Democratic Minority Leader, Senator Chuck Schumer, has emerged as one of the most highly partisan leaders in the Senate in a long while. Senator Schumer has also become a leading critic of President Trump's Commission on Election Integrity headed by Vice President Pence.
Senator Schumer decried:
"President Trump has decided to waste taxpayer dollars chasing a unicorn and perpetuating the dangerous myth that widespread voter fraud exists."
Reported by Fox News on May 11, 2017
He continued by claiming the Commission was going to be a:
“clear front for constricting the access to vote to poor Americans, older Americans, and — above all — African-Americans and Latinos.”
Reported by the Washington Post on May 11, 2017
However, it looks like Senator Schumer's real objection is simply this is a Commission called for by President Trump after he claimed that vote fraud occurred during the 2016 Election.
Let's take a look at what Senator Schumer said in March 2009. According to Politico:
Chuck Schumer’s side won big in 2008, but the New York senator has launched an inquiry into potential voter fraud and disenfranchisement.
On Wednesday morning, Schumer gaveled to order a hearing on a report estimating that as many as seven million voters were kept from casting ballots in November.
“This report is beyond troubling,” said Schumer, who is chairman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. “Put together, you get massive disenfranchisement. This is unacceptable and undemocratic.”
While the problems of the infamous 2000 election battle were the result of long lines and hanging chads, an MIT study argues the problems of the 2008 race were the result of voter registration issues. Among the report’s findings are that two million to four million registered voters were discouraged from casting ballots and that as many as nine million additional people tried and failed to register to vote.
As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration in 2009, Schumer was very - and correctly - concerned about election integrity. However, in 2017, Senator Schumer rather put partisanship ahead of the looking into the extent of vote fraud and overall election integrity.
To be clear, at least "some" vote fraud did occur during the 2016 Election. To categorically deny the problem is to fully ignore a serious problem, a real threat to our elections and our democracy. While the full extent of this problem is currently unknown, the RNLA has documented those cases that have been published on our Vote Fraud News page.