Bob Bauer who was a co-chairman for former President Obama's presidential election commission in 2013 and 2014, recently told NBC News that Trump's voter fraud commission was an "F enterprise". According to an article titled: "Obama election commission chair: Trump fraud panel a 'calamitous failure', voting experts say that they were not impressed with the commission's "work." Trump's voting commission was created out of the debunked myth that 3 to 5 million illegal voters cost him the popular vote during the 2016 election. Kris Kobach's latest controversial claims over election fraud in New Hampshire is only a recent example of why the panel is such a dismal failure.

New Hampshire law says that new residents to the state have 60 days to get state IDs but Kobach says that thousands of people have come in from out of state to overwhelmingly vote for Clinton and the Democratic contender for the Senate seat, Maggie Hassan. The state has become a target for Trump supporters who support Kobach's false claims, who is Kansas' Secretary of State and vice chairman for Trump's Presidential Commission On Election Integrity. The group held a second session at the Saint Anselm college in Manchester, NH. this month.

Members lash out at Kobach for false claims, Breitbart

The session included all 11-members, minus Vice-President Mike Pence. One of the main issues brought up by some members of the panel was Kobach's OpEd piece that he published with the "alt-right" Breitbart News media outlet titled: "Exclusive – Kobach: It Appears That Out-of-State Voters Changed the Outcome of the New Hampshire U.S.

Senate Race", the week before.

In the OpEd, Kobach claimed that the state's election laws tipped votes in favor of Democrats because same-day registration allowed people with out-of-state IDs to vote. Two of the members of the panel -- Secretaries of State for New Hampshire Bill Gardner and Maine Matthew Dunlap -- slammed Kobach during the session calling his claims "absurd".

Dunlap said that Kobach's claims were "reckless".

Kobach gets fact-checked

The fact that the OpEd piece was published by Breitbart puts more value on the side of the media outlet's CEO Steve Bannon, who -- until he was fired last month -- was President Trump's chief White House strategist. Prior to joining the Trump campaign last year, Bannon ran Breitbart as the extreme-right's propaganda arm, making outrageous claims about Washington's politicians and politics in general.

Since been fired, Bannon has returned to the internet publisher.

Kobach's OpEd with the controversial outlet would certainly attest to Bannon's determination to upset the establishment with debunked theories. But FactCheck examined the previously debunked theory that Kobach was peddling in an article titled: "Kobach’s Bogus ‘Proof’ of Voter Fraud" this month, to add to the mounting criticism against the panel and its vice chair.

The FactCheck article goes through the details of the state's laws, the figures that Kobach played with and how he wrongly came up with his theory. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) also went after Kobach on the same day of the panel's session for rehashing false claims.

She also called out President Trump for creating the commission in order to "lay the groundwork for broad-scale voter suppression laws."

National reaction to voting fraud panel

In late June, Kobach wrote to every state asking that they turn over voter data, which would provide detailed information of each voter. He claimed that this was to search for evidence of election irregularities. It was reported that 44 states immediately rejected his requests. The NBC News article said that many voters de-registered because of Kobach's requests. During the session, Kobach continued to say that it was "almost impossible" to learn how people with out-of-state ids were able to vote.

He said that because of this, they would never know if the election results last year were legitimate.

The out-of-state voting process was defended by a professor of political science for the University of New Hampshire, Andrew Smith, who told the panel that if a college student paid the out-of-state tuition rate, even if they had a Massachusetts license and plates, that they could still vote in New Hampshire where they were living when going to school.

In the end, Kobach seemed to back off of calling those votes "fraudulent", saying they were "questionable" instead. Rather than establish certainty that they proved as being cases of voter fraud, Kobach said it was still worth legislators examining. It's also worth mentioning that those who lambasted Kobach were Democrats, no Republicans seemed to question the validity of his claims.
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