Schumer says Charlottesville violence is reason to cancel Trump voter commission
By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Thursday, August 24, 2017
The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate demanded Thursday that President Trump disband his commission designed to investigate voter fraud, saying it stems from the same hateful ideology that spurred neo-Nazis and white supremacists in Charlottesville earlier this month.
Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, said that if Mr. Trump won’t cancel the Presidential Advisory Commission on Voter Integrity, he will force a fight over an amendment to shut down the commission when Congress returns in September.
It’s the latest move as Democrats seek to convert momentum from Charlottesville into political victories for their agenda in Washington — or, in this case, to harness the momentum to stop the president from advancing his own agenda.
Mr. Schumer said he believes Mr. Trump’s commission — ostensibly to look at fraudulent voters and bloated voting rolls — is really an effort to keep minorities from the polls. He called the commission “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”
“Under the guise of voter fraud, which experts agree is practically non-existent, conservative forces in the administration, cheered on by white-supremacy-stoking publications like Breitbart News, are reviving the old playbook of disenfranchising minority voters,” Mr. Schumer wrote in a new post on Medium. “Unfortunately, hardly anything would make the torch-bearing men who just marched on Charlottesville any happier than for this effort to succeed.”
The voter integrity commission has held one meeting so far.
Its leaders say it is looking at illegal registration and voting by non-citizens, but is also looking at barriers that would keep legitimate voters from the polls.
Democrats from the start have doubted the commission’s mission, saying it appeared more of an effort to justify the president’s claims that he would have won the popular vote in last year’s election but for illegal voting.
Mr. Schumer said he’d always had questions about the commission, “but now, given what’s happened in the last several weeks, we’ve entered a new world and it’s even more important that the commission be disbanded.”
Mr. Schumer said Congress should take over the issue, holding hearings on both voter fraud and on ways to expand voter participation, such as same-day voter registration.
The Democratic leader said if GOP lawmakers want to distance themselves from neo-Nazis, white supremacists and others who marched in Charlottesville, sparking clashes with counter-protesters.
In the wake of those clashes, a man seen marching with the white supremacists plowed his car into a crown of counter-protesters, killing one woman and injuring 19 others, police said.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...-reason-cance/
