Jake Laperruque writes: The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity — a body set up by President Donald Trump to investigate “the registration and voting processes used in Federal elections,” including vulnerabilities that could lead to voter fraud — is widely seen as perpetuating the myth of mass fraud in the 2016 election in order to facilitate voter intimidation and suppression, including selectively purging voter rolls.

Of the fifty states to receive a request for voter roll data from Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach in his role as vice chair of the commission, 44 (and the District of Columbia) have already either totally or partly refused to comply. Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann went as far as to declare, “They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from,” and in his position as Secretary of State of Kansas, Kobach was legally bound to refuse his own request to himself.

But our nation needs more than a vociferous rejection of Kobach’s efforts. We need to put civics before partisanship and promote proactive policies to ensure accessibility and ease of voting, and the stakes for doing so are higher than ever. [Continue reading…]