Dan Coats: Trump’s former spy chief is calling on Congress to create an election oversight commission
Former DNI Dan Coats outlined the proposed oversight commission in an opinion piece published Thursday in The New York Times in which he wrote that “our democracy’s enemies, foreign and domestic, want us to concede in advance that our voting systems are faulty or fraudulent; that sinister conspiracies have distorted the political will of the people,” among other things. As a result, Coats wrote, the “most urgent task American leaders face is to ensure that the election’s results are accepted as legitimate.”
Coats said Congress should “create a supremely high-level bipartisan and nonpartisan commission to oversee the election. This commission would not circumvent existing electoral reporting systems or those that tabulate, evaluate or certify the results. But it would monitor those mechanisms and confirm for the public that the laws and regulations governing them have been scrupulously and expeditiously followed — or that violations have been exposed and dealt with — without political prejudice and without regard to political interests of either party.”
Though Coats doesn’t take direct aim at Trump in the op-ed, it nonetheless presents a contrast with views espoused by his former boss, who has frequently made unproven claims that American elections are rife with voter fraud, stoking fears that the results might not be recognized as valid by millions of Americans.
Earlier this month, Trump launched a new baseless accusation about how he believes Democrats will attempt to commit fraud during the presidential election, telling North Carolina rallygoers to act as poll watchers to prevent fraud at voting locations. He has also claimed, without evidence, that he lost the popular vote in 2016 due to voter fraud.
Coats wrote that the proposed commission “would be responsible for monitoring those forces that seek to harm our electoral system through interference, fraud, disinformation or other distortions” adding that any illegal activity would be “referred to appropriate law enforcement agencies and national security entities.”
The commission’s members, Coats said, would be comprised of both Democrats and Republicans and “could include congressional leaders, current and former governors, ‘elder statespersons,’ former national security leaders,” and others, including former Supreme Court justices and leaders in the private sector.
“They would accept as a personal moral responsibility to put the integrity and fairness of the election process above everything else, making public reassurance their goal,” Coats wrote.
