Not long after Donald Trump won the presidential election through an Electoral College majority, he falsely claimed that he had lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by some 3 and has been repudiated by both Republican and Democratic state officials, the lie was a central rationale used to justify an executive order establishing the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The commission was chaired by Vice President Mike Pence and its vice chair, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, was well known as the architect of voter suppression laws adopted by GOP-controlled states across the U.S.
After the commission failed to secure sensitive voter data from all 50 state governments and provoked eight lawsuits for violating federal regulations, on Jan. 3, Trump disbanded the commission that in the end produced no evidence supporting his accusation of massive voter fraud. Ominously, Kris Kobach expressed satisfaction that the work of the now defunct commission would be moved over to the federal Department of Homeland Security, where department staff would search its files for immigrants, legal and otherwise, to detect foreign citizens who are illegally casting ballots in U.S. elections.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with investigative reporter Greg Palast, whose film documentary, “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,” examines Kobach’s role in wrongly purging some 1.1 million Americans of color from the voter rolls in the 2016 election. Here, Palast discusses the renewed threat of voter purges and suppression he sees in moving the Kobach commission to the Department of Homeland Security.
GREG PALAST: The Trump commission – the so-called Presidential (Advisory) Commission on Election Integrity is really what they call the Trump fraud commission to prove that there’s electoral fraud. That they literally, Donald Trump and the guy he put in charge of the commission, Kris Kobach of Kansas – if you can’t remember that, just think “KKK” – Kris Kobach of Kansas, the secretary of state there, has claimed that a million people swam the Rio Grande, I kid you not, to vote for Hillary. And in addition, three million people voted twice. Now the mainstream media laughed at this charge and as far they were concerned, the commission was a laugh.
I’m not laughing as an investigative reporter, because I’m been following Kobach well before the commission, now since 2014. Thirteen on his trail, last five years, knowing that he was working with Trump – he’s the first politician, major elected official to endorse Trump and with other right-wing groups and funded by the Kochs – remember he’s out of their bailiwick, Wichita, Kansas – to come up with systems to remove voters. So you may laugh and say, “Ha, ha, there’s not people swimming the Rio Grande to vote for Hillary, except for they’re removing people with Hispanic surnames. And that’s what they really wanted to do with this commission. That’s the first order of business.
So Kobach met on Jan. 10 privately, with Donald Trump to say, “So here’s what you gotta do. You gotta run the system of removing Hispanic voters from the voter rolls by using the powers of Homeland Security. And we can all do it in secret. Trump decided instead, with Pence, let’s have a public commission. Well, they immediately started operating in secret. They wouldn’t even tell the Democrat when the meetings were: What’s on the agenda? What are they doing?
And when you have a presidential commission, guess what? We have a government of and by and for the people. We have Freedom of Information. You’ve got to reveal what you’re doing! And who you’re doing it to. They wouldn’t. They got scared. Kobach recommended shutting down the commission. And a lot of progressives said that’s a big victory. In some ways it is, because we forced them to close that commission. The problem was, they took their nefarious activities and they stuck them into the Department of Homeland Security where they can put the shroud of national security over their doings.
I don’t know if it will be successful, by the way. You can’t just mark something “national security” and just say when you’re removing black and Hispanic voters from the voter rolls and say it’s part of the war on terror. You know, it depends if we have some honest judges they’re going to crack that open. The problem is the mainstream media has been laughing about Kobach and his claims, laughing about Trump and his claims of voter fraud. If you watch my film, you’ll laugh because I do a lot of dark humor in there, but you won’t laugh about what they’re doing. They did remove – ready? – 1.1 million voters of color from the voter rolls before the 2016 election. That absolutely handed them Michigan and had a great deal to do with handing them Ohio, North Carolina, Arizona – these were states in were Kobach’s (Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck) purge programs and so what you get in the film is the investigation about this commission of Kobach, well before the commission starts. In fact, I even jump Kris Kobach at an ice cream social in Wichita.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Greg, what is, in your opinion the biggest threat to the integrity of the vote in 2018 that a lot of people who are opposed to Trump and the Republican agenda are hoping will turn things around in Congress? The House of Representatives may be flipped as some polls predict, and maybe even the Senate.
GREG PALAST: Well, what we’ve seen is at the polls – including the exit polls – we have a thing called the “red shift”, where the numbers come out different than the polls. How does that happen? The answer is, that funny term, vote suppression. And the biggest, my biggest fear, I know a lot of people are afraid of electronic voting machines and stuff. I’m not saying don’t worry about it, you have a lot of things to keep track to worry about. But the one thing we’re not spending enough time on and thought on and action on, is the prevention of Americans of color from voting. And students, by the way. That’s also another target group that they go after. Students and voters of color. And basically, and they when go after voters of color, it means going after poor voters. Things like, we are all familiar with these laws about ID. Well, who doesn’t have a driver’s license? Guess what, people who don’t drive. People who don’t have cars. It tends to be poorer Americans or students. Again, Democratic, demographic.
Yet, who is accused of voting twice? People with simply common names, like Jose Garcia, again Democratic demographic. I’m not here to support the Democratic party, I’m here to support counting every vote and letting Americans vote. The rest of the world is stunned at everything that we do to block voters. And we think it’s OK if you get away with it. That’s what I’m concerned with.
For more information, visit Greg Palast’s journalism website at gregpalast.com.
