The head of the Federal Election Commission has accused President Donald Trump of threatening democracy with his unproven allegations of voter fraud and asked him to show his evidence if he has any.
Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat who leads the agency, sent him a scathing letter Wednesday, calling on the president to produce evidence that illegal ballots were cast in last year's election.
"This allegation of a vast conspiracy ... has deeply disturbed citizens throughout America," the letter said. "Our democracy depends on the American people's faith in our elections. Your voter fraud allegations run the risk of undermining that faith."
In January, days after he entered the White House, Trump said that between 3 million and 5 million illegal votes were cast in the November presidential election. He told members of Congress that he lost New Hampshire because "thousands" of people came from neighboring Massachusetts and voted illegally. White House officials at the time said the claim was based on studies and evidence presented to the president.
The administration has produced no evidence to back up these claims.
"Facts matter, Mr. President," Weintraub wrote. "The American people deserve to see your evidence."
Trump, who lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, has called for an investigation into voter fraud, but nothing formal has been launched.
In December, researchers at Dartmouth College conducted a study of abnormal voting patterns in the 2016 election. They looked into voting by non-citizens and the dead, among other things, and found no evidence to support Trump's claims. After his statements about New Hampshire, the researchers honed in on voting there and found no irregularities.
Nationwide, Republican and Democratic elections officials said that voter fraud is rare and that it did not affect their states.
Weintraub has drawn criticism from the nonprofit group Cause of Action Institute, which said that allegations of voter fraud fall outside the campaign finance jurisdiction of the FEC, an independent regulatory agency that focuses on campaign finance rules.
"This is not how the FEC operates," James Valvo, a senior policy adviser of the group told The Washington Post. "There are procedures in place for the agency to investigate allegations of violations of federal campaign finance law. Those procedures do not include individual commissioners sending public letters demanding evidence."
