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A press release, dated 11 May, posted to the White House Web site (archived copy) announces (all links and party affiliations were added by the submitter):
[...] the issuance of an executive order forming the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Integrity. The President also named [Republican] Vice President Mike Pence as Chairman and Kansas Secretary of State [Republican] Kris Kobach as Vice-Chair of the Commission.
Five additional members were named to the bipartisan commission today:
Connie Lawson [Republican], Secretary of State of Indiana
Bill Gardner [Democratic], Secretary of State of New Hampshire
Matthew Dunlap [Democratic], Secretary of State of Maine
Ken Blackwell [Republican], Former Secretary of State of Ohio
Christy McCormick, Commissioner, Election Assistance Commission
[...]
The Commission on Election Integrity will study vulnerabilities in voting systems used for federal elections that could lead to improper voter registrations, improper voting, fraudulent voter registrations, and fraudulent voting. The Commission will also study concerns about voter suppression, as well as other voting irregularities. The Commission will utilize all available data, including state and federal databases.
Secretary Kobach, Vice-Chair of the Commission added: "As the chief election officer of a state, ensuring the integrity of elections is my number one responsibility. The work of this commission will assist all state elections officials in the country in understanding, and addressing, the problem of voter fraud."
Additional Commission members will be named at a later time. It is expected the Commission will spend the next year completing its work and issue a report in 2018.
According to Wikipedia's biography of Mr. Kobach (citation style changed by submitter):
Kobach has come to prominence over his hardliner views on immigration, as well as his calls for greater voting restrictions and a Muslim registry.[cite][cite][cite] Kobach regularly makes false or unsubstantiated claims about the extent of voter fraud in the United States.[cite]
As Secretary of State of Kansas, he has implemented some of the strictest voter ID legislation in the nation and has fought to remove nearly 20,000 properly registered voters from the state's voter rolls.[cite] After considerable investigation and prosecution, Kobach secured six convictions for voter fraud; all were cases of double voting and none would have been prevented by voter ID laws.
additional coverage:
- Washington Post
- ABC News
- Chicago Tribune (editorial)
- Los Angeles Times
- Atlanta Journal Constitution blog
- New York Times
- Kansas City Star
- The Nation
- American Civil Rights Union press release
- Rhode Island Public Radio
- Project Veritas
- Observer
- ABC News
- Fox News (archived copy)
- KCUR-FM
- NBC News
related stories:
Kansas Secretary of State Finally Convicts an Immigrant of a Voting Irregularity
Former Colorado GOP chairman charged with voter fraud
Hundreds of Texans may have voted improperly
Donald Trump is Filling Out His Transition Team
Hacking Voter Registration Data in Indiana
Study Finds Texas Voter Photo ID Requirement Discourages Turnout
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday May 15 2017, @07:37AM (2 children)
> Conservatives tend to stay home. Most passport holders are liberal.
That sounds plausible, and I can't be bothered to look it up. However I'll assert that the fees for obtaining a passport are a few hundreds of dollars; the poor could find it beyond their means.
> The real conservative base is the middle class, particularly those who are insecure in that class. The liberal base are poor.
Let's agree to conflate conservatives with Republicans and liberals with Democrats. If we agree to that, then we agree that the poor are more likely to vote Democratic. I'll agree that the the Republican party has made a successful appeal to the lower middle class, at least in the 2016 election. Now, if a small monetary expenditure is needed before someone is allowed to vote, won't that tend to most strongly dissuade the poor, whilst having less effect on the participation of the middle class, including the lower middle class?
In Wisconsin, a judge
[...] found that 9 percent of registered voters lack the sort of qualifying ID required under state law — enough to change the outcome of the election [...]
“[T]he photo ID requirement results in the denial or abridgment of the right to vote on account of race or color” in violation of the Voting Rights Act, Adelman concluded.
-- https://thinkprogress.org/striking-down-wisconsin-voter-id-law-judge-finds-no-rational-person-could-be-worried-about-voter-99edd9befffc [thinkprogress.org]
Paul Weyrich [wikipedia.org] said in 1980,
I don’t want everybody to vote [...] our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.
-- http://www.pfaw.org/blog-posts/the-voter-fraud-fraud/ [pfaw.org]
Here's a brief video with an excerpt from his speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN7IB-d7Hfw [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 16 2017, @07:55PM (1 child)
How would you know which person is voting without a photo-ID ?
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday May 16 2017, @10:37PM
Except in North Dakota, a list of eligible voters is kept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_registration_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
When someone comes to the voting place, they can be asked their name, and their name may be marked on a printed copy of the list.
According to the North Dakota Secretary of State,
North Dakota's system of voting, and lack of voter registration, is rooted in its rural character by providing small precincts. Establishing relatively small precincts is intended to ensure that election boards know the voters who come to the polls to vote on Election Day and can easily detect those who should not be voting in the precinct.
-- https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_in_North_Dakota [ballotpedia.org]
In some other countries, ink is applied to a voter's hand as a way of detecting and preventing double voting. I'm not aware of that being done in the United States.
During the Zimbabwean presidential election, 2008, reports surfaced that those who had chosen not to vote were attacked and beaten by government sponsored mobs.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_ink#International_use [wikipedia.org]