President Donald Trump's plans to investigate the possibility of voter fraud in the 2016 election could pave the way for tough voting rules including stringent ID requirements that Democrats and rights groups say would amount to a new assault on voting rights.
Trump's frequent and repeatedly refuted assertions of election fraud were a tacit endorsement of recent Republican-led state restrictions on access to the ballot, critics said, and could be an early sign of the administration's support for changes in laws that could create new hurdles to voting.
"If you look throughout history, these allegations of fraud have always been deployed as a justification for restricting access to the ballot," said Dale Ho, director of the Voting Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.
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