Washington, D.C. — Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced the Anti-Voter Suppression Act today, a bill that would put a stop to the commission headed by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, created by President Trump to investigate so-called voter fraud. The bill would completely defund the commission. Sen. Booker pointed out that a person is more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud. Forty-five states—led by Republicans and Democrats—are resisting the demands of the Trump administration’s voter fraud commission. Michele Jawando, vice president for Legal Progress at the Center for American Progress, issued the following statement:
No federal dollars should go toward propping up President Donald Trump’s obsession with alleged voter fraud, and it’s evident that Trump and his administration could use the guise of “voter fraud” to justify making it harder for Americans to vote. New revelations about the Trump campaign’s contact with Russia show the true threats to the integrity of our elections. But the administration would rather use trumped-up charges of voter fraud to make it harder to vote, and Congress has not stood up for voters by taking action against this effort. A committee in the House of Representatives even passed a bill to defund the Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency in charge of making sure that election systems are secure.
The Anti-Voter Suppression Act gives Congress the chance to end the Trump administration’s effort to restrict access to the ballot. Many Republican officials at the state level have stood up for voters by refusing to provide information to the commission. Instead of wasting time and resources investigating an inconsequential problem, the federal government should be ensuring that more Americans can participate in our democracy.
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