“‘Pray there is no hell’: Critics are savaging Trump’s voter fraud panel via email”

Must-read Celeste Katz:

When President Donald Trump’s “voter fraud panel” holds its first meeting on July 19, members of the public won’t be able to speak. Instead, the Presidential Commission on Election Integrity, which has enraged and frightened plenty of Americans by requesting detailed data on every registered voter in the country, offered to take comments via email.

And comment people did.

As of Thursday afternoon, 112 pages of responses were already available on the White House website — and if the feds set up a swear jar, the U.S. just might be on its way to paying off that national debt.

Descriptions of the controversial panel and its aims included “pea brained,” “undemocratic,” “stupid” and “unpatriotic.”

And that was the good news.

The panel is supposed to study and address vulnerabilities in the system, along with concerns about potential fraud and suppression. Critics fear it could ultimately be weaponized to keep people from voting.

While there were some notes encouraging the commission, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach as vice chairman, the majority of the responses posted to date were so harsh that they probably should have come with a vial of antivenom — or at least a box of tissues.

“You are all about voter suppression to rig elections. You are evil. Pray there is no hell,” said a relatively mild June 29 missive submitted under the header, “you are not about voting integrity.”

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