Tell Trump Kobach Must Go

Dear President Trump:

Your pick to lead your Commission on Election Integrity has no business investigating voting in this country.

Kris Kobach is a longtime lawyer for the Federation for American Immigration Reform – an anti-immigrant extremist group with longstanding ties to white nationalists. He is a leader in the movement to suppress the votes of minorities and has a track record of aggressively finding and prosecuting voter fraud where none exists.

The evidence is clear from numerous studies — and we all know — that voter fraud is virtually non-existent in our country. Researchers at the Brennan Center have found that it is rarer than death by lightning.

The real threat to our democracy is the kind of voter suppression that Kobach promotes.

If the goal of your commission truly is to “identify the laws, rules, policies, activities, strategies and practices that undermine the American people’s confidence in the integrity of the voting process,” you will appoint people to lead it who have a track record of strengthening  voting rights and improving  voter participation — not those with extremist agendas who want to erode voting rights.

Your spokeswoman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said that you are “committed to the thorough review of registration and voting issues in federal elections.”

If that’s true, you must rescind your appointment of Kobach. He is unfit to serve in this capacity, and his appointment does nothing but telegraph your intention to make this commission as fraudulent as your claims about voter fraud in the November election.