Trump dissolves Election Integrity Commission after lawsuits

President Trump has shut down the commission he established in July to investigate his unfounded allegations of voter fraud in the 2016 elections.

The Election Integrity Commission found no evidence of the fraud he claimed gave Hillary Clinton 3 million more votes than him in the 2016 presidential election.

The inability of the commission to find any evidence was not among the reasons Trump gave for disbanding it. He instead said the shutdown was due to legal battles that were weighing it down.

The 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act requires that Federal advisory committees operate in full view of the public. Several lawsuits had been filed claiming the commission was not doing that.

One of those was filed by Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, claiming he was not given access to information on commission activities and communications. Dunlap - a Democrat - was a member of the commission.

The commission was disbanded soon after a federal court ordered it to provide the documents to Dunlap.

But the commission had credibility problems right from the start - with Vice Chair Kris Kobach demonstrating a bias toward a conclusion that would make it tougher to register to vote.

In a pre-inauguration meeting with Trump, Kobach was photographed holding a document of what he hoped to accomplish had Trump chosen him to head the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). A partly-visible sentence reads "Draft Amendments to National Voter..." - which has been speculated to refer to the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. Kobach did not offer an alternative meaning.

This was consistent with an email Kobach had previously sent to the Trump transition team explicitly stating his intent to change the law.

For more, read the New York Times story.

States may not have enough time to prevent election hacking

One way states are looking to strengthen their elections against hacking is to have the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) screen their voting systems.

Some states may need to wait nine months to get the intensive screening, Politico reports. That means they might not be completed in time for fixes to be made before the 2018 elections in November.

DHS classified the country's election systems as "critical infrastructure" during the Barack Obama administration.

Congress could have enacted legislation to help speed up the process, but that has not happened - partly due to other priorities they have set - such as repealing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and reducing revenue from taxes.

For more, read the Politico story.

Trump nominee "almost certainly" voted illegally

President Trump has been claiming that people voted illegally in the presidential election that he won. He now apparently has found someone.

Jeffrey Gerrish - Trump's nominee for deputy U.S. Trade Representative - "almost certainly" voted illegally, the New York Times reported.

Gerrish voted in November's presidential election in Virginia. Yet he had sold his Virginia home and bought one in Maryland in July - well outside the 30-day grace period Virginia provides.

Maryland was considered to be a sure win for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The vote in Virginia was expected to be much closer.

For more, read the New York Times story.

Voting fraud fabricator named to investigate voting fraud

President Donald Trump has named Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach vice chair of a new Election Integrity Commission to investigate voter fraud. The commission's chair is Vice President Mike Pence.

Trump established the no evidence supporting that claim.

In fact, numerous studies have shown this type of fraud to be exceedingly rare.

Kobach has a history of claiming incidents of major voter fraud.

In his campaign for secretary of state in 2010, he claimed there were 1,966 dead people registered to vote, some of whom actually had cast ballots. He named only one: Alfred K. Brewer. Brewer, it turned out, was alive.

After Kobach was elected, he successfully pushed for a law requiring proof of citizenship from voter registration applicants, and then asked legislators to expand his powers to allow him to prosecute voter fraud. They obliged in 2015, and Kobach convicted eight people. Out of nearly 1.8 million registered voters in Kansas.

A 2012 study found 1.8 million dead people remain on the voter rolls nationwide, and another 2.75 million are registered in more than one state (those include Trump's daughter Tiffany Trump and his chief strategist Steve Bannon).

None of that is illegal, however. Actual fraud - where people vote more than once or noncitizens cast ballots - is extremely rare.

Instead, the myth of voter fraud has been used by Kobach and others to engage in voter suppression. For decades, under the guise of "election security," Republican-controlled states have been passing Voter ID laws, purging registered voters, restricting registration, and using other tactics that disenfranchise blacks, Hispanics and other groups that tend to vote for Democrats.

Unlike voter fraud, these tactics could actually swing elections.

In Florida, before the 2000 presidential election, the state hired a private firm to purge more than 82,000 "felons" from the voting rolls. It turns out, 12,000 voters who weren't felons were removed from the rolls. Blacks, who make up 11 percent of the Florida electorate, made up 44 percent of the purge list. Ninety percent of black voters cast ballots for Vice President Al Gore. George W. Bush won Florida and the presidency by 537 votes.

"It's not a stretch to conclude that the purge cost Gore the election," Ari Berman wrote in The Nation.

Republicans have ramped up their politically motivated voter suppression efforts in the years since, and 14 states had new voting restrictions in place for last year's presidential election.

The day after Trump was elected, Kobach suggested to the transition team changing federal law to require proof of citizenship during voter registration, according to an email obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of an ongoing lawsuit.

For more about Kobach's email, read the Washington Post story.

Click here to read an examination of Kobach's record by the Brennan Center for Justice.

Write-in vote could be world's quietest protest

It happens every four years. Someone is dissatisfied with the candidates for president, so they use their vote to write in another choice. They know their candidate won't win. It's a protest. But is it a protest anyone even will hear?

In voting for president, 9 states don't allow write-in votes. Of the rest, only 7 states allow you to vote for anyone you want.

While most states allow you write in a vote for president, in order for the vote to count the write-in candidate must have previously registered with the state. If you vote for someone who isn't registered, your choice would not be allowed to win in that state regardless of how many votes he received.

Also, your state might not even record your write-in vote (or might record it as something like "other").

In other words, if you write someone in as a protest vote, it's likely your protest will be seen by exactly one person - the person who records your ballot.

The states that do not allow write-in voting for president are: Arkansas, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota.

The states that allow you to write in anyone for president (without requiring the person register with the state) are: Iowa, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont.

Making federal election days national holidays

President Barack Obama says he endorses making federal elections a national holiday as a way to increase participation by registered voters.

In an interview with The Daily Targum - the Rutgers University newspaper - Obama responded to whether he believes the United States should follow the lead of other developed nations that automatically register voters and hold elections on weekends or national holidays.

"Absolutely. We are the only advanced democracy that makes it deliberately difficult for people to vote. And some of it has to do with the nature of our history and our Constitution, where we allow individual states to determine their own processes for structuring elections within certain boundaries.

I think that we know some states like Oregon are doing a much better job at extending mail-in voting, increasing tools like online voting that are safe and secure, give people flexibility over a long period of time, (and) early voting. And so everything we can do to make sure that we're increasing participation is something that we should promote and encourage. Our democracy is not going to function well when only half or a third of eligible voters are participating.

The single most dramatic political change that could occur in this country - and the best way for us to relieve the frustrations that people feel around the political process - would be if we had greater participation that was more reflective of the day-to-day concerns that people have."

An assortment of bills has attempted this several times in the recent past. The most recent attempt, the 2015 Democracy Day Act still is active in the Senate - which has refused to act on it.

Federal elections take place in even-numbered years in November - on the first Tuesday following the first Monday.

For more, read the GovTrack.us report.

You can read the interview with President Obama at The Daily Targum.

Supreme Court ruling could make Congressional districts competitive

The Supreme Court ruled that citizens of a state have the right to decide who defines their state's Congressional districts.

Redistricting typically takes place every 10 years - soon after data from the latest Census is available. It typically is done by a state's legislature - a process that often results in gerrymandered districts that favor the majority political party.

In 2010 Arizona voters passed an initiative to create an independent commission to define its new districts - removing that power from the state legislature. The legislature sued, claiming that the Constitution allows only the legislature to perform that function.

The Court ruled that the Constitution does not prohibit such independent commissions.

For more, read the New York Times story.

Click here to read our discussion of Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.

Voter ID places insurmountable barriers to millons

Laws requiring voters to have a government-issued ID have placed an almost insurmountable barrier to voting on approximately 10 percent of eligible voters, according to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan public policy institute. Ten states have passed such laws.

Though the IDs themselves are supposed to be provided at no cost, the supporting identification required to obtain the ID - such as a birth certificate - do cost money. Married women whose names differ from that on their birth certificate also are required to provide a marriage certificate. In Wisconsin, the most expensive state to obtain both documents, the total cost ranges from $5 to $40.

A more imposing barrier is getting to a state office that issues the required ID. More than a million of those voters who don't have valid voter identification live more than 10 miles from the nearest office. About 500,000 of those do not have access to a car.

"By definition, eligible voters who need photo ID will not have a driver's license, so they cannot drive themselves to a government office," the report points out. In addition, the states that passed the most restrictive voter ID laws also are among those that spend the least in public transportation.

Someone who successfully overcomes those barriers still faces an overwhelming challenge - the state offices are open for limited and erratic hours. Many are not open on every weekday, or are open for fewer than eight hours a day.

Just finding out when an office is open can be a problem. In Georgia, most county offices do not make their business hours easily accessible online, and some have incorrect addresses and phone numbers listed.

"Even when contacted directly, county offices in Georgia frequently gave incorrect information about free IDs," the report states.

You can read the 40-page report - which includes information on how they obtained all of their data - either online or by downloading it as a pdf file. It can be found here.