Rep. Collins: I have no evidence of Trump's voter fraud claims

Rep. Chris Collins, one of President Donald Trump’s earliest supporters on Capitol Hill and the transition team’s liaison to Congress, said Wednesday that he sees no proof of the type of widespread voter fraud that Trump believes occurred in last year’s election.

Pushed during a back-and-forth with CNN “New Day” anchor Chris Cuomo over Trump’s claim that as many as five million people voted illegally in November’s presidential election, Collins admitted that he has no evidence to support allegations of voter fraud of the scale that the president has described.


“This is three to five million people that made a dispositive difference in his loss of the popular vote. Do you have a shred of proof of that suggestion?” Cuomo asked Collins.

“No, I don't. That's his opinion,” Collins replied. “But I'll say there are illegal votes cast and if we can tighten down we should do it.”

Trump’s allegations of voter fraud, prevalent during his presidential campaign, resurfaced Monday night when he reiterated them to congressional leaders who had come to the White House for a meeting. There is no evidence to support such allegations, although White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said Tuesday that the president’s beliefs on voter fraud were rooted at least in part in a Pew Research study.

The author of that study said in November that his team found “millions of out of date registration records due to people moving or dying, but found no evidence that voter fraud resulted.” On Tuesday, he wrote on Twitter that “as I've noted before, voting integrity better in this election than ever before. Zero evidence of fraud.”

Still, Trump announced Wednesday morning that he would call for a “major investigation” into voter fraud, something Collins said he supported even if he saw no evidence of issues on the scale that Trump suggested. While presidential elections are decided by thousands or millions of votes, local elections are much tighter and are therefore much more susceptible to the influence of voter fraud.

“I think it's always important to make sure that we don't have illegal votes. We know we have them,” Collins said. “We should know who’s walking into the voting booth and I would support anything we do to make sure that our elections are secure, that it's only citizens voting. And if we do an investigation, and sounds like we're going to, I'm all in support of that.”

“When an illegal vote is cast for president that illegal vote’s also cast for a city councilman,” he added later. “So, I mean, the president’s entitled to his opinion and I'd like to get rid of all illegal voters and it does impact down ballot and I guess that’s my position.”