Crosstalk: Is voter fraud probe needed?

In a July 19 news conference launching the first meeting of his so-called and highly dubious “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity,” Trump claimed that “so many Americans” are concerned that “improper voting is taking place and canceling out the votes of lawful American citizens.”

Wrong and wrong.

What most Americans are worried about is the specter of a president with authoritarian role models (such as Vladimir Putin of Russia, for one) who is openly promoting the lie that “millions” of “illegal” votes were cast in the 2016 election. This kind of talk leads in one direction only — efforts to rework our election systems in ways that favor the person in power.

It’s outrageous that the commission, even before its first meeting, asked officials from all 50 states to provide personal data on voters, including full names, addresses, dates of birth, which political party they listed on their registration, an accounting of all the elections every voter has participated in since 2006, and even the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.

The election panel is co-chaired by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a highly partisan Republican gubernatorial candidate who has for years pushed a series of policies that include strict requirements to register to vote.

It might sound reasonable on the surface to request that a person registering to vote has either a passport or a birth certificate, but think about that for a moment.

Those who are not financially stable usually do not have passports, because they don’t have the financial resources to travel abroad. And for the poor, and college students, and minorities, it is not a given that they will have their birth certificate, or have one in their possession.

Coincidentally, these groups tend to favor one political party, the Democrats.

Placing restrictions that predominantly impact these groups makes it more likely Republican candidates will win. This is a way to stack the deck.

Vanita Gupta, president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and a former head of the civil rights division at the Justice Department, warned that SHE believes the commission is planning to help Trump strip the right to vote from millions of Americans through aggressive voter purges.

“The voter rolls are the key,” Gupta explained in a July 19 opinion piece SHE wrote for the New York Times. “Registration is one of the main gateways to political participation. It is the difference between a small base of voters pursuing a narrow agenda and an electorate that looks like America.”

Trump has claimed that as many as 5 million people voted fraudulently in the 2016 election. He has no evidence and no facts to back this up, and these unsubstantiated claims — coming as they do from our nation’s top political leader — create uncertainty and could bring chaos to our electoral systems.

It will make it more likely that election results will be challenged, or seen as “rigged” —which in fact was another claim Trump made even before the 2016 election took place.

Our right to vote is at the heart of our democracy. Attempts to initiate new, stricter voting restrictions that make it tougher for citizens to vote are flat-out wrong.

If federal officials can dictate to the states how they should handle voter registration efforts, we are at risk of losing our democracy. And that’s not overstating it.

— Jesse Burkhardt

It’s once again politics before integrity with liberals howling about “voter suppression” and “discrimination” because President Donald Trump has appointed a special commission to investigate the level of voter fraud in U.S. elections.

How is determining the accuracy of voter registration, number of people who are voting illegally —or in multiple states — and identifying non-citizens and others who are ineligible to vote, but still registered, anything but good for America?

Although Democrats and the left-media insist there is no truth behind Trump’s assertion that up to 5 million people voted illegally in 2016, a Washington Post poll last October shows most Americans agree there is a problem.

The poll found that 84 percent of Republicans believe a “meaningful level” of fraud is occurring, 75 percent of Independents concurred, as did 52 percent of Democrats.

So, why would anyone not want to find out how much corruption lies in a voting system based on honor? Perhaps, because your side needs those illegal votes to win elections.

Contrary to accusations that the commission is on a witch hunt, only public information authorized by federal law has been requested from states.

The National Voter Registration Act requires states to maintain, and make available to the public, the very voter records the bipartisan White House panel seeks.

This same information is routinely purchased and used by political parties and candidates for public office, as well as private companies that use the data for commercial purposes.

You can bet that many of the politicians expressing outrage at the commission’s request have themselves obtained and used such data to plan their own political strategies.

Trump rightfully said, “Every time voter fraud occurs, it cancels out the vote of a lawful citizen and undermines democracy.”

More than 30 states have already agreed to share information with the commission.

Democratic claims that there are no problems cannot be taken seriously given numerous reports that show significant problems with America’s election system.

The Heritage Foundation has found 1,071 cases of proven instances of voter fraud in 47 states, with 938 ending in a criminal conviction. Another 43 resulted in civil penalties. A judge directed the defendant into a pretrial diversion program in 74 cases and 16 ended in judicial or official findings.

That report follows findings in 2012 by the Pew Research Center that 1.8 million dead people were listed as voters, 12 million records had incorrect data and 2.7 million persons were registered in more than one state.

America’s Majority Foundation has determined that 2.1 percent of non-citizens voted in the Nov. 8 election.

In the battleground states of Michigan and Ohio, 2.5 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively, of non-citizens reported voting.

Then there is the report by Just Facts, a research organization that examined data from an extensive Harvard/YouGov study that found as many as 7.9 million non-citizens illegally registered in 2008 and 594,000 to 5.7 million voted. In 2012, Just Facts said 3.2 million to 5.6 million non-citizens were registered and 1.2 million to 3.6 million voted.

There has never before been a systematic effort to investigate the scope of the problem, but it is time to learn just how many people are exploiting weaknesses and how far the corruption spreads.

A candidate who wins by only a few votes in a time of deep political divides should do so legitimately, and not because the system was rigged to allow people to fill out ballots illegally. Our republic is at stake here.

— RaeLynn Ricarte