Vice President Mike Pence promised a “full evaluation” of voting rules and integrity to congressional Republicans in a private meeting, according to reports published Thursday.
During a closed-door meeting with congressional Republicans at GOP lawmakers’ annual retreat in Philadelphia this week, Pence was recorded responding to a question from Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) on voter fraud, according to the Washington Post and the Guardian.
Brooks said President Donald Trump had been “spot on” in identifying voter fraud as a problem, “although he can’t really itemize the magnitude.”
“What I can tell you is that I would anticipate that the administration is going to initiate a full evaluation of voting rules in the country, the overall integrity of our voting system in the wake of this past election,” Pence responded, according to the Post.
“Just because so many Americans share the concern that you have, I have, the President certainly has about people being registered in multiple states,” Pence added later, according to the Post. “You can anticipate that we will be looking for ways to work with you, to simply dig into it, to follow the facts, to see where the facts go. That one person, one vote principle is at the very heart of this republic and our democratic institutions, and it must be defended.”
Representatives for Pence and members of Congress present in the meeting refused to confirm the recording’s authenticity to the Post, though Brooks’ office confirmed the accuracy of his quotes to the publication. The Post reported that its quotes from the meeting match up with reporting from the Post’s journalists on the meeting. The Guardian report on the tape matches quotes with the Post.
On Tuesday of this week, Donald Trump repeated his baseless claim that millions of illegal votes cost him the popular vote to the Hillary Clinton in a meeting with congressional leadership. After backlash, including from members of his own party, he wrote on Twitter that he intended to initiate an investigation of voter fraud.
