Republicans are unlikely to be open to the Democratic push to include dismantling the election commission in a spending bill. And given GOP control of Congress, it seems unlikely, to put it mildly, that Schumer’s proposal will ever become a reality.

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But that doesn’t mean Democrats shouldn’t try.

In the current political climate, it’s crucial that the Democrats make it clear to voters that they recognize the commission for what it is — a ruse established by a fact-averse president to prop up disproven claims of voter fraud in order to justify voter suppression measures, which have a history of being aimed at minority voters.

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Proponents of voter suppression efforts were handed a defeat just yesterday — one that serves as a reminder of that history. A federal judge in Texas struck down that state’s law requiring voter ID — a favored tactic by the proponents of “tougher” laws on supposed voter fraud — holding that it intentionally discriminated against black and Latino voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has pledged he will appeal the ruling.

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In his post this morning, in which he recounted Trump’s awful response to Charlottesville, Schumer pointedly wrote that voter suppression is motivated by race. As Schumer put it, “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.”

Widespread opposition to the commission, which Trump assembled in May, long predates Charlottesville. As Ari Berman has reported, the commission’s vice-chair, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, has been a leading promoter of false, unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, the nonexistent problem that the commission purports to address. “Making people believe that voter fraud is rampant builds public support for policies that restrict access to the ballot,” Berman wrote. “The Trump commission marks a major step forward in Kobach’s efforts to nationalize his restrictions on voting.”

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Although he won the presidency, Trump has remained obsessed with promoting false claims about voter fraud, insisting he would have won the popular vote if not for the “millions” that supposedly voted illegally. But such claims of voter fraud have been long been proven to be false. As the Brennan Center for Justice writes, “examination after examination of voter fraud claims reveal fraud is very rare, voter impersonation is nearly non-existent, and much of the problems associated with alleged fraud relates to unintentional mistakes by voters or election administrators.”

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The absence of any justification for the commission’s existence, then, has long been known, leading to widespread condemnation of its efforts. Before the commission’s first meeting last month, the Post ran an editorial entitled “Trump’s voter-fraud commission itself is a fraud.” The New York Times editorialized that it was “a sham and a scam,” arguing “it is run by some of the nation’s most determined vote suppressors, the kind who try to throw out voter registrations for being printed on insufficiently thick paper or who release reports on noncitizen voting that are titled ‘Alien Invasion’ and illustrated with images of U.F.O.s.”

The commission is also the target of at least seven lawsuits, including one brought by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund last month, alleging it “was formed with the intent to discriminate against voters of color in violation of the Constitution,” based on Trump’s own statements and that of his surrogates that “are grounded on the false premise that Black and Latino voters are more likely to perpetrate voter fraud.”

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