Friday, September 15, 2017

Trump's election fraud commission preps to embrace faulty explanation for Trump's New Hampshire loss

Rss@dailykos.com (kerry Eleveld) · Monday, September 11, 2017, 4:55 pm

Nothing says “fraud” like Donald Trump using his 'elections integrity' commission to rationalize his New Hampshire loss to Hillary Clinton. That's exactly what the Kris Kobach-led commission appears to be preparing to do at a Tuesday meeting by drawing the completely unfounded conclusion that New Hampshire's nonresidents pushed the state in Clinton's direction. TPM's Tierney Sneed writes:

Kobach’s allegations were based on data released by New Hampshire’s GOP-controlled state House, showing that 5,513 out of the 6,540 voters who showed an out-of-state ID when using same-day registration last November have not gone on to get drivers licenses or register vehicles since. [...]

Kobach touted the data Thursday in an op-ed for Breitbart, where he is a paid columnist, alleging that the state hosting the commission’s meeting this week was the site of “more than enough” illegal voting in 2016 “to swing the election.”

“It seems,” Kobach wrote, that the 5,513 voters “are not actually residing in New Hampshire” and “never were bona fide residents of the State.”

Somehow Breitbart's crackerjack fact-checking team failed to give full context to those numbers and Kobach's wild accusations. First, it's not illegal in the Granite State to use an out-of-state ID to register to vote, though voters do have to have an in-state domicile. Second, some 5,000-plus of those 5,513 voters hadn’t registered a motor vehicle in the state (i.e. had no reason to seek an in-state driver’s license). Additionally, the state's GOP-controlled legislature already got straight to work this year with new residency restrictions requiring people registering within 30 days of an election to prove they reside permanently in the state through a utility bill, lease, or proof of college enrollment.

But there's no definitive proof that any of those 5,513 folks voted illegally. Most likely, the vast majority of them did vote legally, and Trump just didn't like what they had to say. (Apparently, he’s not super concerned about fraud in Michigan, a state that he did win but was decided by an even narrower margin.)

Source
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/sxXt3r0Xq0g/-Trump-s-election-fraud-commission-preps-to-embrace-faulty-explanation-for-Trump-s-New-Hampshire-loss

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