A federal election official entertained a pitch from a group tied to President Donald Trump to discredit public comments on making voters prove citizenship.
According to a Wednesday article by Democracy Docket, emails showed that Christy McCormick, a former Republican vice chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, kept in regular contact with leaders of the Election Integrity Network during the agency's public comment period on the proof-of-citizenship proposal.
The Election Integrity Network is a conservative group founded by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer and longtime Trump ally. The legal group Democracy Forward obtained the emails between McCormick and leaders of Mitchell's group.
At issue was whether the U.S. Election Assistance Commission should require documentary proof of citizenship on the federal voter registration form. Last October, Election Integrity Network deputy director Ned Jones wrote to McCormick claiming many of the comments submitted to the agency were fake or manufactured.
"One of our data scientists has done a deep analysis of the 134,950 'Posted Comments,' and has found that approximately 40,000 are exact multiple duplicates and approximately 90,000 are unique, many with just a slight change from the duplicates," Jones wrote.
"At some point, it may be very beneficial to have our data scientist brief the commissioners or even staff with his analysis of the comments," Jones added. "Thanks for all you do for election integrity."
McCormick did not turn him down, even though such a briefing could have raised legal problems for the nonpartisan agency, according to Democracy Docket.
"It's good to know that you have a data scientist analyzing the comments," McCormick replied. "Once we get back to full strength and can have a discussion about it, I will let the others know of your offer."
Democracy Docket noted that whether the briefing ever took place remained unclear. Neither the commission nor McCormick responded to Democracy Docket's requests for comment. McCormick was permitted to resign when Trump ousted the agency's leadership in July.
The comment period grew out of Trump's March 2025 executive order directing the commission to add the citizenship requirement. After a federal judge blocked the order, a conservative legal group founded by Trump aide Stephen Miller petitioned the agency to pursue the change anyway, according to Democracy Docket.