Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap alleges the group’s leadership is violating transparency laws and has excluded him from deliberations.
Update, Nov. 9, 2017: Responses from
Kris Kobach and Andrew Kossack, co-chair and executive director,
respectively, of the voter fraud commission, have been added.
A Democratic member of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity filed suit against the commission
in federal court in Washington, D.C. on Thursday morning, alleging that
its Republican leadership has intentionally excluded him from
deliberations and violated federal transparency laws. The commission has
been sued more times (eight, including the new filing) than it has
officially convened for meetings (two times).
The suit, filed by Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, accuses
the commission of violating the Federal Advisory Commission Act, which,
among other things, requires that advisory committees be bipartisan and
sets transparency requirements for them. “Everything we are doing is
absolutely perpendicular to that,” Dunlap charged in an interview. “We
aren’t inviting the public to participate. We aren’t transparent. And we
aren’t even working together at all. My real fear is that this
commission will offer policy recommendations that have not been properly
vetted by all of the commissioners.”
The complaint contends Dunlap “has been, and continues to be, blocked
from receiving Commission documents necessary to carry out his
responsibilities” despite repeated requests to be included. It asserts
that Dunlap is moving forward with the lawsuit “reluctantly” in order to
prevent the commission from “becoming exactly the kind of one-sided,
partisan undertaking the Federal Advisory Committee Act was designed to
prohibit.”
Click here for the full article.
Source: ProPublica
No comments:
Post a Comment