MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — The second meeting of President Donald Trump’s election commission Tuesday was marked by a lengthy discussion between one of the panel’s leaders and the man who has ruled elections here for decades over the integrity of last year’s vote in the Granite State.
Kris Kobach, the commission’s vice chair and Kansas’ secretary of state, defended his published claim that last November’s election here was “highly likely” to have been influenced by votes cast by non-residents, a charge that New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner dismissed.
Kobach made the claim in an op-ed published by Breitbart News last week, charging that the senate race, won by Democrat Maggie Hassan, was “stolen through voter fraud” due to the participation of voters with out-of-state licenses. Throughout the afternoon session, Kobach continued to suggest that out-of-staters could sway an election, but it would be hard to prove.
“In that column, I struggled with … what verb to use,” Kobach said, noting that he settled on the word “appears” to describe the possible fraud but allowed that he erred in trying to condense a “complex legal issue” into the column.
But experts said that is no evidence of voter fraud. State law allows people with non-New Hampshire driver’s licenses to live in the state and vote legally. Gardner, a Democrat, pushed back on Kobach’s claims, saying, “what you wrote is that the question of whether our elections that we have recorded is real and valid. And it is real and valid.”
Gardner pointed to the comments made by the panel’s chair, Vice President Mike Pence, at the first meeting, who said the panel would not work with any preconceived notions. Pence did not attend the second meeting.
“That is something that we all need to stay focused on,” Gardner said. “I hope we all learn from this.”
Gardner has come under fire from members of his party for continuing to serve on Trump’s commission, especially in light of Kobach’s column. The state’s two senators called for him to step down, but Gardner on Tuesday gave no indication that he would.
Commissioner Matthew Dunlap, the secretary of state in Maine, also criticized Kobach for the column, calling it a “reckless statement.”
“There is no connection between motor vehicle law and election law,” Dunlap, a Democrat, said. “That would be almost as absurd as saying if you have cash in your pocket that you robbed a bank.”
“I do think that whatever happened in November either in Maine or New Hampshire, we’ve certified those elections and I think people should trust those elections,” Dunlap added.
Related: Trump Claims Vote Fraud in New Hampshire. His Commission Is Going There.
Yet, much of the second meeting was more “substantive” than the first meeting, both Dunlap and Kobach told NBC News.
The panel invited several experts and officials involved in voting matters around the country to speak at the meeting, including partisan groups such as Judicial Watch, a non-profit conservative watchdog.
Hans von Spakovsky, a member of the commission, presented a database compiled by the Heritage Foundation he said contains nearly 1,100 cases of voter fraud.
He called it “the tip of the iceberg.”
“There is evidence of voter fraud and this is just a fraction of the cases,” he said.
Hours before the meeting began, dozens of protesters held signs calling the commission a “sham” and said the commission work could lead to voter suppression. Within the next year, the panel will produce a report to give to the president.
The rally was organized by the local ACLU, NAACP and Let America Vote, a group led by Jason Kander, the former Missouri secretary of state.
Kander said the commission was borne out of the president’s claim that three to five million people voted illegally in the 2016 election, costing him the popular vote. Kander said it is “the biggest lie a sitting president has ever said.”