Kobach defends controversial Breitbart column on NH voter fraud

by Ben Kamisar - 09/12/17 1:59 PM ET

Kris Kobach, who helps lead President Trump’s controversial voter fraud panel, on Tuesday defended a controversial column he penned raising the possibility of widespread voter fraud in New Hampshire.

But the Kansas secretary of State admitted that his wording in the Breitbart column may have been imprecise, since it’s possible that the votes he highlighted as potentially illegal could very well have been permitted under state law.

“This obviously is a subject of concern because there have often been anecdotal reports of people driving into New Hampshire because it’s a same-day registration state and it’s a battleground state,” Kobach said of his column.

{mosads}”I’m still wondering if that was the right word and if it’s possible to condense a complex legal issue into an 800 word column,” he added.

Kobach addressed the column in the middle of the White House Election Integrity Commission’s Tuesday meeting in New Hampshire, while casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2016 election results in the state.

New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner (D), a member of the panel, told the crowd that New Hampshire’s 2016 elections “were valid” as the audience applauded.

Kobach admitted that he “struggled’ with word choice during his article because he said it was unclear whether those thousands of voters followed the law or not.

Kobach’s Breitbart column argued that the thousands of people who registered to vote on Election Day in New Hampshire with out-of-state licenses could mean the “election was stolen through voter fraud.”

That accusation came months after reports that Trump blamed illegal votes from those bussed in from surrounding states for Democratic victories in New Hampshire’s presidential and senatorial elections.

Election officials have since explained that New Hampshire law allows those “domiciled” in the state to vote — covering those who spend most of their nights in the state, such as college students who may have licenses from their home states.

Kobach said Tuesday that in order to prove whether illegal voting swayed the state’s elections, election officials would have to investigate the voters’ status and then undergo the near-impossible task of finding out for whom any illegal voters cast their ballots.

“Until further research is done, we will never know the answer regarding the legitimacy of this particular election,” he said.

Tags Kris Kobach New Hampshire