Newspapers rip Trump voter fraud panel in July 4th editorials
By Max Greenwood - 07/04/17 11:44 AM EDT Some of the country's largest newspapers seized on the Fourth of July to rip President Trump's voter fraud commission, accusing the White House of fostering voter suppression under the guise of cracking down on a virtually nonexistent problem.
"As the nation marks 241 years of independence, the most pressing voting issue should be getting those tens of millions of nonparticipating Americans registered and to the polls, so that their voices can be heard," The New York Times' editorial board wrote.
"If the paranoid voter-fraud crusaders devoted a fraction of their inquisitorial energy to solving that vexing problem, now that would be something to celebrate," the paper's board added.
The Chicago Sun-Times cast the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity as a political tool "looking for any scrap of information that might support Trump’s unfounded claim that millions of people illegally cast ballots in 2016."
In doing so, the Sun-Times' editorial board wrote, Trump's commission "would further efforts to suppress the vote in future elections."
The commission, created by executive order in May, was painted as an effort to restore faith in the integrity of U.S. elections, particularly by investigating Trump's widely debunked claim that millions of illegally cast ballots cost him the popular vote in 2016.
But a letter last week, sent by the commission's vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, requesting that states provide troves of voter data to the panel was met with widespread defiance.
More than half of the country's secretaries of state have either declined to provide all the information requested by the commission, including driver's license and Social Security numbers, or flatout refused to turn anything over.
USA Today's editorial board had a different Independence Day take on Trump's voter fraud panel. In probing potential illegal voting, it wrote, the president is failing to address a greater threat to American election integrity: Russian meddling.
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http://thehill.com/homenews/news/340609-newspaper-editorial-boards-rip-trump-voter-fraud-panel-for-july-4