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Kris Kobach Defends Trump's Voter Fraud Commission

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Kris Kobach, the Vice-Chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, defended the mandate of his commission in an interview with Chris Stigall on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT, saying they are only trying to assess whether any illegal votes were cast.

"It was created to put facts on the table and take a nationwide perspective and look at voter fraud. We've got states like Kansas, where I live and where we've done a lot of work to analyze one particular type of voter fraud and that's voting by aliens, registering and voting. We have a proof of citizenship law. We're only one of four states that has it. When you register to vote, you have to prove your citizenship. But, most states have not done a systematic look at voter fraud and so the commission was created to measure and quantify and make recommendations to the President and to the American public and put the facts on the table."

Kobach contended, despite reports to the contrary, that the commission is only looking to acquire voter data from states that is already available to the public.

"Any guy on the street...can walk into a county election office, a county clerk's office and ask for that same information. I think you have to pay $20 for it in Pennsylvania...and the commission may very well do that. Some states have a law that says you have to pay for it and the commission will comply with those state laws and pay for it."

He added that they are not delving into any matter related to Russian hacking or election interference.

"You really have to divide the Russia question into two parts. One question is, could Russia or did Russia hack any of the state's voter rolls? Now, we already know the answer is no there. No states voter rolls were compromised. In other words, no one was able to go in through the internet and modify someone's voter rolls. But the other question is could they have? The other half of the issue is did Russia or some private individuals associated with Russia hack into people's private email accounts and just release emails in order to embarrass the Clinton campaign? We're not getting into that because our commission's charge is to look at the voting system. Whether Russia tried to influence the public debate, that's a question Congress is looking at we don't need nor do we have a charge to go into that."

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