Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Tuesday said President Trump’s Advisory Committee on Election Integrity is making false claims about voter fraud, and called for it to be disbanded.
On the Senate floor, Schumer cited a Washington Post story that dismissed claims from the group’s commissioner, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who claimed that more than 5,000 people voted in New Hampshire without a valid state driver’s license, and said that was evidence of voter fraud. The story downplayed the findings by saying at least a few of them were college students who weren’t aware they had to get a state driver’s license.
“This commission, and I would say particularly its vice chair, Mr. Kobach, are so eager to prove their point, which is virtually unprovable, that there’s huge amounts of voter fraud that they come up with these baseless claims and then have to back off,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning. “Throwing these kinds of deeply misleading, bogus claims around about stolen elections, massive voter fraud without any actual evidence is extremely irresponsible and damaging to our democracy.”
“They are so eager to prove their point about voter fraud, which is demonstrably false, they are resorting to these crazy claims, discrediting their commission and discrediting them,” Schumer continued.
“The voter integrity commission is a punishment in search of a transgression that never happened,” Schumer said. “If there were overwhelming evidence of fraud, obviously we’d have to do something, but there isn’t. … The election integrity commission ought to be disbanded. We will be looking for ways to do that legislatively.”
The comments came as the commission meets for the first time in New Hampshire. The commission is chaired by Vice President Pence.
