President Trump announced additional members for his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity yesterday: Christian Adams and Alan King, a Democrat from Alabama. These experts will greatly aid the commission in its work and bring a wealth of real-world experience and expertise to the commission.  

Christian Adams has experience in election administration at the state and federal levels.  Adams served as General Counsel to the South Carolina Secretary of State, advising on election law and administration, and served in the Voting Section at the U.S. Department of Justice.  He has litigated election cases all over the country.

Currently, Adams is doing the important work of enforcing liberals’ favorite voting law, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA or “motor voter”). The NVRA requires local election officials to take steps to ensure their voter registration rolls are accurate, including removing dead and ineligible persons. Many local election officials have not been following the law’s requirements, some from fear of litigation from liberal groups who oppose such efforts to keep the voter registration records accurate. Adams and his organization, Public Interest Legal Foundation, have been requesting information about the voter registration records from local officials, publicizing the errors in them and lack of efforts to keep them accurate, and in certain cases, filing suit to require the local official to follow the law.

Adams has something his critics sorely lack, experience with elections from both a federal and state government perspective. The importance of this cannot be overstated and is a key component for any federal commission in our state-based election system. This is in strong contrast to some of the harshest critics of the Commission on Election Integrity who base their views on biased partisan studies or spend their time in academia far removed from the nuts and bolts of elections.