National: Democrats on Trump’s fraud commission say they’re in the dark about what it’s doing | The Washington Post

Democratic members of President Trump’s voter fraud commission are voicing mounting frustration about its mission and lack of collaboration, raising questions about the future of a bipartisan panel that has been a magnet for controversy since its inception. In just the past week, two of the commission’s four Democrats have written letters to its executive director, demanding basic information such as when the panel might meet again, what kind of research is being conducted by its staff and when it might send a report to the president. Their concerns are being fed by suspicions that the panel’s direction was preordained and that the agenda is being driven by its Republican members, several of whom would like to see restrictions on voting imposed that would be detrimental to Democrats. “I think the basis of this whole commission was an urban legend,” said Alan King, a probate judge in Alabama and one of the Democratic members who recently wrote commission leaders seeking information. “If you’re going to go down this road, it needs to be done right, and it needs to be done in a professional way. So far, I haven’t seen that.”

National: Trump’s secretive fraud panel is keeping own members in the dark | Associated Press

Donald Trump’s advisory commission on election integrity has integrity questions of its own – with some of its own members raising concerns about its secretive operations. Democrats in the Senate are requesting a government investigation of the commission for ignoring formal requests from Congress. This week, two members sent letters to commission staff complaining about a lack of information about the panel’s agenda and demanding answers about its activities. In a letter sent on 17 October, Maine’s secretary of state, Matthew Dunlap, said he was not being made aware of information pertaining to the commission and requested copies of all correspondence between its members since Trump signed the executive order creating it in May. “I am in a position where I feel compelled to inquire after the work of the commission upon which I am sworn to serve, and am yet completely uninformed as to its activities,” Dunlap wrote in his letter to Andrew Kossack, the commission’s executive director.

National: A Death And More Questions For Trump’s Fraud Commission | NPR

A member of President Trump’s voter fraud commission, former Arkansas state Rep. David Dunn, died suddenly Monday from complications during surgery, according to his office. According to the Associated Press, Dunn was 52 years old. Dunn was one of five Democrats on the advisory panel, which has been embroiled in controversy ever since it was created earlier this year to study problems in the nation’s electoral system. In a statement, fellow commissioner J. Christian Adams, a Republican, said Dunn was “courageous to serve, courteous in his manners, and kind to everyone.” The commission has met only twice so far — the last time on Sept. 12 in New Hampshire. There’s been no word on when, where or whether it will meet again.

Wisconsin: Voter Suppression May Have Won Wisconsin for Trump | New York Magazine

Close elections almost by definition conjure up countless explanations of what might have changed the result. As the fine voting-rights journalist Ari Berman notes, one of the more shocking and significant developments on November 8, 2016, was Donald Trump’s win in Wisconsin, a state that had not gone Republican in a presidential election since the 49-state Reagan landslide of 1984. Explanations were all over the place: Clinton’s stunning loss in Wisconsin was blamed on her failure to campaign in the state, and the depressed turnout was attributed to a lack of enthusiasm for either candidate. “Perhaps the biggest drags on voter turnout in Milwaukee, as in the rest of the country, were the candidates themselves,” Sabrina Tavernise of the New York Times wrote in a post-election dispatch that typified this line of analysis. “To some, it was like having to choose between broccoli and liver.” Virtually no one, says Berman, talked about voter suppression, even though Scott Walker’s hyperpolarized state had enacted and fought successfully to preserve one of the nation’s strictest voter ID laws, expected and designed to reduce minority turnout.

National: Democratic Senators want probe of Trump’s fraud commission | The Hill

A group of Senate Democrats is asking a government watchdog to investigate President Trump’s voter fraud commission. Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet (Colo.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Cory Booker (N.J.) sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) saying the panel, known as the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, is a “cause for serious concern.” “Investigative reports raise questions about the partisan motives and actions of the Commission,” the senators wrote. They added that the panel has “ignored numerous requests” from lawmakers seeking to clarify its activities.

Maine: Member of Trump fraud commission decries ‘vacuum of information’ | Portland Press Herald

The Maine member of President Trump’s voter fraud commission has written a pointed letter to its executive director, demanding he be given documents and kept informed about the group’s activities and charging that there is “a vacuum of information.” Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, one of four Democrats on the 12-person commission, sent the letter Tuesday after learning from a reporter that a commission staffer had been arrested and charged with possession of child pornography. Dunlap said he had not only not known ahead of time about the arrest last week of researcher Ronald Williams II but he was not even aware he had been hired – or that the commission had any staff members apart from its executive director, Andrew Kossack. Williams, whose employment has been terminated, faces 11 counts of possession and distribution of child pornography, officials told The Washington Post.

National: Conflict Mounts Inside Fraud Commission in the Wake of Child Porn Arrest | ProPublica

The arrest, on child pornography charges, of a researcher for the controversial Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is intensifying conflict inside the group, with two Democratic members asserting again that a small band of conservatives holds disproportionate power. The researcher, Ronald Williams II, who was arrested late last week, previously worked as an intern at the Department of Justice on a case with J. Christian Adams, who is now a Republican member of the commission. Democratic commissioner Matt Dunlap contends Williams’ involvement with the commission is the latest in a series of discoveries suggesting a few conservative members wield outsize clout; Dunlap claims that Democratic members have been largely excluded from planning. Today he wrote a letter to the commission demanding information. “I am seeking information because I lack it,” stated the letter, a copy of which was given to ProPublica. “I am in a position where I feel compelled to inquire after the work of the Commission upon which I am sworn to serve, and am yet completely uninformed as to its activities.” The letter demanded copies of “any and all communication between members of the commission” beginning in May.

Maine: Matt Dunlap says he’s heard nothing from Trump voter fraud commission for a month | Portland Press Herald

The Maine Democrat serving on President Trump’s voter fraud commission has reiterated his criticism of its direction and said communications to him from its staff have essentially ceased since the body last met Sept. 12. “I have heard nothing from staff or anyone else on the commission really since we adjourned our meeting in New Hampshire almost a month ago,” Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap told MSNBC’s Ari Melber in a live broadcast Thursday. Dunlap also said he had no idea when the body – which Trump created to investigate his evidence-free assertions that he lost the popular vote because of widespread voter fraud – would next meet. “I don’t know,” he said. “I have heard nothing.” Dunlap, who has been criticized by fellow Democrats for participating in the voter fraud commission, emerged as one of the panel’s most vocal critics during its meeting last month at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. He said Commission Vice Chair Kris Kobach’s suggestion that thousands of people had acted illegally when they registered to vote in New Hampshire using out-of-state licenses was a “reckless statement to make” and factually untrue.

Editorials: Ohio’s illegal voter purges shouldn’t be getting Justice Department’s blessing | Vanita Gupta/Cleveland Plain Dealer

Throughout our history, the country has marched toward a more perfect union by expanding access to the ballot. That progress has helped enshrine our core values of justice, fairness and inclusivity, and slowly strengthened America’s foundation. The first eight months of the Trump administration have shaken that foundation. President Donald Trump’s bogus assertion that millions of people voted illegally has been widely debunked. The sham commission he created to validate this absurd claim has already suppressed voting. Its attempt to create a national database through its unprecedented request for personal voter information, such as partial Social Security numbers and party affiliation, led thousands of voters to cancel their registrations. 

National: Trump Fraud Commission Violates Federal Law, Lawsuit Claims | Newsweek

President Donald Trump’s controversial “election integrity” commission is facing yet another legal challenge with a privacy-rights group saying the panel is breaking federal law by gathering massive amounts of information on the nation’s registered voters. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, which has been doing court battle against the voter panel for months, filed a revised complaint in District of Columbia federal court Thursday. Privacy watchdogs concerned about the panel’s activities have questioned whether the information can and will be kept safe from hackers and whether it will only used for research and not other political purposes.  The Trump administration has defended the attempt to collect huge quantities of voter data by saying the panel is not technically a federal agency. Therefore, the argument goes, it does not have to do a so-called “impact assessment” to show that collecting the information doesn’t violate anyone’s privacy rights.

Rhode Island: Block’s ‘voter analysis’ debated before elections board | Providence Journal

With no one actually disputing the possibility that Rhode Island has for close to a decade violated a federal law requiring a driver’s license or Social Security number from people registering to vote for the first time, a battle of wills broke out Wednesday night at the state Board of Elections. The battle pitted elections board member Stephen Erickson, a one-time state lawmaker and retired District Court judge, against 2014 Republican candidate for governor Ken Block, who did a recent — and highly controversial — voter analysis for a nonprofit co-founded by President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon. Before a live audience at the election board’s Branch Avenue headquarters, Erickson and Block essentially acted out their running Twitter dispute over the complaint that Block filed with the U.S. Department of Justice late last month alleging violations by Rhode Island of the “Help America Vote Act (HAVA).”

National: Obama-linked group asks for temporary injunction against Trump fraud commission | McClatchy

A group of former Obama Administration lawyers on Wednesday moved for a temporary injunction against President Donald Trump’s voting fraud commission, saying the committee caused an “immediate blow to the proper functioning of our democracy” when it requested voter data from all 50 states without following legally mandated procedures. The motion, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., by Protect Democracy Project and United to Protect Democracy, cited reports of people withdrawing their voter registration in response to the Trump commission’s request for information — proof, the motion argues, that the court should stop the Trump group from collecting the data now before it does more harm. The motion also argues that the requests “may increase the vulnerability of voter registration systems to hackers” and, contrary to federal law, gives Protect Democracy insufficient time to respond and mobilize the public to its actions.

New Hampshire: Amid internal tension, Gardner stands by fraud commission | Concord Monitor

Amid a lapse in communication and uncertainty for the future, some Democratic members of President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission are growing restless. Nearly a month after the group came to New Hampshire, holding its second meeting at Saint Anselm College, neither Vice Chairman Kris Kobach nor any other commission member has made contact to discuss future plans, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap told the Huffington Post on Tuesday. “I don’t know that we’re ever going to meet again, to tell you the truth,” Dunlap said. But New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner said he doesn’t see a reason for alarm. Speaking Wednesday, Gardner, also a Democrat, said he continues to support the goals of the commission, even if he too has not received communication from any of its members. “I haven’t had any communications, but I don’t have any expectations,” he said.

National: Democratic Member Isn’t Sure If Trump Fraud Panel Will Ever Meet Again | HuffPost

A member of President Donald Trump’s voter fraud probe expressed deep frustration Tuesday over the way the commission has been run so far and doubted that the panel would ever meet again. Even though the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity was formally created five months ago and has conducted two public meetings, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap (D) told HuffPost that he still has no idea what it’s working on or when it will meet next. He said he plans to raise concerns with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), the commission’s vice chair, about how it has operated so far ― if he ever has another chance. “I think we have to talk about that if we get another opportunity. I don’t know that we’re ever going to meet again, to tell you the truth. We certainly haven’t talked about it,” Dunlap said. “I think it is a possibility. We haven’t heard about any future meetings. We talked about a meeting in November ― that was back in July. We haven’t had anything further about it. … It wouldn’t surprise me if we didn’t meet again.”

North Carolina: District attorney, nonprofit spar over handling of alleged voter-fraud cases | Charlotte Observer

A group targeting voter fraud in North Carolina has called on the Trump administration to withdraw its nomination of Andrew Murray to be the next U.S. Attorney for what they say is his refusal to prosecute two cases of illegal voting. Murray, the Mecklenburg district attorney, says the allegations are unfounded and that the Voter Integrity Project of Raleigh has mischaracterized his actions as well as the cases they cite. “This office prosecutes crimes of every level every day,” Murray’s office said in a statement Monday. “But prosecuting people when sufficient evidence does not exist simply for the sake of media attention to the Voter Integrity Project’s cause … is simply wrong and unjust. This office does not – and will not – operate that way.”

National: Kobach plan for Trump included federal voting laws changes | McClatchy

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach urged President Donald Trump to pursue changes to federal voting law to promote proof-of-citizenship requirements, according to documents unsealed Thursday by a federal judge. Kobach, a candidate for Kansas governor and the vice chair of Trump’s voting commission, was photographed carrying a strategic plan for the Department of Homeland Security into a meeting with Trump in November. The American Civil Liberties Union sought the documents as part of an ongoing lawsuit challenging a Kansas law that requires voters to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when they register. Kobach was ordered to turn over the documents to the ACLU earlier this year, but the documents had been sealed until Judge Julie Robinson opened them Thursday.

National: Kobach plan for Trump included federal voting laws changes | Associated Press

A Kansas official who later became vice chairman of President Donald Trump’s commission on election fraud drafted a proposal for Trump to change federal voter registration laws to promote proof-of-citizenship requirements by states, an unsealed federal court document showed Thursday. The proposal was part of a “strategic plan” for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security prepared by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and carried by him into a meeting in November with Trump, then the president-elect. It was among three proposals designed to “stop aliens from voting.” U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson ordered a highly-edited version of the document unsealed Thursday in a voting-rights lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union. Robinson also ordered the unsealing of a second document, prepared by Kobach and circulated within the Kansas secretary of state’s office, showing the text of proposed changes to federal law.

National: Trump Fraud Commissioner Is Continuing Voter Purge Crusade Side Job | TPM

A member of the President Trump’s voter fraud commission is continuing his separate crusade of bullying localities into purging their voter rolls, even as a witness at a commission meeting last month questioned the formula the commissioner has used to bring his claims. For years before J. Christian Adams was named to Trump’s voter fraud commission, he led a private group that sent letters and in some cases brought lawsuits against counties alleging that they had bloated voter rolls in violation of the National Voter Registration Act. To make those claims, he has compared the Census Bureau’s estimate of the number of a county’s citizens of voting age to the number of registered voters on its rolls. … However, as Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, testified at the voter fraud commission’s second meeting in New Hampshire last month, the comparison is not as simple as it looks.

National: Who’s Really in Charge of the Voting Fraud Commission? | ProPublica

On Friday, in response to a judge’s order, the Department of Justice released data showing the authors, recipients, timing, and subject lines of a group of emails sent to and from the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. They show that in the weeks before the commission issued a controversial letter requesting sweeping voter data from the states, co-chair Kris Kobach and the commission’s staff sought the input of Hans von Spakovsky and J. Christian Adams on “present and future” state data collection, and attached a draft of the letter for their review — at a moment when neither had yet been named to the commission. The commission’s letter requesting that data has been by far its most significant action since its formation in May — and was widely considered a fiasco. It sparked bipartisan criticism and multiple lawsuits. Yesterday, a federal court blocked the state of Texas from handing over its data due to privacy concerns.  

National: How Civil Rights Groups Are Fighting Trump’s Fraud Commission in Every State | Newsweek

Civil rights advocates have launched a direct attack on President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission in the form of a grassroots campaign aimed at increasing voter participation in all 50 states. Taking a step beyond simply responding to Trump-backed efforts to find voter fraud, the American Civil Liberties Union over the weekend kicked off a “Let People Vote” campaign in Lawrence, Kansas, the home state of Kris Kobach, who leads the controversial commission. The location wasn’t accidental.

Texas: Judge Blocks Texas Secretary Of State From Giving Voter Information To Trump Commission | KUT

A Texas district judge has issued a temporary restraining order preventing Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos from handing voter information to President Donald Trump’s voter fraud investigation commission. The order, which came out Tuesday, adds Texas to a growing list of states not complying with the president’s investigation into the 2016 elections, which Trump says suffered from large-scale voter fraud. Judge Tim Sulak of the Austin-based 353rd Texas Civil District Court issued the order in response to a lawsuit filed July 20 by the League of Women Voters of Texas, its former president Ruthann Geer and the Texas NAACP against Pablos and Keith Ingram, the Texas Elections Division director in the the secretary of state’s office. The lawsuit seeks to stop the state from handing over voter data from the state’s computerized voter registration files to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The suit argues that doing so would reveal voters’ personal information, “which may be used to solicit, harass, or otherwise infringe upon the privacy of Texas voters.” The secretary of state’s office didn’t immediately return a request for comment for this article.

New Hampshire: Gardner releases records, emails on vote commission | Union Leader

Secretary of State William Gardner has released dozens of documents related to his participation in a presidential commission on voting integrity, responding to a Right-to-Know request from the New Hampshire office of the American Civil Liberties Union. Many of the documents relate to logistics for a meeting the commission held in New Hampshire last month, and preparations by the Secretary of State’s office to submit voter data the committee has request. Some of the most colorful material consists of emails and postcards from New Hampshire residents urging Gardner to boycott the effort. The commission, led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, held its first meeting outside of Washington at St. Anselm College in Manchester last month.

National: New Document Shows Inner Workings Of Trump’s Fraud Probe | HuffPost

President Donald Trump’s opaque voter fraud probe released the most comprehensive look at its inner workings to date in court documents Friday, providing a clearer sense of how it plans to use the voter data it has collected and raising new questions about its scope and goals. The commission’s work so far has been unclear; even some commissioners have said they’re not exactly sure what the panel is working on. Friday’s disclosure is significant because it shows officials on the probe have contacted officials with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the Social Security Administration ― which suggests the commission may be proceeding with a plan to compare the voter data it’s collected against federal databases. The commission is declining to release the email exchanges themselves, saying they are either administrative in nature or constitute individual research. Spokespeople for the commission, as well as for DOJ and the SSA, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Louisiana: Advocates believe Louisiana’s voting rights have been under attack | The Louisiana Weekly

The U.S. courts are full of lawsuits challenging slick techniques by elected officials, like gerrymandering and state laws, designed to dilute the voting power of people of color. Current voter disenfranchisement tactics are part of a concerted effort by white elected officials to diminish the voting power of an increasing Brown America. A good example is Donald J. Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Trump created the entity by an Executive Order in May 2017, claimed that thousands voted illegally during the 2016 presidential election, without providing any factual evidence. “The chair of President Trump’s Election Integrity Commission has penned a letter to all 50 states requesting their full voter-roll data, including the name, address, date of birth, party affiliation, last four Social Security number digits and voting history back to 2006 of potentially every voter in the state,” according to The Washington Post.

National: The Few Democrats on Trump’s Fraud Panel Push Back | Bloomberg

There’s a story that’s been going around over the past several months about busloads of people from Massachusetts driving into New Hampshire to vote illegally in last year’s election. President Trump told it to a group of senators in February, as part of a story about why he lost in New Hampshire. The head of his voter integrity panel, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, alluded to it in a Sept. 7 article on Breitbart.com. He also cited data made public by New Hampshire’s Republican House speaker that more than 5,000 people with out-of-state driver’s licenses had voted in New Hampshire in November. In his Breitbart piece, Kobach used those statistics to conclude that the outcome of the state’s Senate election, won by Democrat Maggie Hassan, and the awarding of its four electoral votes, which Hillary Clinton won by 0.4 percent, were “likely changed through voter fraud.” New Hampshire is a strange state to accuse of voter fraud. First, it’s tiny, with just 1.3 million people. Second, New Hampshire votes a lot more than most other states, electing its governor, lawmakers, and other state officials every two years instead of four. Bill Gardner, New Hampshire’s Democratic secretary of state, and also one of five Democrats on Trump’s 12-member voter fraud commission, has overseen 490 elections in his 41 years on the job. And while he says there are discrepancies in almost every election, including a handful of fraudulently cast votes, Gardner insists there’s no evidence to support claims that the problem is rampant.

Kansas: ACLU kicks off voting effort on Kris Kobach’s home turf | The Kansas City Star

Kansas has once again taken center stage in the fight over voting rights in America. The American Civil Liberties Union on Sunday night made a point of calling out Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has championed stricter requirements for voters and alleged widespread election fraud that he’s been unable to prove. The criticism of Kobach came as the ACLU kicked off a 50-state “Let People Vote” campaign at the Lied Center in Lawrence, roughly a half hour from Kobach’s office in Topeka. “This is going to be difficult, this is complex,” said Faiz Shakir, the ACLU’s national political director. “Because given the dysfunction in Congress, we are not going to pass anything through there to expand voting rights. It would be ideal if we could. But it’s not going to happen. “So the only way that we can fight to expand voting rights in America is to go state by state by state.”

Kansas: Voting experts to discuss voter suppression in Kansas, the ‘capital of voter suppression’ | The Daily Kansan

More than 20,000 Kansas citizens were prevented from participating in the 2016 election because of voter suppression, said Davis Hammet, the 27-year-old founder of Loud Light, an organization that focuses on increasing youth civic participation in Kansas. Hammet, along with three other Kansas voter experts, will address the topic of voter suppression in a panel discussion sponsored by the ACLU of KU. The panel discussion will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 5, in the Centennial Room of the Kansas Union. “It’s so bad, voter suppression,” Hammet said. “Kansas is the voter suppression capital of the country, and it calls into [question] the legitimacy of every elected official. So that’s why these issues are critical. It’s really about do we have a democracy or not in Kansas.”

Wisconsin: State treasurer to Legislature: Penalize Dane County for funding voter ID study | Wisconsin State Journal

Republican State Treasurer Matt Adamczyk on Wednesday called on the Legislature to penalize Dane County for funding a UW-Madison study on the effects of the state’s voter ID law. Dane County spent $55,000 on the study by UW-Madison political science professor Ken Mayer. It concluded nearly 17,000 registered voters in Dane and Milwaukee counties may have been deterred from voting in November because of the controversial law. In a statement, Adamczyk called the taxpayer expenditure “a complete waste of money” partly because nearly three in four of those surveyed lived in Milwaukee County. He called for cutting $55,000 in shared revenue Dane County receives from the state in the next budget. The county receives about $3.9 million in shared revenue.

National: 7 Senators Demand To Know If DOJ Is Involved With Trump Fraud Probe | HuffPost

Seven Democratic senators on Tuesday asked the Department of Justice to explain any involvement it has with President Donald Trump’s commission convened to investigate voter fraud. Justice Department officials have said it has no involvement with the commission, which Trump created in May. But in a Tuesday letter, Democrats said two incidents made them suspicious. In June, the department sent an unusual letter to 44 states asking them for information on their practices for purging voters from the rolls. The same day, the voter fraud panel sent out a request to all 50 states for sensitive voter information. Earlier this month, a public records request by the Campaign Legal Center revealed that a February email from Hans von Spakovsky, a commission member, was forwarded to the Department of Justice with instructions for U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to read it. In the email, von Spakovsky said Democrats shouldn’t be appointed to the commission and lamented it also might be filled with Republicans whose views were too mainstream.

Wisconsin: UW Study: Up To 23,000 Didn’t Vote Because Of Voter ID Law | Wisconsin Public Radio

Sites in 20 Wisconsin cities took part in National Voter Registration Day efforts Tuesday. The event comes a day after a University of Wisconsin-Madison study showing the state’s voter ID law lowered turnout last year. The study from UW-Madison estimates that up to 23,000 people in Dane and Milwaukee counties did not vote in November 2016 because of the state’s voter ID law. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that between 16,800 and 23,250 voters in two of the state’s most Democratic counties did not vote because of the law. Shauntay Nelson of the group Wisconsin Voices says part of the problem was just confusion, and she says events like National Voter Registration Day can cut through that. “Our intention is to partner with as many people as possible to educate individuals and to really begin to help them to understand that there really are avenues,” Nelson said.