To justify his voting commission, Trump insists there are „very large numbers of people“ casting illegal ballots. As he probably knows, that’s not true.<\/b>
\nDonald Trump, apparently still annoyed that he received far fewer votes than his principal rival, is moving forward with his \u201cvoter integrity\u201d commission, whose members will be tasked with finding evidence of widespread \u201cvoter fraud, \u201d which doesn\u2019 t actually exist.
The panel, led in large part by Kansas\u2019 Kris Kovach, a voter-suppression pioneer, held its first formal meeting at the White House today, where the president gave a spirited endorsement of the commission\u2019s work.
None of this should be taken seriously by anyone. Voters may have expressed concern to Trump about \u201cirregularities, \u201d but that\u2019s because conservatives have been conditioned to believe, without proof, that fraud is a scourge on our democracy.
Indeed, it\u2019s largely self-fulfilling: Trump tells people there are \u201cvery large numbers of people\u201d casting illegal ballots, which his followers accept as true, which leads conservatives to \u201cexpress concerns\u201d about the imagined problem they\u2019 ve been told to accept.
As part of the scheme, Trump has created a commission to bolster the conspiracy theory that the president believes because (a) it makes him feel better about coming in second; and (b) he\u2019s looking for some kind of justification to impose new voting restrictions.
To that end, the \u201cvoter integrity\u201d panel has requested every state\u2019s full voter rolls, including the name, address, date of birth, party affiliation, last four Social Security number digits, and voting history for every voter going back more than a decade. Most states have balked.
\u201cIf any state does not want to share the information, one has to wonder what they\u2019 re worried about, \u201d Trump said this morning. \u201cWhat are they worried about? There\u2019s something, there always is.\u201d
I honestly have no idea what that last part of the quote means, but in terms of what states might be \u201cworried about, \u201d a variety of state officials \u2013 from both parties \u2013 simply don\u2019 t trust the White House to collect the nation\u2019s voter rolls, and use them for dubious purposes, without any meaningful security protections in place. (The commission has already been caught failing to protect Americans\u2019 private information.)
The Trump administration explained in court this week that the White House has the problem all figured out .
Oh, I see. A \u201cfew people\u201d in a hapless White House are expected to oversee the voter rolls for the entire nation \u2013 data that\u2019s being collected without a legitimate reason.
Is this supposed to make anyone feel better?<\/p>\n

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