HOUSTON, TX. – November 27, 2016: True the Vote (TTV), the nation’s leading voters’ rights and election integrity organization, today released a statement with respect to President-elect Donald Trump’s claim that “millions” of individuals illegally voted in the 2016 Election.

“True the Vote absolutely supports President-elect Trump’s recent comment about the impact of illegal voting, as reflected in the national popular vote. We are still collecting data and will be for several months, but our intent is to publish a comprehensive study on the significant impact of illegal voting in all of its many forms and begin a national discussion on how voters, states, and the Trump Administration can best address this growing problem.”

Jay Caruso

? @JayCaruso

As a 33-year-old with no previous administrative experience, Phillips had not long been in charge of the 4,300-employee agency before questions began to surface about his management decisions and the disallowance of $2 million in MDHS expenditures by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

At the heart of the controversy was a deal Phillips made for a workforce training program based at Ole Miss called LEAP.

In late April, 1995 Phillips resigned his MDHS post and immediately entered into a contract with Synesis Corporation, an outfit whose Centec subsidiary Phillips had been doing business with at MDHS. The PEER committee was already hot on finding out about Phillips dealings.

That resulted in a searing PEER report charging that Phillips had in effect set Centec up in business with an $878,000 contract and now was profiting from it to the tune of $84,000 a year.

PEER, with a recommendation that Phillips’ “impropriety” likely constituted a violation of state conflict of interest laws, turned it over to the Attorney General’s office and urged lawmakers to tighten ethics laws regarding state executive appointees who are not elective officials. Unfortunately, Phillips was never charged with a law violation before he moved on to pastures out of state.