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Voting Integrity Commission Did Not Find Widespread Voter Fraud

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Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap says his review of documents released from the now-disbanded Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity show the Republican-dominated panel was determined to endorse claims of widespread voter fraud without any supporting evidence.

Dunlap had successfully filed suit to have the documents turned over to him, and he has now placed them on his website for public evaluation and sent a letter to the Commission's co-chairs demanding that the materials be published in the Federal Register.

Dunlap says that as a Democratic member of the panel, the panel's GOP co-chairs prevented him from carrying out the Commission's charge to determine whether there was widespread voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election. They did this, Dunlap says, by withholding documents from him and excluding him from the group's activities. “What I now understand was that was very naive, because the purpose of this commission was to never examine those facts," Dunlap said. "It was really to validate the claim, and whether it was validated in fact or not was immaterial. The goal was to validate the claim, and I think that's really unfortunate and a disservice to the American people."

The commission, led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas GOP Secretary of State Kris Kobach, met twice during its seven-month tenure and was disbanded after President Trump claimed that many states' were refusing to turn over voter information.

The Maine Secretary of State says none of the documents substantiate the president's claims of voter fraud.