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1 Documents and Correspondence of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity - Batch 2164 [1] (2017)

handle is hein.prescomm/dscppta0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Message From: von Spakovsky, Hans [/O=THF/OU=THFDC/CN=RECIPIENTS/CN=SPAKOSKYH] Sent: 8/3/2017 1:27:26 PM To: Andrew J. Kossack [Andrew.J. Kossack@ovp.eop.gov]; Mark Paoletta [mark.r.paoletta@ovp.eop.gov] Subject: Fwd: Critics Try to Smear Trump's Election-Integrity Commission Critics Try to Smear Trump's Election-Integrity Commission Calling us racists and 'voter-suppression superstars' is shameful and corrosive to civility. By Hans von Spakovsky andJ Christian Adams Aug. 2, 2017 5:26 p.m. ET It's one thing to attack a proposed policy. It's another thing to attack someone for simply asking a question. Yet that's exactly what President Trump's Advisory Commission on Election Integrity is facing from the New York Times , Washington Post, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and others. Since the president signed an executive order creating the commission in May, these organizations have attacked members of the commission personally, including the authors of this article. The reprehensible (and false) claim that we are engaged in voter suppression is a scare tactic, pure and simple. Ours is an advisory commission, It has no federal authority or power of any kind. It can't tell the states, local governments or even the executive branch of the federal government what to do in the administration of elections. Further, the commission s request for publicly available information from the states is not some nefarious plot. This basic information about the voter registration process is necessary for the commission s work. Many states have already given or sold the same information to multiple private vendors. It's clear the frenzied critics never even read the president's executive order, which empowered the commission to study the registration and voting process used in Federal elections and to identify vulnerabilities that may imperil integrity and public confidence. What could be a worthier goal than examining the electoral system and formulating recommendations to improve it? What American wouldn't want to improve our election process? It's also clear the critics didn't bother to watch the commission's first meeting on July 19. There was near unanimity among the commission's bipartisan members. All agreed on the need to