U.S. President Donald Trump called Thursday for stronger voter identification laws, a day after he disbanded a commission tasked with investigating his claims of massive voter fraud.
The president has not presented any evidence to back up his allegations that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election. He won the presidency by way of the Electoral College vote while losing the overall popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton by nearly 3 million votes.
In a series of Twitter posts Thursday, Trump blamed the commission's failures on "many mostly Democrat states" for refusing to hand over voter information.
"As Americans, you need identification, sometimes in a very strong and accurate form, for almost everything you do.....except when it comes to the most important thing, VOTING for the people that run your country. Push hard for Voter Identification!" Trump wrote.
State officials expressed concerns about the privacy of the data the commission requested, which included names, partial Social Security numbers, voting histories and people's party affiliations. Critics of the commission also cited fears that the commission was working both to justify Trump's fraud claims and to make it more difficult for poor and minority voters to participate in elections.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday that Trump had decided to disband the commission "rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense." She added that the Department of Homeland Security would review the panel's work and "determine next courses of action."