Who Is Kris Kobach? 'We May Never Know' If Hillary Clinton Won Popular Vote, Republican Says

Kris Kobach is the Republican Secretary of State of Kansas and the vice chair of President Donald Trump’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. The commission was proposed by Trump earlier this year after he claimed that 5 million people possibly voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election, robbing him of winning the popular vote over Hillary Clinton. The president has not provided any evidence for the claim.

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Clinton won the popular vote by about 2.9 million people, but Kobach disputed that fact in an NBC interview Wednesday.

“We will probably never know the answer to that question,” said Kobach.

Kobach also insisted on CNN Wednesday that the commission was not set up specifically to back up Trump’s claim.

“The commission is not set up to prove or disprove President Trump’s claim,” said Kobach. “This commission is going to be looking at real figures, real numbers, real voter rolls and real cases.”

The panel’s first step was to ask all 50 states for detailed voter roll information including names, voter history and last four digits of social security numbers. The commission said the information was to investigate fraud. Many states refused to comply fully or gave only limited data.

“They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from,” said Mississippi's Republican Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann about the request.

Kobach is an ardent supporter of strict voter ID laws and has called himself “the ACLU’s worst nightmare.” The ACLU is the American Civil Liberties Union, a non-profit dedicated to fighting for civil rights. The organization has filed four lawsuits against Kobach, according to the New York Times in June.

The ACLU’s suits address a 2011 Kansas law shepherded in by Kobach called the Secure and Fair Elections Act. The law requires Kansas citizens to show a birth certificate, passport or naturalization papers to register to vote.

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Kobach contended Wednesday in the first public meeting of the election commission that more than 18,000 noncitizens could have registered illegally in Kansas. According to Slate Magazine Wednesday, Kobach has prosecuted one noncitizen voter in Kansas since his tenure began in 2010.

Kobach also touted an interstate cross check program during the meeting, which he said uncovered millions of people registered in multiple states. The program cross checks names and dates of birth. Critics say that this program disproportionately affects non-white voters who are more likely to have the same last name. A study performed by Microsoft and several Universities such as Harvard and Yale concluded the cross check misidentifies 200 voters as registered in multiple places for every positive result.