Heritage Foundation Told Trump to Keep Democrats Off Voter-Fraud Commission [View all]

[CousinIT]

In late February, the Heritage Foundation learned something “very disturbing” about President Trump’s upcoming “voter-fraud commission” — the White House was planning to let Democrats serve on it.

“There isn’t a single Democratic official who will do anything other than obstruct any investigation of voter fraud and issue constant public announcements criticizing the commission,” a staffer (whose name has been redacted) at the right-wing think tank told Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in an email obtained Tuesday by the Campaign Legal Center through a Freedom of Information Act request. “That decision alone shows how little the White House understands about this issue.”

The email went on to warn Sessions that, “If they are picking mainstream Republican officials and/or academics to man this commission then it will be an abject failure because there aren’t any that know anything about this or who have paid any attention to this issue over the years.”

Instead of appointing members of the opposition party, normal members of the president’s party, or people who have studied voting issues in institutions that aren’t funded by the conservative movement, this Heritage official suggested the White House staff the panel entirely with “real experts on the conservative side of the issue” like Kansas secretary of State Kris Kobach. Specifically, the think-tank staffer suggested that they appoint the real experts who work at the Heritage Foundation.

Ultimately, Trump decided to name two Democratic secretaries of State to his “Bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Integrity,” along with an Obama-appointed commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission.

But he also put Kobach in charge of the commission, and eventually asked Heritage’s Hans von Spakovsky — one of fathers of the modern voter-fraud myth — to join his fellow “real expert” on the panel.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/heritage-told-trump-to-keep-democrats-off-voter-fraud-panel.html