In 2017, President Donald Trump created the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity after repeating the unsubstantiated claim that millions of illegal immigrants had voted in the 2016 election. J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), served on the commission and promoted allegations of widespread voter fraud. The commission was disbanded in January 2018, less than a year after its creation, without producing evidence of significant fraud.
The source also describes PILF’s campaign to force localities to purge voter rolls and publish identifying information about people it suspected of fraud. NBC News reported that the organization placed personal data online, including Social Security numbers, and falsely accused eligible voters; one identified voter was a U.S. missionary in Guatemala. Adams’s attacks on the Electronic Registration Information Center in 2021 contributed to several states withdrawing from the cooperative data-sharing network, potentially reducing voter-roll accuracy. The episode illustrates how unsupported fraud claims and exposure of private voter data can undermine election administration without establishing the alleged misconduct.
