Trump dissolves election fraud panel after states balk at data requests
President Donald Trump on Wednesday shut down a presidential commission charged with looking into allegations of electoral fraud during the 2016 election, after many states refused to provide it with data, the White House said.
By : migrator
Update: 2018-01-04 03:53 GMT
Washington
"Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the Commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action," Trump said in a statement.
The panel, headed by Vice President Mike Pence, was established in May last year to look into voter fraud but met with resistance from many states.
A federal judge in Washington, D.C., noted in November that the commission was an advisory body that lacked legal authority to compel states to hand over data.
Trump, a Republican, has said that fraud may have accounted for his loss nationwide in the popular vote to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes.
Most state officials who oversee elections and election law experts say that voter fraud is rare in the United States.
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