Tag Archives: voter fraud

Trump’s voter fraud panel to meet as U.S. states’ refusals mount

FILE PHOTO: A ballot is placed into a locked ballot box by a poll worker as people line-up to vote early at the San Diego County Elections Office in San Diego, California, U.S., November 7, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s commission to investigate possible election fraud will convene this month, a government notice said on Friday, as more U.S. states have refused to hand over at least some voter data.

Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May, after claiming without evidence that millions of people voted illegally for his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 election.

U.S. civil rights groups and Democratic lawmakers have called the panel a voter suppression tactic by Trump, a Republican who won the presidential election by securing a majority in the Electoral College tally of delegates even as he lost the popular vote to Clinton by some 3 million votes.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a watchdog group, has filed a lawsuit to block the commission’s data request until its privacy impact can be weighed. A hearing in the case was scheduled for Friday afternoon.

There is a wide consensus among state officials from both parties and election experts that voter fraud is rare. States rejecting the commission’s attempts to gather voter information have called it unnecessary and a violation of privacy.

The commission will meet on July 19 to swear in members, formulate objectives and discuss next steps after asking the 50 states to turn over potentially sensitive voter information, according to a General Services Administration (GSA) notice published in the Federal Register.

A June 28 letter from the election panel sought names, the last four digits of Social Security numbers, addresses, birth dates, political affiliations, felony convictions and voting histories.

As of Wednesday, at least 44 states had refused to hand over at least some of the data requested, the Washington Post said. Republican Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the commission vice chairman, on Wednesday said such reports were false. He said in a statement sent by the White House that 14 states and Washington, D.C., had rejected the request outright.

Matthew Dunlap, Maine’s Democratic secretary of state and a commission member, on Friday dismissed Trump’s claim that millions of voters illegally cast ballots. “We just don’t see that,” he told CNN. “People are incredibly law abiding.”

Although Maine is one state that has pushed back at the commission’s request, Dunlap said he hopes the panel can tackle voting issues including ballot access and hacking.

A Republican commission member, former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, defended the panel, telling CNN on Thursday that fraud with even “one vote per precinct … can change the course of history.”

A court filing in the Electronic Privacy Information Center case also showed the panel plans to house data on White House computers rather than at the GSA. The Washington Post, which earlier reported the filing, noted GSA would be required to follow specific privacy requirements.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Moscow tried to tilt the election in Trump’s favor. Moscow has dismissed the accusations. Trump has denied any collusion and has questioned the agencies’ conclusion as well as any Russian role.

(Writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Howard Goller and David Gregorio)

Three more states refuse Trump commission’s voter data request

FILE PHOTO: A ballot is placed into a locked ballot box by a poll worker as people line-up to vote early at the San Diego County Elections Office in San Diego, California, U.S., November 7, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo

By Ian Simpson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Maryland, Delaware and Louisiana on Monday joined a growing number of U.S. states that have refused to hand over voter data to a commission established by President Donald Trump to investigate possible voting fraud.

More than 20 states, including Virginia, Kentucky, California, New York and Massachusetts, have declined to provide some or all of the information that the panel requested, saying it was unnecessary and violated privacy.

Republican Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity in May after making unsubstantiated claims that millions of people voted illegally for his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, in last November’s election.

Calling the request “repugnant,” Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh said in a statement that his office had advised the State Board of Elections that the commission’s request was illegal.

The request “appears designed only to intimidate voters and to indulge President Trump’s fantasy that he won the popular vote,” Frosh said.

The commission sent a letter to the 50 states asking them to turn over voter information including names, the last four digits of Social Security numbers, addresses, birth dates, political affiliations, felony convictions and voting histories.

Louisiana Secretary of State Tom Schedler said the presidential commission could purchase the limited information legally available to candidates running for office.

“You’re not going to play politics with Louisiana’s voter data,” he said in a statement.

Delaware Elections Commissioner Elaine Manlove said in an interview with Milford’s WXDE-FM radio that her office would not comply since some of the information was confidential. Manlove said she was working with the attorney general’s office to see if the request could be denied completely.

Trump has blasted the states who have refused to turn over the data. He said in a tweet on Saturday, “What are they trying to hide?”

Trump won the White House through victory in the Electoral College, which tallies wins in states, but he lost the popular vote to Clinton by some 3 million votes. He has claimed he would have won the popular vote had it not been for voter fraud.

Civil rights activists say the commission will encourage voter suppression by justifying new barriers to voting, such as requiring identity cards to vote.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Frank McGurty and Grant McCool)

Officials in Florida, Virginia file voter fraud charges against three people

An election volunteer holds a box outside Trump Tower in the Manhattan borough of New York City,

By Scott Malone

(Reuters) – Officials in Florida and Virginia filed voter fraud charges against three people in apparently unrelated cases on Friday, just 11 days before American voters cast ballots in the hotly contested presidential race.

The charges targeted a Florida woman and a Virginia man accused of filing bogus voter registration forms and a Florida woman    alleged to have tampered with absentee ballots she was opening at the Miami-Dade Elections Department.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has charged in recent weeks that the election will be rigged in favor of Democrat Hillary Clinton, though he has shown no proof for these claims and many Republicans have called them unfounded.

Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle in Florida said that 74-year-old Gladys Coego, had been working as an absentee ballot opener when a supervisor allegedly saw her changing ballots that had been left blank to support a mayoral candidate. Prosecutors said that Coego admitted to marking the ballots, and was charged with two felony counts of marking or designating the ballot of another.

“The integrity of the electoral process is intact because our procedures work,” said Christina White, the county’s election supervisor, in a statement.

Separately, 33-year-old Tomika Curgil was charged with five felony counts of submitting false voter registration information for allegedly handing in forms filled out by fictitious voters while working on a voter-registration drive for a medical marijuana advocacy group.

A Virginia man was also charged with submitting falsified forms while working for a voter-registration campaign, state prosecutors said.

Vafalay Massaquoi, 30, was arraigned on two felony counts of forging a public record and two counts of voter registration fraud.

“There is no allegation that any illegal vote was actually cast in this case,” said Virginia Commonwealth’s Attorney Bryan Porter. “Furthermore, since the fraudulent applications involved fictitious people, had the fraud not been uncovered, the risk of actual fraudulent votes being cast was low.”

Neither Coego, Curgil nor Massaquoi could be reached for immediate comment.

A man in Texas, where early voting started on Monday, was arrested on Monday on charges of electioneering and loitering near a polling place, public records show.

The man, Brett Mauthe, had been charged for showing up to vote in a Trump had and T-shirt with the phrase “basket of deplorables,” a reference to a comment Clinton made disparaging her rivals’ supporters, election officials told local media.

(Additional reporting by Jonathan Herskovitz in Austin, Texas, and Letitia Stein in Tampa, Florida; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)