President Donald Trump will name Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach to a commission to examine voter fraud and other election issues, the White House said today.
Trump, who claimed that as many as 5 million people voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election, is expected to sign an executive order today to get to the bottom of his election fraud conspiracy theory.
The order will establish a commission to investigate alleged voter fraud and voter suppression and Vice President Mike Pence will chair the commission. Kobach will serve as vice chair, the White House said.
The commission is expected to review policies and practices that “enhance or undermine the American people’s confidence in the integrity of Federal elections – including improper registrations, improper voting, fraudulent registrations, fraudulent voting, and voting suppression,” according to the White House.
Shortly after taking office in January, Trump promised a “major investigation into VOTER FRAUD.” Trump has also made unsubstantiated claims that millions of illegal votes cast by noncitizens tipped the popular vote in the 2016 election to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton despite his victory in the Electoral College.
Independent fact-checkers mocked Trump for the voter fraud allegations, saying there was no evidence, though his team cited two-year-old reports that did not point to fraud even then.
Kobach is almost single-handedly responsible for some of the nation’s strictest immigration laws in at least a half-dozen states. Kobach not only writes the laws, but advocates for them and battles on their behalf in court. He is often cited as the chief architect of what Arizona’s SB 1070, which was passed in 2010 and led to protests and state boycotts for encouraging the profiling of Latinos and other people of color.
