A Democratic congressman has introduced a bill to deny taxpayer funding to President Trump's voter fraud commission.

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, created by Trump in May, received little attention until this week, when at least 20 states rejected a request to provide the commission with all publicly available voter roll data.

"As the president continues to press his blatantly false claim that voter fraud cost him the popular vote in the 2016 presidential election, he endangers the sanctity of our nation's democracy," Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Texas, said in a statement Friday. He is the author of the legislation and co-chair of the Congressional Voting Rights Caucus. "The commission's mission to study non-existent voter fraud cases has nothing to do with ballot security and everything to do with voter suppression and discrimination," Veasey added.

According to Congress.gov, Veasey actually introduced the bill in the House June 22.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the commission, sent a letter to all 50 secretaries of state Wednesday requesting voters' full names, their addresses, their birth dates, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, their voting histories and their political parties, if they had been recorded.

State officials — mostly Democrats, but also some Republicans — have objected to the request, citing concerns over privacy, politics ... and Kobach.

Kobach, a conservative candidate for Kansas governor in 2018, is a leading proponent of strict voter-identification laws. He has helped design some of the toughest voting laws in the country, which Democrats and civil rights groups allege are meant to restrict voting access by minority groups.

Trump created the commission by executive order after making an unsubstantiated claim that millions of illegal immigrants voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election and prevented him from winning the popular vote.

The commission, led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kobach, is charged with investigating voter fraud and issuing recommendations to prevent it.

It will have its first meeting July 19 in Washington, D.C.