New Mexico Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver said that “false claims of voter fraud” by President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions “are yet another disgusting attempt at voters suppression.”
Toulouse Oliver encouraged New Mexicans to vote on Election Day despite the statements.
“The President is only trying to degrade confidence in our elections and discourage eligible voters from casting their ballots,” Toulouse Oliver said. “There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud anywhere in New Mexico or the United States, and when it does occur it is prosecuted swiftly and vigorously. I encourage all eligible New Mexico voters to get to the polls today and make their voices heard.”
In a release, the Secretary of State linked to a Washington Post article from Monday night that said Trump and Sessions warned about voter fraud without providing any evidence. Trump made the claims about the alleged voter fraud ahead of a campaign rally in Cleveland on Monday. He also tweeted that law enforcement was “strongly notified to watch closely” for illegal voting.
Sessions said in the Department of Justice’s plans for monitoring Election Day voting that “fraud in the voting process will not be tolerated.”
The Washington Post reported, “In past years, Justice Department officials have not listed voter fraud as a top concern when announcing the deployment of election monitors, as Sessions did Monday.”
MSNBC reported that Trump’s false or misleading claims in office have ramped up in October as the midterms approach.
Trump alleged that millions of votes in 2016 were cast illegally, without providing any evidence. A voter fraud commission put together by Trump, led by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, unraveled earlier this year without finding any evidence of widespread voter fraud. Kobach himself was found in contempt of court for “willful failure” to obey a judge’s ruling regarding a Kansas law.
Toulouse Oliver was among a bipartisan group of Secretaries of State who refused to provide voter data, which would have includes Social Security numbers and other information, to the commission.
The Brennan Center for Justice found voter impersonation fraud happens only between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent of the time.
