"The Plural of Anecdote Is Not Data" Commission Member Dunlap's Problems With Presidential Advisory Commission on Elections

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Elections was controversial before it began   Today one of the Democrats on the commission (though they were shut out from viewing documents and meetings) published a letter he wrote to the defunct committee's chair and to the President.  First come experts from a news report, then below is the letter itself.


From the Bangor Daily News :  

PORTLAND, Maine — The now-disbanded voting integrity commission launched by the Trump administration uncovered no evidence to support claims of widespread voter fraud, according to an analysis of administration documents released Friday.
In a letter to Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who are both Republicans and led the commission, Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap said the documents show there was a “pre-ordained outcome” and that drafts of a commission report included a section on evidence of voter fraud that was “glaringly empty.”
“It’s calling into the darkness, looking for voter fraud,” Dunlap, a Democrat, told The Associated Press. “There’s no real evidence of it anywhere.”

Kris Kobach disagreed.

“It appears that Secretary Dunlap is willfully blind to the voter fraud in front of his nose,” Kobach said in a statement released by his spokesman.
Kobach said there have been more than 1,000 convictions for voter fraud since 2000, and that the commission presented 8,400 instances of double voting in the 2016 election in 20 states.
“Had the commission done the same analysis of all 50 states, the number would have been exponentially higher,” Kobach said. 

But Dunlap says:

In response, Dunlap said those figures were never brought before the commission, and that Kobach hasn’t presented any evidence for his claims of double voting. He said the commission was presented with a report claiming over 1,000 convictions for various forms of voter misconduct since 1948.
“The plural of anecdote is not data,” Dunlap said in his Friday letter to the shuttered commission’s leaders. 

But here's Dunlap's complete letter to Kobach and Trump outlining his complaints.  He doesn't mince words.

Matthew Dunlap Presidential Advisory Committee on Elections (PACEI) Docs Findings Letter - by Steve on Scribd

You can get 29 additional documents Dunlap received at the Maine Secretary of State website.