Story highlights Jason Kander: The President's Commission on Electoral Integrity has been created to find evidence of voter fraud

Instead of uncovering fraud, it will be used to suppress Democratic voters and ensure Trump's re-election in 2020

Jason Kander is a CNN contributor and the former Missouri secretary of state. Kander is the president of Let America Vote, an organization dedicated to fighting voter suppression, and was recently named by the Democratic National Committee as chairman of its Commission on Protecting American Democracy from the Trump Administration. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) President Donald Trump is upset he lost the popular vote by such a historic margin, and this month he announced he is going to do something about it. What started as a presidential lie about voter fraud has turned into the President's "Commission on Election Integrity," a group that poses an actual threat to American democracy.

With so much bad news coming out of the White House, a scandal can feel like a welcome distraction from Trump's policy proposals, which have the potential to harm many Americans.

Jason Kander

And that's exactly what's happening now. As the investigation into the Trump campaign's alleged ties to Russia gets underway, the President has formed a sham of a commission to suppress voting rights.

Republicans, of course, are taking full advantage. When Trump made up the lie that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 election -- ultimately causing him to lose the popular vote -- Vice President Mike Pence and other party leaders saw an opening to take their state and local efforts to suppress voters, until now through voter ID laws enacted in 34 states , to the national stage.

So what started as a way to soothe Trump's ego after losing the popular vote has become the perfect vehicle to attacking American voting rights and making it easier for Republicans to win elections.