President Donald Trump dissolved his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity Wednesday and farmed out the work to the Department of Homeland Security.
We hope department officials will be able to do the work the commission was never allowed to do because mostly Democrat-run states refused to comply with requests for public voter roll data. Lawsuits also were filed that purported that releasing the requested state voter data would break privacy protections (even though the information often easily can be bought).
On the contrary, we believe many of the states knew evidence - perhaps widespread - of voter fraud would be found, and they would do anything to keep that fact from being published.
Already, the Public Interest Legal Foundation has found that thousands of self-admitted noncitizens were registered to vote in New Jersey, Virginia and Philadelphia. It stands to reason that many of them have voted.
Trump, in his bombast, has suggested that enough noncitizens voted in states like California that would have given him the popular vote win - instead of just the comfortable Electoral College win - in the 2016 presidential election.
We think that's a big stretch. But we don't think it's a big stretch that noncitizens are being registered in these states and are voting.
The goal of the commission was to obtain state voter data and compare it to Homeland Security databases of noncitizens.
Although the commission met only twice in the eight months it existed, and despite its limitations, members already had found 8,500 documented cases of double voting in elections in 21 states and 1,000 convictions for voter fraud since 2000.
Democrats when the commission was announced last spring maintained there was no voter fraud or, at worst, a negligible amount. In the little work that could be done, that already was debunked. But they still wanted the commission shut down.
Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the panel, said, in so many words, Democrats - who were part of the commission - should have been careful what they wished for.
"It will get done faster, but the Democrats no longer have a seat at the table," he said. "If they think this is a victory for the left, they are wrong."
Trump said there was no reason to continue the commission when the work being done could be carried out by existing agencies.
"Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud," press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, "many states have refused to provide the [commission] with basic information relevant to its inquiry. Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, [the president] signed an executive order to dissolve the commission, and he has asked the Department of Homeland Security to review its initial findings and determine next courses of action."
Kobach, who is the secretary of state for Kansas, agreed.
"DHS can do it more freely and efficiently than a commission can," he said. "The most important info that only the DHS can provide is how many aliens we have on the voter rolls."
Trump, as is his way, couldn't help but weigh in on Twitter on what he'd decided.
"Many mostly Democrat States refused to hand over data from the 2016 election to the Commission On Voter Fraud," he tweeted. "They fought hard that the Commission not see their records or methods because they know that many people are voting illegally. System is rigged, must go to Voter I.D."
Trump was making the cases many states already have in approving a voter identification system, and often photo IDs. Such identification, after all, is required for a driver's license, for flying on commercial airlines, and often for verification for payments by check.
States like Tennessee, which require a photo ID, have made it simple for anyone who is eligible to get one. Undoubtedly, this is the case in most other states.
Why do Democrats continually oppose these measures? Why would they oppose a voter ID when IDs are required in so many other places? If they don't want to hide anything, as they maintain, what is their true opposition to requiring an ID to vote?
"The fact that the commission encountered so many lawsuits and such resistance illustrates just how the partisan left is determined to obstruct the gaining of information about the extent of voter fraud," Kobach said.
We believe it is because voter fraud already exists in some states and locales. Allowing access to voter data would only prove that. In light of that, we hope the public will push for voter security in every state, and that Homeland Security can close the loop from its end in keeping noncitizens from fouling a right that should be sacred to every American.