Speaker 1: President Donald Trump signs an executive order yesterday establishing the
Speaker 1: Presidential Commission on Election Integrity to examine alleged improper voting
Speaker 1: and voter suppression in federal elections. Trump has claimed without
Speaker 1: proof that his opponent won the popular vote last year
Speaker 1: because of voter fraud, saying that millions of people who
Speaker 1: weren't eligible to vote, particularly undocumented immigrants, cast ballots. We're
Speaker 1: going to protect the integrity of the ballot box, and
Speaker 1: we are going to defend the votes of the American
Speaker 1: citizens so important. Many top democratic and civil rights leaders
Speaker 1: have charged at the effort to clap down on alleged
Speaker 1: voter fraud is intended to suppress voter turnout among minorities,
Speaker 1: the poor, and the elderly by putting up new barriers
Speaker 1: to voting. Trump has named Vice President Mike Pence as
Speaker 1: chairman of the Commission, and Chris Koback, the Kansas Secretary
Speaker 1: of State known for advocating for the strictest voter i
Speaker 1: D laws in the country as vice chairman. Joining us
Speaker 1: our election law experts, Nate Personally, Professor It's Stanford Law School,
Speaker 1: and Richard Refault, Professor at Columbia Law School, Nate, you
Speaker 1: were the research director on the Presidential Commission on Election
Speaker 1: Administration after the election. Tell us about any real evidence
Speaker 1: of widespread voter fraud. Well, there isn't widespread evidence of
Speaker 1: voter fraud. There are any number of irregularities in our
Speaker 1: election system, um coming from you know, machines that don't work,
Speaker 1: voters who are wrongly put on the registered registration rolls,
Speaker 1: dead people on the rolls, people who move. So there
Speaker 1: are all kinds of problems with our election administration system,
Speaker 1: but there is no widespread evidence of fraud. Rich. This
Speaker 1: commission is being built by the White House at least
Speaker 1: as a bipartisan commission. There are at least two Democrats
Speaker 1: on it. What do you think is that? Is this
Speaker 1: going to be an even handed look at America's election laws? Well,
Speaker 1: it's not really being set off that way, uh As
Speaker 1: Natean knows his experience, Nate was the research director of
Speaker 1: the last major commission that looked into the election administration
Speaker 1: system in the US. Typically, these commissions have two chairs,
Speaker 1: and one of a prominent senior Democrat and one of
Speaker 1: a prominent senior Republican. So there was the Carter Baker
Speaker 1: or Baker Carter, Jimmy Carter and James Baker's Republican Secretary
Speaker 1: State the one that Nate was on, the Power Ginsburg.
Speaker 1: They were the top election lawyers of their two different parties.
Speaker 1: This is one of the top two figures of both Republicans.
Speaker 1: The Vice President, Mike Pences the chair, and I believe
Speaker 1: Chris Koback supposed to be the vice chair, and he
Speaker 1: not only is the partisan, but he has taken a
Speaker 1: very um strident efficacy position on a lot of election issues.
Speaker 1: So there may be some Democrats on the commission. I
Speaker 1: think the full membership has not been announced, but it
Speaker 1: is certainly not being set up in the the bipartisan
Speaker 1: way that passed. The commissions that have looked into election
Speaker 1: leader issues have been Nate. We know that Senate Majority
Speaker 1: Leader Mitch Connell set in February that no federal money
Speaker 1: should be spent investigating voter fraud. Doesn't the commission need
Speaker 1: professional staff with experience dealing with election administration and resources
Speaker 1: to examine any credible evidence? I mean, don't you need
Speaker 1: to put money into this commission? They will put money
Speaker 1: into the commission. I mean, I've looked at the Executive
Speaker 1: Order and it you know, suggests that they'll have all
Speaker 1: the support from the General Services Administration, and Chris Koback
Speaker 1: went on the air last night and said that their
Speaker 1: plan is to match up the voter lists with other
Speaker 1: lists that the federal government has about green card holders
Speaker 1: and other citizenship databases in order to see how many
Speaker 1: non citizens and ineligible voters are on the roles that
Speaker 1: may have voted in the last election. And so this
Speaker 1: will actually be a relatively expensive effort as these things go.
Speaker 1: I mean, we the Presidential Commission that I served under
Speaker 1: UM actually was was very frugal I think, I mean
Speaker 1: there was less than half a million dollars we ended
Speaker 1: up spending, and that was mainly just to have hearings
Speaker 1: around the country. Uh So this commission, yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: it's a real research effort if they undertake a real
Speaker 1: research effort. One thing I would also note that there's
Speaker 1: no UM concluding date for the commission, So this commission
Speaker 1: could be there for a while, perhaps looking into what
Speaker 1: happens in the two thousand eighteen election as well. Rich
Speaker 1: And but just about thirty seconds right now, But what's
Speaker 1: the scope of this commission? Is it going to look
Speaker 1: into allegations of votes suppression as well as allegations of
Speaker 1: voter fraud. It'should be not in the mandate of the charge.
Speaker 1: The mandate is all about election fraud and voter integrity,
Speaker 1: improper voter registration and improper voting. I think if you
Speaker 1: wanted to, you could squeeze it in because the mission
Speaker 1: talks about looking at rules and practices that enhance the
Speaker 1: people American people's confidence in the integrity of the electoral
Speaker 1: system and that undermine it. And you could argue that
Speaker 1: vote suppression devices undermine the integrity. So if somebody really
Speaker 1: wanted to push for looking at those voter suppression issues,
Speaker 1: they they could be stated within. But the overall tenor
Speaker 1: of the mission on the key terms and it all
Speaker 1: seems to be focused on concerns about voting registration and
Speaker 1: voting by people who should not be voting, as opposed
Speaker 1: to mechanisms that make it harder for people who are
Speaker 1: entitled to vote to actually vote. Coming up on Bloomberg law,
Speaker 1: what about the timing of this commission? And the A
Speaker 1: c l U has filed a Freedom of Information Act
Speaker 1: request seeking information that the Trump administration is using as
Speaker 1: the basis for its voter fraud claims go. We're talking
Speaker 1: with two experts in election law, Nate Personally, professor at
Speaker 1: Stanford Law School, and Richard Fall, professor at Columbia Law School,
Speaker 1: about President Donald Trump's Presidential Commission on Election Integrity. Nate,
Speaker 1: as I said, there were many top Democrats who came
Speaker 1: out with statements and civil rights leaders charging that this
Speaker 1: is an effort to uh, really to suppress voter turnout
Speaker 1: among minorities, the poor, and the elder by putting up
Speaker 1: new barriers to voting, such as voter I D S.
Speaker 1: Would a federal commission be able to do that? The
Speaker 1: commission itself won't be able to pass any laws, but
Speaker 1: it will um make recommendations, perhaps of federal legislation. The
Speaker 1: commission I served under, we made recommendations principally to the states,
Speaker 1: because that's where most election law is created, and so
Speaker 1: that was what we viewed as our goal and really
Speaker 1: tried to focus on the best practices from the states
Speaker 1: so that we could improve election administration and performance. But
Speaker 1: let me just we have to pull away the veneer
Speaker 1: a little bit with this executive order in this commission,
Speaker 1: which is that we have to remember that this is
Speaker 1: reverse engineered in order to justify a tweet that happened
Speaker 1: in the wake of President Trump's loss of the popular vote.
Speaker 1: And so these people are appointed and uh, their mission
Speaker 1: is to justify the idea that three to five million
Speaker 1: illegal votes were cast in the last electction. And so
Speaker 1: you can't rip this commission out of that context, especially
Speaker 1: when the Vice president is leading it and he has
Speaker 1: said that he believes that to be true already. Is
Speaker 1: the timing of this suspicious. Many people are saying that
Speaker 1: it's timed to to take attention away from the Comey
Speaker 1: firing and the FBI. I don't think it has. In
Speaker 1: some ways, I could see two stories in that regard.
Speaker 1: One is that it's attempt to distract from the Comey investigation.
Speaker 1: The other is the Comey investigation is distracting from this,
Speaker 1: and so you sort of slip it in at the
Speaker 1: same time that everyone's preoccupied with that. I don't think, um,
Speaker 1: it's distracting from everything happening with Comey. At least if
Speaker 1: you look at the front pages today, this is really
Speaker 1: below the fold um and you know this is something
Speaker 1: that's going to be going on and on over the
Speaker 1: next few years as they appoint new members and investigate
Speaker 1: the claims of voter front Well, speaking of appointing new
Speaker 1: members and actually putting a commission together, Rich, we have
Speaker 1: a commission here that doesn't really have any you know,
Speaker 1: a full complement of members or a staff or anything else,
Speaker 1: And so it's not clear who's going to end up
Speaker 1: on this. Is there any positive what do you think
Speaker 1: the possibilities are that, you know, Democrats and independent election
Speaker 1: experts would be willing to serve on this commission, giving
Speaker 1: the suspicion, given the suspicions a lot of them have
Speaker 1: about it, it's hard to say. I mean, part of
Speaker 1: the fact, the very fact that it was rushed out
Speaker 1: like this, So those sort of give credence to the
Speaker 1: idea that maybe there was an attempt to distract from
Speaker 1: the comby affair. The commission is not ready, and the
Speaker 1: White House at the President and talking about doing something
Speaker 1: like this for months. Why now when it's not even
Speaker 1: fully done In terms of people joining up, It's hard
Speaker 1: to say. I mean, on the one hand, it's sort
Speaker 1: of it's sort of um resonates to all of the
Speaker 1: statements people are making since November about how valuable would
Speaker 1: be for high quality people to join the Trump administration
Speaker 1: and to contribute their expertise and their knowledge and their
Speaker 1: you know, their commitment to standards. We saw what happened
Speaker 1: with Mr Rosenstein trying to do that. Um, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think they're the sense that this is
Speaker 1: clearly a facade, that this is a veiled device designed
Speaker 1: to both Nates suggests to give some kind of support
Speaker 1: for the idea that there were millions of illegal votescast,
Speaker 1: and then maybe going beyond that, to give to provide
Speaker 1: a program to make a tougher to add new restrictions
Speaker 1: on voting going forward. I mean, the Commission itself doesn't
Speaker 1: have the power to do it, but it has the
Speaker 1: bully put have the bully pulpit. Um, it's you know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure they would want to, as some people who
Speaker 1: are not die hard Republicans, to make it look more legitimate,
Speaker 1: but it's not clear that you ever will be legitimate. Nate,
Speaker 1: what's your reaction to the a c L you filing
Speaker 1: a Freedom of Information Act request seeking information that the
Speaker 1: Trump administration is using as the basis for its voter
Speaker 1: fraud claims. Well, I see that mainly as a strategic
Speaker 1: device in order to highlight the fact that they don't
Speaker 1: have the evidence that there's three to five million illegal
Speaker 1: votes cast in the election. Realized that if that had
Speaker 1: been the level of illegal voting in the last election,
Speaker 1: the voter turnout among the undocumented population would have rivaled
Speaker 1: that of citizens. And so it's not as if, um,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, if you had hordes of illegal
Speaker 1: voters of flooding the polling place, you would have had
Speaker 1: a much higher voter turnout than we had in this election,
Speaker 1: and you would have been able to see it left
Speaker 1: and right. And so I see this the a c
Speaker 1: l US attempt here as well as future attempts that
Speaker 1: people are going to lodge under the Federal Advisory Committee Act,
Speaker 1: just a way to try to keep this commission in
Speaker 1: check into continue and needle ith in order to justify
Speaker 1: its mission. Rich given those kinds of efforts, in the
Speaker 1: fact that we don't have a commission put together yet, Um,
Speaker 1: if you had to predict how long the commission's work
Speaker 1: is going to take, how long would it be? It
Speaker 1: really is unpredictable. I mean, they it's it's they don't
Speaker 1: have a full commission, they don't have a staff. The
Speaker 1: Vice President is sharing it, and he has other things
Speaker 1: to do. They do have a very activist and very
Speaker 1: determined of ICE chair, Chris Kodak of Kansas Secretary of State,
Speaker 1: and he may want to push it pretty hard. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm it's hard to say. I mean, I think any
Speaker 1: any number I give would be totally made up. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, bloom Ye, it will be. I mean, as
Speaker 1: Nate points out, they might actually even want to wait
Speaker 1: to pass the twenty eighteen election. They might want to
Speaker 1: come out sometime next year. All the idea that maybe
Speaker 1: to press Congress to pass some restrictive measures that would
Speaker 1: make it hard for people to vote in federal elections.
Speaker 1: It's just impossible to tell thank you both for being
Speaker 1: for being on Bloomberg Law. That's we should Refall professor
Speaker 1: at Columbia Law School and Nate personally, professor at Stanford
Speaker 1: Law School, both election law experts. Coming up on Bloomberg Law.
Speaker 1: We're going to be talking about the Fire Music Festival.
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Speaker 1: but it finished before it started, and there's a one
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Speaker 1: the Hunger Games. We're going to speak to the plaintiff's
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Speaker 1: and how she has built a reputation, a sort of
Speaker 1: a star's reputation in Europe. That's coming up on Bloomberg Law.
Speaker 1: I'm June Grosso with Michael Best and Greg Store. You've
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