On Thursday May 11, President Donald Trump issued an executive order creating a presidential commission on electoral integrity. The commission includes Vice President Mike Pence as chair, and Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach as vice-chair. The commission is charged with reviewing “ways to strengthen the integrity of elections in order to protect and preserve the principle of one person, one vote because the integrity of the vote is the foundation of our democracy.” In the announcement, Vice President Pence is quoted stating “We can’t take for granted the integrity of the vote. This bipartisan commission will review ways to strengthen the integrity of elections in order to protect and preserve the principle of one person, one vote because the integrity of the vote is the foundation of our democracy.”
The idea for the commission seems to have originated with President Trump’s as-yet-unsubstantiated claims that 3 to 5 million illegal votes were cast in the 2016 presidential election.
In fact, only four cases of “voter fraud” have been documented in the election last Fall, even though over 135 million votes were cast. Investigative reporter Greg Palast notes that “since 2012, millions of votes have been cast in multiple elections, and they have prosecuted almost no one.”
Palast is particularly concerned about the appointment of Kris Kobach as the commission’s vice chair. “Kobach is the promoter of Interstate Crosscheck, a system for identifying voters who have voted twice.” Palast has covered Kris Kobach for years, and includes video footage of an attempted conversation with him in his new film, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.”
Kobach made national news on November 20 when his notes for a meeting with President Trump were captured on film by an Associated Press photographer.
Kobach was then a candidate to head the Department of Homeland Security. The notes in the photo included a plan to track “aliens from high-risk areas” and pursue “extreme vetting” of “high risk” immigrants.
Palast explains that another item visible on Kobach’s pad was “amend the national voter registration act.” According to Palast, in Kansas, Kobach “blocked 36,000 people [mostly students] from voting by requiring that they prove American citizenship to vote.” But a federal judge overturned this provision of the Kansas law as a violation of the National Voter Registration Act’s “Motor Voter” provision. “So, what he wants to do,” says Palast, “is change the act to require proof of citizenship. The effect would be to prevent young people, potential Democratic voters, from voting.”
Similarly, Interstate Crosscheck’s system of identifying potential “double voters” by simply comparing first and last names, has a tendency to disproportionately affect voters of color, many of whom are potential Democratic voters. “Eighty-five of the most common names in America are minority names,” notes Palast. “In Virginia, they removed 12 percent of the people on the voting list.”
This speaks to a much greater threat to our electoral process. According to the new executive order, “The Commission shall, consistent with applicable law, study the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections.”
Following the 2016 elections, recounts were initiated in three states—Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Wisconsin, the only state to fully complete the recount process found almost no change in the numbers of votes cast. But a bigger question is that of ballots that were never cast.
A new study of voting in the state of Wisconsin by Priorities USA, a voter-centric progressive advocacy organization funded in part by Democratic Party donors, shows a significant decrease in voter turnout among populations particularly affected by the rigors of the state’s voter identification law. This new law was implemented for the first time in April 2015.
Nation contributor Ari Berman, first reported on this study noting “Wisconsin’s voter-ID law reduced turnout by 200,000 votes, according to the new analysis. Donald Trump won the state by only 22,748 votes.”
Before becoming Vice President, Mike Pence was governor of Indiana. Indiana was the first state to implement photo ID requirements for voting. The law was contested all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Writing for the court, the late Justice Antonin Scalia said “The law should be upheld because its overall burden is minimal and justified.”
Greg Palast disagrees: “In 2008, the law was implemented in Indiana, and the court was shown that 80,000 African Americans did not have the proper ID to vote [under the new law].” The law was created to solve a problem that did not exist according to Palast. “In 100 years of record keeping,” he says, “the State of Indiana did not have a single case of identity-theft in voting. It is a manufactured fear, the real goal [of these laws] is to eliminate minority voters and young voters.”
Identity-theft in voting is a manufactured fear, the real goal of these laws is to eliminate minority voters and young voters.
On Thursday, Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, issued a statement noting “In no uncertain terms, we condemn the launch of this so-called Presidential Commission on Election Integrity. President Trump is trying to create a distraction from actual threats to our democracy, such as ongoing voter suppression.” The statement went on to give particular mention to Kobach “who has a proven record of advocating for discriminatory and burdensome policies that prevent members of minority communities from exercising their right to vote.”
Last year, as voting restrictions were being implemented and contested in various states, the fiftieth anniversary of the 1965 voting rights march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama was remembered in documentaries and film. The struggle for voting rights, says Palast, “will never be over. It is always the poor and the dispossessed that are most affected.”
As the documentaries show, the descendants of the same people who fought and died to gain the right to vote now face the prospect of having their right to vote taken away.