Washington, D.C. – Colorado U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, a member of the Senate Finance Committee, joined his colleagues in pressing the Social Security Administration (SSA) for details of its coordination with the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. As Bennet highlighted in recent efforts to uncover the Commission’s motives, the Commission has sought sensitive voter roll data on the majority of the voting public and conducted highly partisan hearings based on discredited allegations of voter fraud-yet it has refused to provide Congress even the most basic overview of its operations. In a letter to SSA’s Acting Commissioner Nancy Berryhill, the senators called on SSA to turn over its communications with the Commission.
“We are deeply concerned that SSA is becoming a cog in this Administration’s machinery of voter suppression,” the senators wrote. “Full disclosure of any documents reflecting communication or coordination between SSA and the Commission is therefore necessary for Congress to provide appropriate oversight on this issue.”
The senators presented evidence that strongly suggests the Commission is attempting to build a federal version of Commission Vice Chair Kris Kobach’s “Crosscheck” voter identification system, which Kobach spearheaded as Kansas Secretary of State. Kobach is “a leading propagator of false and unsubstantiated allegations of widespread voter fraud,” the senators wrote, pointing to non-partisan voting experts who have roundly criticized his Crosscheck system for yielding wildly inaccurate results.
Citing research from Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania, the senators wrote, “Crosscheck ‘gets it wrong over 99 percent of the time.’ Mr. Kobach and the Commission, however, view Crosscheck’s inaccuracy not as a bug in the program but rather a feature that legitimatizes their efforts to purge eligible citizens from the voter rolls.”
The senators’ letter adds to a growing list of Senate requests for information on the Commission, including those from Bennet. To date, the Commission and the Trump administration have failed to respond to several congressional oversight requests seeking a better understanding of the Commission’s work. Last month, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) announced it would investigate the Commission in response to a letter from Bennet. Bennet has also filed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have required the GAO to audit the Commission and called for the Commission’s termination.
A copy of the letter is available HERE.