A member of the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Friday called on US President Donald Trump to share any evidence he has to support a statement that voter fraud caused him and former US senator Kelly Ayotte to lose in New Hampshire in last year’s election.
“The scheme the president of the United States alleges would constitute thousands of felony criminal offenses under New Hampshire law,” FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said in a statement.
Trump blamed voter fraud for his and Ayotte’s losses in New Hampshire in November’s election while speaking on Thursday with a bipartisan group of senators, saying that Ayotte’s re-election bid was spoiled by “thousands” of people from neighboring Massachusetts voting in New Hampshire, according to media reports.
US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton narrowly won New Hampshire’s four electoral votes by nearly 3,000 votes, while Ayotte, a Republican like Trump, lost by only 743 votes.
Weintraub, who was appointed by former US president George W. Bush, asked Trump to “immediately share his evidence with the public and with the appropriate law enforcement authorities so that his allegations may be investigated promptly and thoroughly.”
Trump on Sunday last week said he would put US Vice President Mike Pence in charge of a special commission to investigate voter fraud, despite numerous studies showing that such fraud is rare in the US.
Trump has said that fraud might account for his loss nationwide in the popular vote to Clinton by nearly 3 million votes.
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