On CNN's New Day Wednesday morning, co-host Chris Cuomo claimed that serious allegations of voter fraud are "B.S.": "Is there a second line to this story in terms of what this commission is about other than the obvious, which is trying to put meat on the bones of a B.S. allegation."
CNN Political Commentator Errol Louis agreed, saying it is worse than that. The real objective of the administration's voter fraud commission is voter suppression:
LOUIS: Well that's right. They're trying to put meat on the bones of a B.S. allegation...Then there is this question of voter suppression being really sort of the end goal of all of this.
(...)
CUOMO: So you're saying they're saying its about stopping voter fraud, but these efforts go to voter suppression?
LOUIS: Absolutely. Absolutely...This seems to be really kind of what the end goal is, and, of course, Kris Kobach's personal history sort of leads you to conclude this is something he's been associated with all along.
That history, of course, includes voting security measures. What a racist, am I right? CNN Politics Reporter and Editor-at-Large Chris Cillizza then claimed that there is zero evidence of voter fraud:
According to the data this is a solution in search of a problem. I mean, there's no other way to put it, Alisyn. There's -- there's been extensive studies done, not one, not partisan, extensive studies done of elections and alleged voter fraud and the simple fact is, is that to the extent they found mistakes they're almost always, 99.99% of the time attributable to human error, that there is no malicious intent here...
The reality is that the claim is not B.S.
- The Daily Signal has reported on the many cases of voter fraud and other studies have found that there are potentially large amounts of noncitizens registered to vote.
- An Old Dominion University study found that noncitizen voting "is at times substantial enough to change important election outcomes including Electoral College votes and Senate races." As Tom Fitton points out, using this study's math, 1.41 million noncitizens would have voted in 2016.
The Pew Center's 2012 election survey found that:
- "Approximately 24 million—one of every eight—voter registrations in the United States are no longer valid or are significantly inaccurate."
- "More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as active voters.”
- “Approximately 2.75 million people have active registrations in more than one state.”
Additionally, as the Washington Times reports, investigations in Maryland and Virgina have found thousands of aliens registered to vote. I guess that's all B.S. huh?
As far as the voter suppression allegation goes, there is no evidence of it at all. According to Louis, if you want any degree of voting security measures, you are racist. You need a photo ID for almost anything these days. Not protecting the integrity of our elections would seem absurd if it wasn't for the fact that Democrats benefit from voter fraud. In fact, most Democrats think illegal immigrants should be able to vote. After all, illegals overwhelmingly favor that party. The Democrats are very concerned that the Russians are posting fake news stories to affect our elections, but seem to actually favor illegally affecting the vote tally via fraud.
Cuomo finished the segment with this comment: "You think you'd want to with the problem you have all these eligible voters in the country that don't vote. You would think you would want to be increasing participation." Unsurprisingly, co-host Alisyn Camerota expressed her agreement by adding: "Right."
"Right," but we want that increase to come from legally registered voters (and informed ones for that matter).
See the transcript below:
6:20 AM ET
CHRIS CUOMO: Is there a second line to this story in terms of what this commission is about other than the obvious, which is trying to put meat on the bones of a B.S. allegation.
ERROL LOUIS: Well that's right. They're trying to put meat on the bones of a B.S. Allegation. They're trying I think also to sort of show us that they can move quickly. This is done by executive order and, you know, as Shannon points out, they move so quickly they obviously didn't really sort of look at it because it's a relatively narrow point they're sort of getting jammed up on here, which is that they're supposed to issue a privacy impact statement. Just show us that you thought about what the implications for privacy would be. They didn't bother to do that, hence the lawsuit. Then there is this question of voter suppression being really sort of the end goal of all of this and there's a strong whiff of it in all of this because the scenarios if you stop and think about it, how the thing was put together in such haste, you look at the things they're asking for and the reasons why they're asking for it, things like party affiliation -- which really have nothing to do--
CUOMO: So you're saying they're saying its about stopping voter fraud, but these efforts go to voter suppression?
LOUIS: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because this in some respects, I think the advocates that are calling it suppression or the prelude to suppression have a point which is that this is intended to sort of put up this sort of cloud of wrongdoing which will then give individual states, which is where elections are really controlled anyway, give them the predicate to sort of say, you know, "No more early voting, or we're not going to accept all kinds of different I.D. We're going to make it harder and harder for people to register and get their votes counted." This seems to be really kind of what the end goal is, and, of course, Kris Kobach's personal history sort of leads you to conclude this is something he's been associated with all along.
(...)
CHRIS CILLIZZA: According to the data this is a solution in search of a problem. I mean, there's no other way to put it, Alisyn. There's -- there's been extensive studies done, not one, not partisan, extensive studies done of elections and alleged voter fraud and the simple fact is, is that to the extent they found mistakes they're almost always, 99.99% of the time attributable to human error, that there is no malicious intent here. This has been something that Republicans talked about before Donald Trump, but it is something that Donald Trump, and this is true with a lot of things, Donald Trump has brought more light to, the three to five million people that voted illegally, that claim that is just not factually accurate in the 2016 election. So, again, this is -- there is -- it is important to note this, there has never been a study that has suggested there is widespread voter fraud in elections. There just hasn't been. When you have hundreds of millions of votes cast, there are going to be some errors. You know, 65, 70 million votes, there's going to be errors here there, balot -- series of ballots are misread, things are left out, but it is never been proven or come close to being proven that this is in some way, again, malicious, intended, and that's what -- go away from the oddness of the request -- some of the requests for data from Kris Kobach, the broader thing here is, what is the problem we're trying to solve for? Because it doesn't seem like, based on the objective data, there is this problem.
CUOMO: You think you'd want to with the problem you have all these eligible voters in the country that don't vote.
ALISYN CAMEROTA: Right.
CUOMO: You would think you would want to be increasing participation.
