The Los Angeles Times published a lengthy editorial Friday dismissing Trump’s voter fraud commission — the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (PEIC) — as a “sham.”

The 864-word piece, “Trump’s Voter Fraud Commission is a Sham. That doesn’t mean our election system is perfect,”— ridicules the commission, trashing the voter fraud panel’s mission and leadership as “illegitimate”:

Donald J. Trump became president by winning the Electoral College despite collecting nearly 3 million fewer votes nationwide than his opponent. To Trump, the popular vote results weren’t simply a reflection of his campaign strategy or large blue-state populations. They were proof of election fraud.

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Not coincidentally, the commission also tapped into an ongoing argument between Republicans, who say voter fraud is a real problem that needs to be addressed with new safeguards at the polls, and Democrats, who say fraud is a smokescreen that the GOP is using to justify its voter-suppression tactics.

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We haven’t seen evidence of widespread fraud in either Trump’s election or previous ones — indeed, the research has mostly suggested that there’s been very little of it. Nevertheless, we have no objection to a meaningful, concerted effort to get to the bottom of the issue once and for all.

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Based on the history and initial actions by its point person, Vice Chairman Kris Kobach, there’s little reason to think this commission can produce credible answers to the questions that Republicans have been raising about the sanctity of elections. Worse, we fear it will ignore the very real threat to election integrity posed by hackers and meddling foreign powers, as seen in the last presidential campaign.

The crux of the piece is a frontal assault on Kobach, who also happens to be Kansas’s Secretary of State

The Times recommends: “disband this commission and send Kobach back to Kansas.”

On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the voter fraud commission.

Tim Donnelly is a former California State Assemblyman and author, currently on a book tour for his new book: Patriot Not Politician: Win or Go Homeless. He ran for governor in 2014.

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