[7][8][9] Trump's creation of the commission was criticized by voting rights advocates, scholars and experts, and newspaper editorial boards as a pretext for, and prelude to, voter suppression.

[15] At that time, Trump asked that the investigation be transferred to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which already holds much of the requested state voter data and oversees immigration records.

[23][24] The American Civil Liberties Union, representing plaintiffs in a voting rights case, asked the federal judge to prevent Kobach from withholding from the public documents he presented to Trump by virtue of marking them "confidential".

The plaintiffs demanded the public release of those documents that had been prepared with state funds, claiming Kobach "made statements to the public, the Court, and the President, suggesting that noncitizen registration fraud is a serious, widespread problem," while at the same time trying to hide those same documents that reject his claim, to prevent having to testify in open court about those materials.

Non-citizens convicted in criminal court of having made a false claim of citizenship for the purpose of registering to vote in a federal election can be fined and imprisoned for up to a year.

[32] In an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law looked at 42 jurisdictions, focusing on ones with large population of noncitizens.

[35] In October 2016, Trump conflated these irregularities with voter fraud and wrongly cited the Pew report as evidence that 1.8 million people were fraudulently voting against him.

In November 2016, the New York City Board of Elections was ordered by a federal judge to make affidavit ballots available to people who believed their registrations were improperly purged.

[39] Some commentators and courts have concluded that improperly conducted purges affect political parties differently and disenfranchise racial minorities.

[42] Provisions:[1] Vice President Pence has been described as the titular head of the Commission on Voter Integrity with Kris Kobach, who also serves on the elections committee of the National Secretaries of States Association (NSOS), as its operational leader.

[51] He has supported his claims about the extent of voter fraud by citing a 2000 investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which purported to find 5400 instances of deceased people in Georgia voting in the last twenty years.

[51] The Journal-Constitution later revised its findings, noting that it had no evidence of even a single ballot purportedly being cast by a deceased person and that the vast majority of the instances in question were due to clerical errors.

[52][53] In an email, von Spakovsky urged Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to appoint any Democrats, "moderate Republicans and/or academics" to the commission.

[44] According to Richard L. Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California at Irvine, "there are number of people who have been active in promoting false and exaggerated claims of voter fraud and using that as a pretext to argue for stricter voting and registration rules.

"[54] One of Trump's appointees to the commission, Ken Blackwell, was Ohio Secretary of State for two terms beset with controversy, lawsuits, and accusations that he had created impediments to voting.

[56] Also in 2004, Blackwell ordered clerks to toss out provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct, a policy criticized by voting rights advocates but ultimately permitted by a federal appeals court.

[59] The request may have violated the federal Paperwork Reduction Act because it was not submitted to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) prior to being made to the states.

[61] On July 25, 2017, Kobach told the Kansas City Star that he intended to send another request for voter data, after receiving a favorable ruling in a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

[66] In response, Trump made a statement on Twitter, "Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL.

Trump addressed the commission at its inaugural meeting and criticized states that did not comply with the request for data issued by Kobach (saying "One has to wonder what they're worried about").

"[132][133] Another commission member, J. Christian Adams, published a similar op-ed at PJ Media on the same day, stating that "the overwhelming majority of them [the 5,513 voters] can no longer be found in New Hampshire.

"[133] Kobach and Adams based the allegations on statistics reported by Shawn Jasper, Republican speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives.

[134] A spokesman for the speaker said that the statistics were raw data and that Jasper "did not know which states issued the 6,540 licenses and acknowledged that the numbers could include some college students.

[133] The day after Kobach's op-ed was published, the New Hampshire congressional delegation unanimously urged Gardner to resign, so as to deny the commission the appearance of credibility.

[137] At the meeting, both Gardner and fellow commissioner and Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap rejected the allegation that voter fraud affected the election in New Hampshire in 2016.

"[141] John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, made a presentation to the commission, proposing that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System be used for voter verification.

[139] Rick Hasen of the University of California, Irvine, an expert on election law, stated that the commission was "a pretext to pass legislation that will make it harder for people to register to vote" and that there could be no confidence in whatever the committee produced.

[4] Five of the plaintiffs in the different lawsuits were non-profit organizations that included: the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU v. Trump and Pence and Joyner v. Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity), the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, NAACP (NAACP v. Trump), Public Citizen, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

[4][155] Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement that "rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense," Trump abolished the panel and turned the matter over to the Department of Homeland Security.

[16] After Trump shut down the commission, Kobach pointed out in an interview that "DHS knows the identity of everyone who has green cards" and temporary visas, and that to compare those names to state voter rolls would be "immensely valuable.