The Executive order establishing the “voter fraud” commission provides for the VP to chair and up to 15 additional members. Yet the NYT report says it will have “about a dozen” members, and so far we only know the names of Kobach, Lawson, Blackwell, Gardner, Dunlap and McCormick. That’s 6 names.

So unusual to announce the formation of a commission without saying who the members are and passing along their bios; without having a research director in place; without having infrastructure in place.

It is not as though this is a new idea. My Slate piece criticizing the idea of the commission was posted Jan. 25, just 5 days after inauguration.

So here are two theories:

1. This was rushed today to take attention away from Comey/Russia, before everything was put in place.
2. They’ve been trying to find more Democrats and some election professionals/academics to serve on the committee, and so far they’ve come up empty. They want to create the pretense of a fair, bipartisan commission.

I’m open to other theories including simple incompetence.