Mike Pence’s scandal-plagued voter suppression commission goes dormant

After holding just two public hearings in 2017, and two weeks after one of its own members sued the commission for violating federal law, Mike Pence’s impotent presidential commission on alleged voter fraud has officially gone dark for the rest of the year.

Questions now persist whether the panel will even bother reconvening in 2018.

“A commission that President Donald Trump tasked with investigating his own unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud won’t meet again this year, according to court records, fueling more questions about the panel’s future and its viability,” Politico reported.

Citing a White House source, Politico noted that “the official would neither confirm nor deny reports that the panel might close up shop without further meeting.”

If the commission does get shut down, it would be a fitting, anti-climatic ending for a doomed-from-the-start fishing expedition.

Mendaciously dubbed the White House’s “Election Integrity Commission,” and co-chaired Pence and voter suppression crusader Kris Kobach, the panel was supposed to dig into allegations of voter fraud.

But despite Trump’s repeated fantasizing that millions of people illegally voted in the election, experts have spent years confirming the United States does not have a voter fraud problem.

A Loyola University Law School professor conducted extensive research and found only 31 instances of possible voter fraud amidst one billion ballots cast between 2000 and 2014.

To date, the waste-of-time, suppression commission “has been sued more times (eight, including the new filing) than it has officially convened for meetings (two times),” ProPublica recently noted.

The eruption of lawsuits was sparked by the commission’s outlandish demand that states hand over all their voter roll information, including partial Social Security numbers and criminal conviction data.

Even dozens of Republican secretaries of state said no way. “I cannot in good conscience release Arizonans’ sensitive voter data for this hastily organized experiment,” said Michele Reagan, Arizona’s top election official.

And two weeks ago, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democrat who was selected to sit on the commission, sued in federal court, accusing the commission of violating the Federal Advisory Commission Act, which requires that advisory committees be bipartisan and that they meet transparency requirements for them.

According to Dunlop, the commission doesn’t actually exist in any real or substantive way. He says he hasn’t been contacted by the task force in months, and hasn’t been told about plans for any future meetings.

“We aren’t inviting the public to participate. We aren’t transparent. And we aren’t even working together at all,” he declared.

Despite its charter calling for hearings to be held every 30 to 60 days, Pence’s commission hasn’t held a public event since Sept. 12.

And there’s no clear idea when — or if — it will hold another. And good riddance.