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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.)
It didn’t take long for the debunkers to roll in. One Washington Post writer called Kobach’s column a “failing freshman logic paper.” [...]
A New Hampshire Public Radio analysis of the data revealed that those out-of-state ID holders were, not surprisingly, mostly clustered in college towns, which could explain why they didn’t have Granite State driver’s licenses or vehicle registrations.
The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel said it only took him about an hour to find and contact legitimate New Hampshire voters who used out-of-state IDs to register last year.
Kobach, presumably, didn't have the resources to do the same even though he did have the time to pen an op-ed about it in which he not only pinned Trump's loss on the supposed fraudulent voters but also Trump's complete inability to shepherd any major legislation through Congress. Here’s Kobach again:
Clinton won New Hampshire by only 2,732 votes. If 74.8 percent of the 5,513 fraudulent votes were cast for Clinton, then the presidential election in New Hampshire was tipped as well [...] that is already having consequences for the nation. If the 52-48 Republican-Democrat balance in the Senate were 53-47, it could change the balance in any number of votes – not the least of which would be the effort to repeal Obamacare.
Again, there's nothing inherently fraudulent about those votes other than Kobach's claim that they're fraudulent.
But man, if only Trump had one more GOP senator... he would be the awesomest president in American history. Instead, he's a natural disaster.