TOPEKA, Kan. — Voting rights advocates and some state election officials cheered President Trump’s announcement that he was disbanding his election fraud commission, but their celebration could be short-lived.

Trump spiked the commission late Wednesday amid infighting and refusals by numerous states to cooperate, but at the same time transferred its mission to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. That concerns some election officials and experts who had been critical of the commission.

DHS could have broad legal authority to conduct an investigation into Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud. That’s because of a declaration at the end of President Obama’s administration that election infrastructure is vital to national security.

“I am deeply concerned that the work is being shifted over to DHS where it can be done behind closed doors and without the sunshine offered from open public scrutiny,” Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos, a Democrat, said in a statement Thursday to The Associated Press.

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Thursday that the White House would send the commission’s preliminary findings to the department “and make determinations on the best way forward from that point.”

Asked why the task was going to Homeland Security and not another agency, Sanders said: “That was the agency that was best determined by the administration and we’re moving forward and letting them take over the process.”

Condos said the move “only fuels fears of a federal takeover” of elections, which are overseen by the states and carried out by thousands of local jurisdictions. The decentralized nature of the country’s elections has been seen as a buffer against attempts at widespread manipulation.

The commission’s vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, said the work done by DHS is likely to be less public.

Trump convened the commission in May to investigate the 2016 presidential election after repeatedly making unsubstantiated claims that between 3 million and 5 million illegally cast ballots had cost him the popular vote. Trump won the Electoral College.

It wasn’t immediately clear what direction the Department of Homeland Security would take.