WASHINGTON (CN) - The President's Commission on Election Integrity was slapped with a new legal challenge, even as it agreed to stop using a Department of Defense website to collect state voter data as a result of a previous lawsuit.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence and the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity for violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
The ACLU claims in a July 10 complaint that the law requires the commission to provide notice of its meetings and make them open to the public, along with all of its records – something the ACLU says the commission has failed to do so far.
The ACLU says it asked the commission to make its records available for public inspection on July 5, but the commission has yet to do so, saying it is not subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
The lawsuit further alleges that President Trump personally violated the law by failing to balance the points of view and functions to be carried out by the commission, which the ACLU says was established to provide "a veneer of legitimacy" to Trump's false claim that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton because millions of people cast illegal votes.
“The individuals on the commission raise some troubling questions as to the balance, the views that will be expressed,” ACLU staff attorney Sophia Lin Lakin said in a phone interview. “Also the fact that the president has made many allegations about voter fraud also raises some questions about whether or not the commission will sort of be beholden to that point of view," she said.
No evidence exists to support claims of widespread voter fraud. Numerous studies have found that voter fraud is rare, including one by the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, which determined an American is more likely to be struck by lightning than cast a vote illegally.
The lack of evidence, however, has not deterred the president from making the claims.
"President Trump has continued to assert, contrary to all available factual evidence and the findings of the FEC, that he won the popular vote," the 31-page complaint states, abbreviating the Federal Election Commission.
President Trump established the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity by executive order on May 11. After the commission’s first telephonic meeting on June 28, vice chair and Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach sent a letter to all 50 states and the District of Columbia requesting state voter data.
The commission asked states to submit by July 14 voters’ full names, addresses, dates of birth, political party affiliation, partial Social Security numbers, elections voted in since 2006, voter status, felony convictions, military status, overseas information and multistate voter registration.
The request sparked widespread pushback and several legal challenges. So far, only Arkansas has fully complied with the request.
The ACLU lawsuit points to concerns about the data collection raised by media reports: “Cybersecurity experts have described the Commission’s plans to aggregate this data as a ‘gold mine’ for hackers.”
The complaint calls the June 28 meeting of the commission “unlawful,” noting that it did not provide notice in the federal register or make it open to the public.
