[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 116 (Tuesday, July 11, 2017)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E957]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 TRUMP'S VOTER FRAUD COMMISSION IS A FRAUD AND SHOULD BE DISBANDED NOW

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. SHEILA JACKSON LEE

                                of texas

                    in the house of representatives

                         Tuesday, July 11, 2017

  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, unable to cope with the brutal fact 
that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by 2.9 million votes, 
the largest vote deficit of any president in American history, Donald 
Trump tweeted that he would have won the popular vote but for 
``millions of people who voted illegally.''
  Instead of producing any credible evidence to support this claim, a 
hoax that has been repeatedly and decisively debunked by experts, the 
President doubled down and issued an Executive Order establishing the 
``Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity'' (PACEI), 
appointing Kris Kobach, anti-immigration warrior and poster-child for 
voter fraud conspiratorialists everywhere, to lead the Commission.
  It would be more accurate to characterize the PACEI as the 
``Presidential Advisory Commission on Vote Suppression.'' Voter 
suppression is real but the oft-repeated claim that American elections 
are rife with voter fraud is a myth.
  According to a comprehensive 2014 study published in The Washington 
Post, out of more than a billion votes cast between 2000 and 2014, only 
31 credible instances of impersonation fraud were found, and even this 
tiny number was likely inflated because the study's author counted not 
just voter fraud prosecutions or convictions but all credible claims. 
Numerous other reports have reached the same conclusion.
  Any lingering doubt regarding the true purpose of the PACEI should be 
laid to rest by the request made by Commissioner Kobach on June 28, 
2017 when he wrote each of the nation's state secretaries of state 
requesting that they provide the Commission with ``the full first and 
last names of all registrants, middle names or initials if available, 
addresses, dates of birth, political party (if recorded in your state), 
last four digits of social security number if available, voter history 
(elections voted in) from 2006 onward, active/inactive status, 
cancelled status, information regarding any felony convictions, 
information regarding voter registration in another state, information 
regarding military status, and overseas citizen information.''
  The information requested by the Commission will not prevent voter 
fraud. It will violate rather than protect voter privacy.
  And it will make it easier to craft legislation and devise campaign 
strategies intended to suppress the vote in urban clusters and among 
targeted demographic groups, particularly minority voters.
  It is important that all voters, and the people of the 18th 
Congressional District of Texas whom I am privileged to represent, be 
fully protected.
  While supplying only public voter information may seem secure, the 
sad fact is that it is not. There is no publicly accessible database of 
voter registration information in any of the 50 states or the District 
of Columbia.
  That is because information of this kind is protected from public 
disclosure under the settled principle of `collective privacy' 
recognized by the Supreme Court in the landmark decision of NAACP v. 
Alabama, 377 U.S. 288, 84 S. Ct. 1302, 12 L. Ed. 2d 325 (1964), which 
held that compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in 
advocacy may constitute an impermissible chilling effect on the freedom 
of association guaranteed by the First Amendment, a holding that has 
been affirmed repeatedly.
  Accordingly, neither Texas nor any state can, consistent with the 
U.S. Constitution, supply the voter information requested by the PACEI.
  Indeed, if the information sought was as public in nature as PACEI 
contends, there simply would be no need for it to request the 
information from state governments.
  Trump's voter suppression commission is a solution in search of a 
problem.
  Contrary to what Trump and Kobach would have the public believe, 
American elections are not rife with widespread voter fraud. Studies 
have shown that it is more likely an American ``will be struck by 
lightning than that he will impersonate another voter at the polls.''
  No, the major ill affecting our election system is not that too many 
people vote due to voter fraud, but that too many people are prevented 
from voting due to vote suppression schemes such as discriminatory 
photo identification requirements, curtailment of early voting, too few 
polling stations leading to long lines and excessive wait times, and 
purging of election rolls.
  Even in the wholly unimaginable event that the commission created by 
Donald Trump and led by Kris Kobach could be trusted enough for states 
to cooperate by sharing their voter data, there is no reasonable basis 
for assuming that information would be kept secure and the privacy of 
voters protected.
  Recent cyberattacks have made clear the vulnerability of large 
central databases to cyberattack. An information security breach at the 
Department of Veterans Affairs compromised sensitive personal data of 
26.5 million persons and cost the VA between $100 million to $500 
million to remediate; another occurring at the Office of Personnel 
Management impacted 22 million current and former federal employees, 
many of whom held sensitive security clearances; and the attack on 
Yahoo, the mother of all security breaches, resulted in 1.5 billion 
user accounts being compromised.
  Because large centralized databases are targets of opportunities for 
criminals, terrorists, and foreign adversaries, it would be the height 
of recklessness for Texas or any state to provide the PACEI with 
personal information of millions of persons via unsecured email to be 
stored in undersecured databases on undersecured servers.
  One of the biggest strengths of the American election system is its 
decentralized nature.
  Aggregating all voter data into one centralized database with 
questionable security protections makes that data highly vulnerable to 
a cyberattack that could lead to the personal information of hundreds 
of millions of Americans being stolen and misused.
  Voter privacy and the integrity of the secret ballot are integral to 
American democracy. Voter privacy rights should and must be protected.
  This is especially true since we know for certain that adversaries 
like Russia are actively involved in cyberwarfare campaigns to 
undermine our democracy.
  There is no denying that our election system is under assault, but 
not in the way Trump imagines.
  Instead of wasting taxpayer money to fund an investigation into voter 
fraud, which is as mythical as a unicorn, American democracy would be 
better served by focusing on and correcting the real problem with our 
elections--voter suppression and external, illegal, and international 
interference in our national elections.
  I am not opposed to employing reasonable, legitimate, and workable 
means to safeguard the integrity of our electoral system and to protect 
the precious right to vote. But Trump's Presidential Advisory 
Commission on Election Integrity is incapable of doing either and thus 
should be disbanded and dissolved immediately.

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