Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md) is investigating True the Vote
A Maryland congressman has opened an investigation of a group that has tried to remove thousands of voters from registration rolls across the nation in advance of the presidential election.
The inquiry by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings , a Democrat, is being started a week after Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) urged the Justice Department to enforce voting rights laws, citing a Los Angeles Times article detailing attempts by an Ohio offshoot of the group, True the Vote, to strike hundreds of students and others from voting rolls.‘At some point, an effort to challenge voter registrations by the thousands without any legitimate basis may be evidence of illegal voter suppression,’ Cummings told True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht in a letter on Thursday. ‘If these efforts are intentional, politically motivated and widespread across multiple states, they could amount to a criminal conspiracy to deny legitimate voters their constitutional rights.’
Cummings is the ranking minority member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
The Ohio group also challenged the rights of eight members of an African American family to vote from an address it identified as a vacant lot outside Cincinnati. But the address was actually the house where the family had lived for nearly three decades. The family suspected race was the group’s motive. The white tea party activist who challenged the family said she had made a mistake and apologized.
In a statement dated Monday on True the Vote’s website, Engelbrecht said the group’s Ohio volunteers had no intention of challenging properly registered voters and were ‘completely unprepared for the partisan gamesmanship and media spectacle they were subjected to.’
From Rachel Maddow’s show on 27 August 2012, she dicusses True the Vote and what they have been up in Ohio.