Probe Launched of Trump Voter Fraud Panel – By Dartunorro Clark (msn.com) / Oct 26 2017
A government watchdog agency will investigate President Donald Trump’s Election Integrity Commission, it was announced Thursday.
The Government Accountability Office plans to probe the voter fraud panel’s funding, internal operations and how it is protecting and sorting the tens of millions of sensitive voter files the commission has collected.
Sens. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., Michael Bennet, D-Colo., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., sent a letter last week urging the agency to investigate because the commission had ignored several requests from Congress aimed at understanding its work, calling it a “serious concern.”
“Without any…response to the Congressional inquiries, we fear that the manner in which the (commission) is conducting its work will prevent the public from full and transparent understanding the commission’s conclusions and unnecessarily diminish confidence in our democratic process,” the senators wrote.
In a letter Wednesday to the lawmakers, the GAO said it had accepted the request. The agency said the investigation would begin in about five months.
Trump formed the commission this past May through executive order to examine voter fraud.
It is headed by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, an immigration hardliner and strict voter identification law advocate, serves as vice chair.
Since its formation, the commission has been a source of controversy and received backlash from members of both parties for requesting a massive amount of sensitive voter data earlier this year.
The commission has also been mired in internal strife, with some members disagreeing on whether voter fraud exists and two Democratic commission members have openly criticized the panel’s co-chairs for their lack of transparency.
Critics have called the commission a politically-motivated effort to satisfy Trump’s unfounded claims about rampant voter fraud during the 2016 election.
PB/TK – Can we just call this commission a sham and walk away because what this commission is doing is exactly what the FEC and state Attorney Generals are to be doing
