article in The New Yorker. He has supported his claims about the extent of voter fraud by citing a 2000 investigation by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which purported to find 5400 instances of deceased people in Georgia voting in the last twenty years. The Journal-Constitution later revised its findings, noting that it had no evidence of even a single ballot purportedly being cast by a deceased person and that the vast majority of the instances in question were due to clerical errors. In an interview with the New Yorker, von Spakovsky cited two scholars who he said could substantiate that voter-impersonation fraud was rampant: Robert Pastor of American University and Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. Pastor and Sabato both said they would only support voter ID laws if those IDs were issued without cost to the voters, and acquired without substantial difficulty. It is Sabato's belief that voter impersonation is "relatively rare today," yet in a 2011 Heritage Foundation article, von Spakovsky referred to Sabato once more as a researcher whose studies established the existence of widespread voter fraud. He also has cited conservative columnist John Fund's Stealing Elections, a book whose assertions of election fraud have been extensively debunked. Fund also co-authored a book with von Spakovsky. In an email, von Spakovsky urged Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to appoint any Democrats, "moderate Republicans and/or academics" to the Commission. According to Richard L. Hasen, an election-law expert at the University of California at Irvine, "there are number of people who have been active in promoting false and exaggerated claims of voter fraud and using that as a pretext to argue for stricter voting and registration rules. And von Spakovsky is at the top of the list." Hasen said that Trump's appointment of Spakovsky's was "a big middle finger" to people who are "serious about fixing problems with our elections." One of Trump's appointees to the commission, Ken Blackwell, was Ohio Secretary of State for two terms beset with controversy, lawsuits, and accusations that he had created impediments to voting. During the 2004 presidential election, Blackwell attempted to throw out voter registrations in Ohio that were not printed on "white, uncoated paper of not less than 80-pound text weight" (a heavy card-stock paper) and the 2004 election in the state was marred by "controversies over topics ranging from voting devices to long lines on Election Day." Blackwell revoked