President Donald Trump’s dismantled voter fraud commission uncovered no evidence to prove his claim that millions voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election, according to an analysis of administration documents by a former member.
"That the Commission predicted it would find widespread evidence of fraud actually reveals a troubling bias," Maine's Secretary of State and former commission member, Matthew Dunlap, stated in a letter issued Friday.
In the letter addressed to Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Dunlap, a Democrat, wrote that he joined the commission in “good faith” and with “optimism,” but that his experience with the bipartisan group left him skeptical of the intention of the study.
“Unfortunately, my experience on the Commission quickly caused me concern that its purpose was not to pursue the truth but rather to provide an official imprimatur of legitimacy on the President Trump’s assertions that millions of illegal votes were cast during the 2016 election and to pave the way for policy changes designed to undermine the right to vote,” Dunlap said in the letter.
The commission released documents on June 27 after Dunlap filed a lawsuit in November against it in an effort to gain access to materials and documentation he felt was being kept from him and other members of the committee. The suit alleged that Pence and Kobach were in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which has special emphasis on open meetings.
"It's calling into the darkness, looking for voter fraud," Dunlap, told The Associated Press. "There's no real evidence of it anywhere."
The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which Trump created in May 2017 and then shut down in January of this year, after citing "endless legal battles" was headed by Vice President Mike Pence, even though it’s vice chair, Kobach, became the face of the commission's controversies.
“For some people, no matter how many cases of voter fraud you show them, there will never be enough for them to admit that there’s a problem,” said Kobach told the Associated Press in a statement. The secretary is running for Kansas governor on Tuesday against the incumbent, Jeff Colyer, in the Republican primary.
Dunlap also wrote that although there is “no single document that reveals there is no widespread voter fraud” but instead, the totality of the documents released by the judge’s ruling showcase the lack of evidence to prove the president’s claims.
The group was originally created to address the president’s unsubstantiated claims that between 3 million and 5 million ballots were illegally cast in the last election. Critics from both sides of the aisle, including Dunlap, have rejected these claims of widespread voter fraud. Since its creation, the group has only met twice, with their final meeting on Sept. 12, according to White House records.