Why Trump's Hunt for Fake Votes Missed Its Target

Winning wasn’t enough for Donald Trump. His triumph in the U.S. Electoral College made him the 45th president, but he couldn’t accept that Democrat Hillary Clinton captured more total votes. Trump claimed fraud on the order of 3 million to 5 million ballots and created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which was to report back on "improper" or "fraudulent" activity. Skeptics sensed an effort to make it harder to register and vote. The commission’s first action, a broad request for information, drew acid responses from some states, which Trump cited in disbanding the panel on Wednesday.

In a June 28 letter to states and the District of Columbia, the panel’s de facto leader, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, requested, if "publicly available under the laws of your state," the names, birth dates, addresses, political affiliations, felony convictions, military service records and final four digits of Social Security numbers of registered voters, along with which elections they voted in since 2006. The letter also invited opinions on ways to improve the integrity of federal elections, plus information about voter fraud and "convictions for election-related crimes" since 2000.