States that are stonewalling data on registered voters are following "fake news" reports of personal information requests, said the vice chairman of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.
“That is flat-out wrong,” Kris Kobach, who also is Kansas Secretary of State told Newsmax. The commission “never requested any ‘personal information’ but, rather, just the information on voters that is publicly available from every county in the U.S.”
“There is a great deal of fake news and lazy news being reported about the work of the bipartisan Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity,” said Kobach.
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax last week, Kobach scolded national reporters who have been, in his words, “misreporting what we are doing, just as we’re getting started.”
Kobach added that the investigation is off to a great start, depsite news reports to the contrary. Kobach specifically pointed to reports that more than 30 states were not “not complying with the commission” and “not making available” data on registered voters.
On the contrary, Kobach said, more than 30 states
are cooperating with the commission and “will provide the data we are requesting,” and only 14 have definitely said no.
Virginia is one state that has declined. Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe last month became the first governor in the nation to announce that he would not cooperate with the commission.
“Virginia conducts fair, honest, and democratic elections, and there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in Virginia,” McAuliffe wrote in response to Kobach’s request for voter information.
McAuliffe’s response came about three weeks after Andrew Spieles, a James Madison University student, pled guilty to charges he submitted 18 fraudulent voter registrations last year. Spieles, who worked for the Democratic Party-affiliated organization Harrisonburg Votes, was sentenced to up to 120 days in prison.
Kobach also noted that commission member and former Federal Elections Commission member Hans von Spakovsky pointed out 938 specific cases throughout the nation of non-existent voters since 2000.
Kobach himself presented to the commission his own record of prosecuting 128 cases of non-citizens voting in Kansas.
The commission is chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and has two full-time staff members working out of the vice president’s office. Kobach expects that the commission will hold “two or three further hearings” and will have a final report “by next summer —assuming, of course, that the left-wing lawsuits that have been filed against us don’t slow us down.”
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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