Trump scraps his own voter fraud commission

US President Donald Trump has scrapped the voter fraud commission he set up in May to investigate his own allegations of illegal voting.

A White House statement said many US states had refused to cooperate with the commission.

Mr Trump has said fraud had cost him the popular vote in the 2016 election.

His rival Hillary Clinton won three million more votes overall than Mr Trump in results that were certified by the Federal Election Commission.

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Mr Trump had decided to dissolve the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity "rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense".

Democrats had alleged the voter fraud commission is a ploy to suppress left-leaning voters.

• The man behind Trump's illegal vote claim

• Did millions vote illegally in the US?

• Trump's voter fraud talk has liberals worried

Mr Trump won the all-important electoral college vote in November 2016 by prevailing in Midwestern states; however, Mrs Clinton gathered more ballots nationwide - known as the popular vote.

The Republican president has insisted he in fact won the popular vote, "if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally", without offering any evidence for the claim.

State election officials have disputed Mr Trump's claim and many states refused to provide the commission with information for all their registered voters, including their names, addresses, political affiliation and voting history.

Is there any evidence?

• Unsubstantiated claim was started by self-styled conservative voter fraud specialist Greg Phillips, who tweeted: "Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million"

• His tweets were picked up by right-wing fringe websites such as Infowars.com

• Fact-checking website Snopes.com says there is "zero evidence" that "illegal aliens" voted in election

• "Don't buy it," says Politifact, which points to research suggesting there have been 56 cases of non-citizens voting numbers between 2000-2011

• A Pew study in 2012 found millions of invalid voter registrations because people moved or died, but "zero evidence" of fraud