory commission whose ostensible goal is to “enhance the American people’s confidence in the integrity of the voting processes,” with an emphasis on weeding out “improper” or “fraudulent” registration and voting.

Kansas: Kobach’s office hands over documents from Trump meeting | The Wichita Eagle

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office has shared documents from a November meeting with President Donald Trump to the American Civil Liberties Union, but the legal wrangling over the papers is likely to continue after Kobach’s office marked the papers as confidential. Kobach met with Trump in November and was photographed carrying a strategic plan for the Department of Homeland Security. The photograph revealed that the documents contained a reference to voting rolls, and the ACLU has sought access to them as part of an ongoing voting rights case.

Editorials: The Commission to Round Up the Usual Suspects | Justin Levitt/Take Care

Repeatedly, throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump claimed that the 2016 election was “absolutely being rigged.” Not only in the sense of an allegedly distorted media narrative, “but also at many polling places.” He specifically claimed, for example, that there was “large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day.” The assertions persisted after the election, not merely from a candidate but from the President-Elect and then President of the United States.  He stated that there was “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California” (all states in which he did not prevail).  He further stated that he lost the popular vote only because 3-5 million people “voted illegally.” State and local officials actually supervising the election process have, in bipartisan fashion, consistently rebutted these claims. In litigation over recount proceedings, the President’s own attorneys consistently rebutted these claims. 

National: Trump Picks Voter ID Advocate for Election Fraud Panel | The New York Times

President Trump on Thursday named Kris W. Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who has pressed for aggressive measures to crack down on undocumented immigrants, to a commission investigating vote fraud, following through on his unsubstantiated claim that millions of “illegals” voted for his Democratic rival and robbed him of victory in the national popular vote. Mr. Kobach, who has championed the strictest voter identification laws in the country, will be the vice chairman of the commission, which will be led by Vice President Mike Pence and is expected to include about a dozen others, including state officials from both political parties, said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary.

National: A ‘voter fraud’ commission is Trump politics in a nutshell | The Washington Post

Let’s be clear at the outset. There is no evidence of a massive voter fraud problem in the United States. There is no evidence of even a modest voter fraud problem in the United States. There is no statistical evidence. There is no anecdotal evidence. There is no more evidence that we need national protections from voter fraud than there is that we need to wear personal lightning-rod suits so that we avoid the 30-odd deaths each year from electrical storms. For any other president, then, an executive order establishing a “presidential advisory commission on election integrity” such as the one Donald Trump signed on Thursday would prompt a flurry of questions about why such a commission was needed. For Trump, though, it’s part of the package: Directing government resources, however modest, to bolster a faulty political argument that he’s embraced despite being repeatedly shown that it’s false.

National: Trump pick of Kobach for voter fraud panel sparks outrage | McClatchy

Kris Kobach, who as Kansas secretary of state repeatedly made unsubstantiated voter-fraud allegations, will co-chair President Donald Trump’s new Commission on Election Integrity, igniting outrage from civil rights groups and top Democrats. Critics ridiculed the very creation of the commission Thursday, as well as Kobach’s role, saying it’s all intended to perpetuate the president’s false claim that millions voted illegally in November. The 12-member bipartisan commission will review claims of improper registrations and voting, fraudulent registrations and voter suppression, White House officials told McClatchy. Members will provide the president with a report in 2018 and may issue recommendations to the states. It’s a sham, charged critics.

National: The Tangled Story Behind Trump’s False Claims Of Voter Fraud | FiveThirtyEight

Three-thousand Wisconsinites were chanting Donald Trump’s name. It was Oct. 17, 2016, just after the candidate’s now-infamous “locker-room” chat with Billy Bush became public knowledge. But the crowd was unfazed. They were happy. And they were rowdy, cheering for Trump, cheering for the USA, cheering for Hillary Clinton to see the inside of a jail cell. The extended applause lines meant it took Trump a good 20 minutes to get through the basics — thanks for having me, you are wonderful, my opponent is bad — and on to a rhetorical point that was quickly becoming a signature of his campaign: If we lose in November, Trump told the supporters in Green Bay, it’ll be because the election is rigged by millions of fraudulent voters — many of them illegal immigrants. That night wasn’t the first time Trump had made this accusation, but now he had statistics to support it. His campaign had recently begun to send the same data to reporters, as well. In both cases, one of the chief pieces of evidence was a peer-reviewed research paper published in 2014 by political scientists at Virginia’s Old Dominion University. The research showed that 14 percent of noncitizens were registered to vote, Trump told the crowd in Green Bay, enough of a margin to give the Democrats control of the Senate. Enough, he claimed, to have given North Carolina to Barack Obama in 2008.

National: ACLU Files FOIA Request for Voter Fraud Evidence After Trump Orders Election Commission | Law News

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act request on Thursday to learn why President Donald Trump thinks there is voter fraud. This comes after POTUS signed an Executive Order to implement a commission to examine voter fraud in federal elections. “The Commission shall, consistent with applicable law, study the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections,” it says. When done, they’d report to Trump on relevant policies, and vulnerabilities in voting systems. The ACLU’s FOIA request targets our head-of-state’s public comments on voter fraud, citing a Jan. 25 interview with ABC. It is old news that Trump has claimed that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election, but he didn’t provide his sources. The ACLU’s stance: Prove it.

Voting Blogs: Voter Fraud Was Complete Non-Issue in 2016 Elections | Democracy Chronicles

Following numerous claims by members of the Republican Party, including the including the President of the United States, that the election system is “rigged”, there have been numerous studies released following the election cycle that have debunked those claims. One of the most notable instances of voter fraud accusations include President Trump accusing residents from Massachusetts traveling over to New Hampshire and voting a second time in the Presidential election (and New Hampshire Senatorial election). However, a new study done by the Brennan Center for Justice and the Washington Post, concluded that there was no credible evidence for those claims. The two studies reported both on the claim that President Trump made about New Hampshire (the Washington Post’s study), although the study produced by the Brennan Center for Justice focused on nation wide voter fraud allegations.

Texas: Criminal investigation opens into West Dallas voter fraud after ‘off the charts’ allegations | Dallas Morning News

The Dallas County district attorney’s office has opened a criminal investigation into allegations of voter fraud in Saturday’s elections, affecting at least two Dallas City Council races. Assistant District Attorney Andy Chatham said the investigation was opened after an “off the charts” number of allegations, especially in West Dallas, where, he said, there have long been “persistent rumors” of voter fraud and “messin’ around with mail-in ballots.” But nothing like this year, he said.

Texas: Court ordered 671 mail-in ballots in race for Dallas City Council under lock and key. Here’s what happens now | Dallas Morning News

As far as Dallas County Elections Administrator Toni Pippins-Poole is concerned, two Dallas City Council races will be “in limbo” well after polls close Saturday night. At this very moment, 671 ballots cast in the race for the Dallas City Council sit under lock and key at the Dallas County Elections Department — 426 of which were cast in the race for District 6 and 245 cast in the District 2 campaign. Those are mail-in ballots, and their legitimacy is very much in dispute. In recent weeks, elderly voters in West Dallas, where sitting council member Monica Alonzo faces a handful of challengers, alleged that someone forged their signatures on mail-in ballot applications. As a result, those ballots will not be tallied in early voting. Instead, “affected voters” — in the words of Dallas’ city secretary, Rosa Rios — were allowed to cast their vote using a provisional ballot.

Voting Blogs: Just the Facts on Fraud | David Becker/The Center for Election Innovation & Research

Six months after the election, there’s still discussion about the extent to which voter fraud exists and whether the White House will follow through with an investigation. In the meantime, election officials across the country have been quietly doing their jobs and are wrapping up investigations from the last election while preparing for the next. The reviews to date confirm what most election officials have been publicly stating for some time – that while the amount of actual voter fraud is not zero, it’s very close, with only an infinitesimal number of cases of potential voter fraud nationwide. Several states have released the results of their inquiries. One of the most comprehensive analyses was conducted by Secretary of State Jon Husted (R) in Ohio. After comparing voter data to files from the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, Secretary Husted’s office found that 385 non-citizens were registered to vote, and identified 82 of these non-citizens as possibly having voted, referring those cases for further investigation to confirm whether they voted and if fraud occurred.

Wisconsin: Attorney General Brad Schimel contradicts self, says voter fraud probe is open | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Under fire from conservatives, Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said this week an investigation into voter fraud remained open, contradicting comments he made hours earlier that the probe had been closed. Schimel suggested his investigators may yet review more than 100 hours of undercover video shot by Project Veritas Action, a group run by conservative activist James O’Keefe. “It’s not the end of it,” the Republican attorney general said Thursday on “The Mark Belling Show” on WISN-AM (1130). Schimel’s office released a memo this week from an investigator saying he found no violations of Wisconsin laws. Just hours before he claimed the investigation had not been shut down, Schimel told the Wisconsin Radio Network the memo had been released because the investigation was closed.

National: Holder: Trump’s election fraud claims are laying foundation for voter suppression | The Hill

Former Attorney General Eric Holder on Wednesday tore into President Trump’s claims of rampant voter fraud, saying the allegations have laid a foundation for voter suppression and more restrictive voter identification laws. “The vote fraud mantra is said so often — it’s almost said robotically — that some people have unthinkingly begun to believe that the issue is real,” Holder said at a National Action Network conference in New York City. “And with recent claims by Mr. Trump of ‘rigged elections’ based on fraud, again without any proof, save the bluster of the candidate, this mistaken belief in voter fraud becomes almost hardwired,” he continued.

North Carolina: Why This Woman Who Cast An Illegal Vote For Donald Trump Is Getting A Pass For Voter Fraud | The Huffington Post

A North Carolina prosecutor announced Wednesday that he would decline to bring charges in one of the few cases of voter fraud in the state during the 2016 election. The decision is significant because North Carolina is asking the Supreme Court to uphold a law that would require voters to show photo ID at the polls. Of the 4.8 million votes cast, the incident was the single case of in-person voter impersonation at the polls in the 2016 election in North Carolina ― the kind of fraud the voter ID law would prevent. The 67-year-old woman, whose name is not being released, voted for Donald Trump on behalf of her mother, who died on Oct. 26, weeks before Election Day. The woman told the State Board of Elections that her mother had told her “if anything happens you have my power of attorney and you be sure to vote for Donald Trump for me.”

North Carolina: In 2016, in-person voter fraud made up 0.00002 percent of all votes in North Carolina | Vox

One in nearly 4.8 million. That’s how many fraudulent votes North Carolina’s voter ID law would have stopped in the 2016 election had it not been halted by the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, based on a recent audit from the State Board of Elections. After all this time, the court battles, and the protests that the law would disproportionately hurt minority voters, it turns out the push for voter ID was all to stop just one potentially fraudulent vote out of 4,769,640 cast last November. North Carolina’s voter ID law imposed strict voter ID standards, as well as restricted the amount of early voting days, to stop in-person voter impersonation. A judge halted most of the law last year after concluding that it “target[ed] African-Americans with almost surgical precision.” The audit’s findings expose the lie behind voter ID laws: Republican lawmakers say (in public) that their voter ID laws are meant to stop voter fraud, but actual voter fraud is vanishingly rare. Instead, these laws are seemingly geared — by some Republicans’ admission, in fact — toward making it harder for minority and Democratic voters to cast a ballot.

Editorials: Now we know how bad voter fraud is in North Carolina | Charlotte Observer

At last, we know how badly photo voter ID is needed in North Carolina. For years, Republicans in North Carolina have alleged that in-person fraudulent voting is widespread while Democrats have said it is non-existent. But no one knew for sure, leaving the two sides talking past each other on voter ID. On Friday, the State Board of Elections released the results of an extensive, objective audit of the 2016 election. It found that 4,769,640 votes were cast in November and that one (1) would probably have been avoided with a voter ID law. One out of nearly 4.8 million.

National: Trump was going to investigate voter fraud. What happened? | CNN

The White House does not have any immediate timeline for President Donald Trump’s voter fraud investigation and the commission he was adamant about creating during his first few weeks in office, even as the administration approaches the end of its 100 days. White House press secretary Sean Spicer told CNN that he expects something on the commission within the “next week or two, but I don’t want to get ahead of that.” Spicer said there would not be an executive order (as the President originally wanted) and in lieu of that there would be a commission headed up by Vice President Mike Pence. Spicer did say that the vice president will still be “very involved” in the investigation.

Kansas: Kris Kobach wins stay of order to turn over documents from Donald Trump meeting | The Wichita Eagle

A federal magistrate judge has agreed to stay an order requiring Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to hand over documents from a meeting with President Donald Trump pending the results of an appeal. Judge James O’Hara in Kansas City, Kan., ordered Kobach Monday to provide the documents to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of the discovery process for an ongoing federal lawsuit seeking to overturn a Kansas law that requires voters to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate, when they registered to vote.

Nevada: Investigation finds that 3 non-citizens voted in Nevada’s 2016 election | Las Vegas Review-Journal

Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, responding to requests Wednesday for details on allegations of Nevada voter fraud, said her office obtained evidence that three non-citizens voted in Clark County in last year’s election. Her pronouncement comes after the Republican secretary of state on Friday sent a letter to the head of the Department of Motor Vehicles, claiming voter registration procedures at the DMV led to non-citizens being allowed to register illegally to vote. At an event in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Cegavske declined to say if her office would attempt to prosecute the three voters. “As things roll out, we’ll keep everyone abreast,” she told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Cegavske said the DMV should “cease” providing registration applications to people who do not have paperwork proving citizenship. That drew pushback from DMV Director Terri Albertson, as well as Gov. Brian Sandoval.

Nevada: Elections Official Clarifies—Somewhat—Mysterious Voter Fraud Claims | TPM

Nevada’s top elections official announced Wednesday that her office has evidence that three non-citizens voted illegally in the 2016 general elections, culminating five days of intense speculation about the case but leaving many questions still unanswered. News of the claims first emerged last week when Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske accused the state’s DMV of abetting the improper registration of non-citizen voters, setting off a public spat between the two state offices. Voting right advocates have been especially concerned, alleging that Cegavske’s directions to the DMV for how to handle voter registration paperwork would violate federal voting law.

Kansas: Federal judge orders Kobach to share documents from his meeting with Trump | The Kansas City Star

A federal magistrate judge has ordered Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to disclose documents outlining a strategic plan he presented to then-President-elect Donald Trump in November, a decision that could have ramifications from Topeka to Washington. Kobach, who served on Trump’s transition team, was photographed in November holding a stack of papers labeled as a strategic plan for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. That plan, as revealed by the photograph, included the recommendations that the U.S. block all refugees from Syria and engage in “extreme vetting” of immigrants from countries considered high-risk. It also contained a reference to voter rolls, which was partially obscured by Kobach’s hand in the photograph. The American Civil Liberties Union sought the documents’ disclosure as part of an ongoing lawsuit over a Kansas law that requires voters to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when they register to vote. The ACLU argued that if Kobach lobbied Trump on changes to the National Voter Registration Act, commonly called the motor voter law, then the documents may contain material relevant to the case.

Nevada: Sandoval waiting for details about alleged voter fraud in Nevada | Las Vegas Review-Journal

Gov. Brian Sandoval said Monday that he “expects to hear more” from the secretary of state about allegations of voter fraud, and he expressed confidence in voter registration procedures at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske took state officials, including the governor and the DMV director, by surprise late Friday when she announced that her office had uncovered evidence that noncitizens had voted in last year’s presidential election. Cegavske in a letter blamed the DMV, claiming that the agency’s personnel had given voter registration materials to people they knew or should have known were ineligible to vote. In a letter to DMV Director Terri Albertson, Cegavske said the practice must “cease immediately.” Cegavske is a Republican and former state legislator from Las Vegas.

Nevada: Secretary of state alleges voter fraud, blames DMV | Associated Press

Nevada’s secretary of state has launched a voter fraud investigation, claiming the Department of Motor Vehicles may have inadvertently added a number of people to the voter rolls who were not citizens in the last presidential election. Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske made the announcement in a letter Friday evening to the state DMV director, Terri Albertson. Albertson hit back Saturday, in a response letter back to Cegavske that read in part: “Your letter comes as a complete surprise as you and your office have reviewed, contributed to, and approved the processes you are expressing concerns about.”