Speaker 1: Donald Trump's so called Election Integrity Commission is asking states
Speaker 1: for a wealth of information from their voter databases, including names, addresses,
Speaker 1: voting history, birthdates, and the last four digits of Social
Speaker 1: Security numbers. The Commission's vice chairman, Kansas Republican Chris Kobak,
Speaker 1: explained the request on MSNBC. There are lots of errors
Speaker 1: in every state's vote rules. Let's find out how significant
Speaker 1: those errors are. Let's find out how many decease people
Speaker 1: are on the roles. Let's find out how many cases
Speaker 1: where someone's deceased individuals actually voted. And let's find out
Speaker 1: how many aliens are on the vote rules. But the
Speaker 1: request has generated pushback, lots of it. Both Republican and
Speaker 1: Democratic officials are balking in many cases, saying state law
Speaker 1: doesn't permit them to turn over that information. With us
Speaker 1: to talk about the issue, the request are to election
Speaker 1: law experts. Nate personally is a professor at Stanford Law
Speaker 1: School and is with June in our New York studio
Speaker 1: and Josh Douglas, professor at the University of Kentucky School
Speaker 1: of Law. Welcome to you both, um, Nate. Let's start
Speaker 1: with what you just heard Chris kobaks there and the
Speaker 1: goal he says he's trying to accomplish. Is there any
Speaker 1: problem with the goal of trying to gather information from
Speaker 1: the states about their databases. Well, for the most part,
Speaker 1: we have a very decentralized electoral system in the US.
Speaker 1: We not only decentralized down to the state level, but
Speaker 1: we decentralized further down to the local level. And so
Speaker 1: a national database of voters does not exist. So what
Speaker 1: the Kobac Pence Commission is trying to do is unprecedented. Um.
Speaker 1: The secretaries of State have indicated to Kobac that he
Speaker 1: the kind of information that he is asking for from
Speaker 1: the states. Uh, if they were to provide it would
Speaker 1: often violate state law because he's asked for a real
Speaker 1: wealth of information from about the individual voters. I don't
Speaker 1: think there is a problem legally with assembling a national
Speaker 1: database of eligible voters per se. But the way he's
Speaker 1: gone about it is contradictor to some of the state laws. Josh,
Speaker 1: what is he looking for? Really? Is there another way
Speaker 1: to do what he says he wants to do without
Speaker 1: getting all this information? Well, it's not clear what he
Speaker 1: really wants to do. UM And that's the problem. And
Speaker 1: I say it's not clear because although he claims to
Speaker 1: be seeking evidence of duplicate registrations or or people voting illegally, um,
Speaker 1: what he's asking for is not the way to do
Speaker 1: that um. And so I think, well, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are concerned about is that he's gonna if he
Speaker 1: were to obtain this information, he would to learn what
Speaker 1: we already know, which is that the voter registration rules
Speaker 1: can be bloated for for normal reasons like people die,
Speaker 1: people move, um, And that's not evidence of voter fraud.
Speaker 1: I think the concerns that he's going to say, well,
Speaker 1: look we have these bloated registration rules, there's voter fraud here,
Speaker 1: and that's going to support ever more restrictive voter voting laws.
Speaker 1: And and that's what I think one of the big
Speaker 1: problem woses well, um, Nate. I mean, if what he
Speaker 1: ends up finding is just we have a whole lot
Speaker 1: of duplicate registrations, as Josh said, something that uh, you
Speaker 1: election law experts have known for a long time, but
Speaker 1: that there is not a whole lot of evidence of
Speaker 1: you know, actual fraud people actually showing up and saying
Speaker 1: I want to vote for this dead person. Um, wouldn't
Speaker 1: that be a good thing? Well, I think it's you know,
Speaker 1: if you took yourself out of the politics of the
Speaker 1: situation and you said, well, what should the United States
Speaker 1: have a list of eligible voters out there? I don't
Speaker 1: think that's an inherently bad thing. The problem is that
Speaker 1: this is not about creating a national list of voters.
Speaker 1: It's about trying to suss out UH voter fraud and
Speaker 1: duplicate voting in the like. And if you look at
Speaker 1: the request, and those of us in the business of
Speaker 1: dealing with these voter lists know that they're they're all
Speaker 1: kinds of reasons that you have these errors. But more
Speaker 1: importantly that when you match up the types of voter
Speaker 1: list that Chris Kobac is trying to seek with the
Speaker 1: national databases dealing with social security or postal addresses or
Speaker 1: the ones held by the immigration services, that you're going
Speaker 1: to have a huge amount of errors. And so you
Speaker 1: will end up finding out that or suspecting that there's
Speaker 1: all these illegal voters who are voting, when in reality
Speaker 1: you've made a lot of mistakes in the matching process.
Speaker 1: And the way that he has put forth this request
Speaker 1: of the States indicates that he doesn't understand the complexity
Speaker 1: of the matching of the lists. Just about thirty seconds.
Speaker 1: But we can pick up pick up on this based
Speaker 1: on on what's happened. How much information is Kobak actually
Speaker 1: going to end up with from the states. Also far,
Speaker 1: it sounds like not a lot. I think we're up
Speaker 1: to forty four states that's said they're not going to comply,
Speaker 1: at least impart. Six states have not said what they're
Speaker 1: going to do next um and so this has been
Speaker 1: a real debacle already from the start. The very first
Speaker 1: thing this commission has done has really backfired. We're talking
Speaker 1: about Donald Trump's Election Commission and its letters requesting voter
Speaker 1: data from the states. Chris Kobak, the man who signed
Speaker 1: the letters, said, the commission is seeking only public information.
Speaker 1: This is publicly available information. The commission is only requesting
Speaker 1: what any person on the street in California can walk
Speaker 1: into a county election office and get. So if social
Speaker 1: Security number is not publicly available, and it is not
Speaker 1: publicly available in most states, then we aren't requesting it.
Speaker 1: That was from an interview on MSNBC. Our guests are
Speaker 1: Nate Personally, who is an election law expert at Stanford
Speaker 1: University and Josh Douglas, who was an election law expert
Speaker 1: at Kentucky University's law school. Josh, one of the complaints
Speaker 1: about what Chris Kobak is doing is privacy concerns. But
Speaker 1: if Kobak is just as he's saying, seeking information that's
Speaker 1: already public, what's the concern there? Well, for one, I
Speaker 1: think it's off putting to be asked for things like
Speaker 1: social Security numbers, military status, detailed voting history um. Uh.
Speaker 1: Even if that stuff is not public, it's included in
Speaker 1: the request UM. But more poor Only it's not the
Speaker 1: case in every state that someone could just walk into
Speaker 1: the county Klerk's office and UH and obtain this information.
Speaker 1: Some states charge a fee for the voter file UM.
Speaker 1: And as we've discussed earlier, elections in America are really decentralized,
Speaker 1: so it's not about going to uh the state and
Speaker 1: asking for this information. Uh. He even admits in that
Speaker 1: clip you just played that this is all a lot
Speaker 1: of data is held at the county level, and yet
Speaker 1: it's being asked for at the state level. So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of problems with the implementation of this request.
Speaker 1: Not to mention the privacy concerns in the data that
Speaker 1: he's asking for. Nate, So, forty four states that includes
Speaker 1: of course Republican states have said that they won't comply
Speaker 1: or they can't comply. Can Kobak do anything besides having
Speaker 1: Donald Trump trying to tweet them into submission by embarrassing
Speaker 1: them and saying, what are they trying to hide? So far?
Speaker 1: This commission does and have any extraordinary power to issue
Speaker 1: subpoenas or to force them to do anything. And actually,
Speaker 1: as I understand it, he has admitted as much and
Speaker 1: says that, look, we're just asking for the data that
Speaker 1: they have that's publicly available. Uh. And so I think
Speaker 1: they're going to have to go back to square one
Speaker 1: here and figure out how they're going to assemble the
Speaker 1: database that they care about without relying on the sort
Speaker 1: of good intentions of the states, because they've they've sort
Speaker 1: of had a bit of an uproar here. Um at
Speaker 1: some point, you know, we have to admit that what
Speaker 1: this is about is, look, trying to figure out whether
Speaker 1: the voters who are on the list and people who
Speaker 1: have voted are some what's you know, some subsection of
Speaker 1: them are illegal voters the three or five million that
Speaker 1: President Trump tweeted about it following the election. And that's
Speaker 1: really what this commission is about, is trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how many people are illegally on the roles and
Speaker 1: maybe heavy illegally voted in the last election. Josh, this
Speaker 1: commission is at least nominally bipartisan. There are I think
Speaker 1: at least have been at least three Democratic members of
Speaker 1: the commission. Um. One of them, the Maryland Deputies Secretary
Speaker 1: of State Luis Barunda, just resigned. Uh. Can you just
Speaker 1: just talk about that? Do we do? We know? I?
Speaker 1: Mr Barunda resigned and is this truly a bipartisan commission
Speaker 1: at this point? I don't think we have any information
Speaker 1: as to why uh Barunda resigned, although there was a
Speaker 1: little bit of an uproar in the election community when
Speaker 1: he was named, because it's not clear that he has
Speaker 1: any election experience whatsoever. Um. But in terms of the
Speaker 1: broader question about bi partisanship, I don't think that commissions
Speaker 1: can be seen as bipartisan at all. Um. Unlike Obama's
Speaker 1: last commission after the twenty twelve elections, Presidential Commission on
Speaker 1: the Election Administration, That one was co chaired by Obama's
Speaker 1: mean election lawyer and Mitt Romney's an election lawyer and
Speaker 1: had an election expert Nate personally, who everyone sort of
Speaker 1: agrees is very well respected and by partisan field. Um,
Speaker 1: here we have Pence in Kobac leading the charts. Both
Speaker 1: of them obviously have their own political viewpoints. There's no
Speaker 1: serious Democrat who has agreed to join the commission. I
Speaker 1: say serious, and that someone who has a strong election
Speaker 1: uh experience. I think I think the name of the
Speaker 1: commission signifies this true purpose. This isn't the Commission on
Speaker 1: Election Administration. It's Commission on Election Integrity. And that's the
Speaker 1: only thing that the commission seems to be focused on.
Speaker 1: If we're gonna have a serious, five partist commission, it
Speaker 1: would look at not only election integrity, but the problem
Speaker 1: of voter suppression as well as issues of voter enhancement
Speaker 1: to ways of states can and should be making it
Speaker 1: easier to participate in our elections. So, Nate, let's go
Speaker 1: back to the executive order that started this thing rolling.
Speaker 1: What does that tell us about this Well, A lot
Speaker 1: of what President Trump's executive order said in establishing this
Speaker 1: commission is that they want to preserve confidence and promote
Speaker 1: confidence in the American electoral system. And to some extent,
Speaker 1: that's a buzzword for those of us in the election
Speaker 1: administration community, because Uh Quebec and President Trump are right,
Speaker 1: which is that a lot of people do have a
Speaker 1: lack of confidence in American democracy and in the way
Speaker 1: the voting system works. Democrats right now lack confidence because
Speaker 1: they think Russians hacked the election. Republicans lack confidence because
Speaker 1: they think and believe that there was a lot of
Speaker 1: voter fraud. The problem is that you don't find that' say,
Speaker 1: restrictive voter i D laws or the like, have any
Speaker 1: real effect on promoting voter confidence. And if you start
Speaker 1: looking at public opinion instead of the actual data about
Speaker 1: who voted and who may have voted it illegally, you'll
Speaker 1: get a completely different view as to what the pathologies
Speaker 1: are in the American electoral system. I want to thank
Speaker 1: our guests. That was Nate personally talking. He's a professor
Speaker 1: at Stanford University Law School. Uh formerly was the senior
Speaker 1: research director for a truly bipartisan commission set up after
Speaker 1: the election, and Josh douglasa professor at the Universe A
Speaker 1: Kentucky School of Law, both election law experts,