The following article by John Wagner was posted on the Washington Post website November 9, 2017:
President Trump’s voter fraud commission was sued Thursday morning by one of its Democratic members, who alleged that he has been kept in the dark about its operations, rendering his participation “essentially meaningless.”
Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said in a complaint filed in federal court that the 11-member panel is in violation of a federal law that requires presidential advisory commissions to be both balanced and transparent in their work.
“The Commission has, in effect, not been balanced because Secretary Dunlap and the other Democratic commissioners have been excluded from the Commission’s work,” says the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. “The Commission’s operations have not been open and transparent, not even to the commissioners themselves, who have been deprived access to documents prepared by and viewed by other commissioners.”
The lawsuit is the latest drama for a commission that has proven a magnet for controversy since its launch in the wake of Trump’s baseless assertion that he would have won the popular vote in last year’s election if he hadn’t been thwarted by as many as 5 million illegally cast ballots.
On Aug. 1, a federal judge declined to block the president’s voter fraud commission from collecting voter data. A lawsuit attempting to block the collection of voter data could now go to a federal appeals court. (Patrick Martin/The Washington Post)
The 11-member panel, which is nominally chaired by Vice President Pence and is formally known as the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, has met publicly twice, in Washington in July and in New Hampshire in September. A third meeting has yet to be announced.
Pence and others have pledged that the commission has no preordained agenda as it looks at voting practices that could undermine or bolster confidence in elections.
Besides the commission itself, Dunlap’s suit names several other defendants, including Pence; Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R), the commission’s vice chairman; and Andrew Kossack, its executive director.
In a statement, Kossack said: “We are disappointed that Secretary Dunlap has chosen litigation and conflict over working cooperatively and in a bipartisan manner to achieve the important goals of this Commission, which is to ensure confidence in our voting system.”
“This suit has no merit and we look forward to refuting it in court,” he added.
In a separate statement, Kobach called Dunlap’s lawsuit “baseless and paranoid.”
“He assumes that correspondence regarding commission business was occurring, but not being shared with him,” Kobach said. “Dunlap’s assumption is incorrect. I did not receive any such correspondence either.”
Kobach said the commission’s work has been hindered by a spate of lawsuits and the loss of a staff member, who was dismissed after being charged with possession of child pornography.
Dunlap is among four Democrats serving on the 11-member commission. A fifth died last month.
“In fact, the Commission’s superficial bipartisanship has been a facade,” Dunlap says in the suit.
The commission has been targeted in at least eight other lawsuits seeking to curb its operations or make its deliberations more transparent. The filing by Dunlap, who was appointed to serve by Trump, is the first by one of its own members.
President Trump has alleged that widespread voter fraud occurred in the 2016 election. More states than ever before are requiring voters to show photo ID to cast a ballot. Here are the two sides of the Voter ID law debate. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
“Today’s lawsuit is highly unusual and virtually unprecedented, and further underscores the chaotic and dysfunctional nature of this Commission,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, one of the groups that have sued.
Last month, Dunlap and Alan King, a probate judge in Alabama and another of the commission’s Democratic members, wrote separately to Kossack, demanding basic information such as when the panel might meet again, what kind of research is being conducted by its staff and when it might send a report to the president.
“The Commission continues to review information obtained during the last meeting and will keep all Commission members updated should further meetings be scheduled,” Kossack said at the time.
VIew the post here.