[Brown:] A majority of states won't be sending your voter information to a White House panel on voter fraud. Secretaries of states who are Democrats and Republicans for more than 40 states and the District of Columbia are expressing concerns and pushing back on the request made the Commission on Election Integrity with some states flat out refusing outright to provide any information. Among other things the commission asks for names, addresses, party affiliation, felony convictions and whether the voters lived overseas. Many states say it legally cannot provide all of this information. Others express concern about how the information might be used. Joining me now with more is CNN White House reporter, Jeremy Diamond. Jeremy, as I look through the list and read the CNN article about this, what struck me is that even some red states are pushing back against this request.
[Jeremy Diamond, Cnn White House Reporter:] That's right. You know, we've seen some fiery pushback from some of the secretaries of state from some of these Republican states, including from particularly fiery response from the secretary of state of Mississippi, who said, quote, "My reply would be they can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from." There's also been a lot of criticism, of course, from Democrats, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe saying, "I have no intention of honoring this request. This entire commission is based on specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November." The White House, though, is pushing back on a lot of this criticism both from Republicans and Democrats. The president on Saturday took to his favorite medium of course, to Twitter, to say, quote, "Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished voter fraud panel. What are they trying to hide?" I just spoke a little bit ago with the vice president's spokesman, Mark Lauder, the vice president, of course, is chairing this commission. He is pointing out what the commission is asking for, they are not asking for any private information. The letters that were sent to these states are largely the same and they list a number of pieces of information that this commission would like to get from some of these states. But the letter does point out that they would only like this information if it is indeed publicly available and so that's where there seems to be a little bit of a disconnect at least between this Voter Fraud Commission and some of these states that are pushing back. You know, we've had some of these states pushing back and saying we're not going to provide any private information. We're only going to provide publicly available information, and that in effect would be it appears complying with this request. But nonetheless, as you point out there has been a lot of criticism of this in part driving from the intentions of this commission, number of states pointing out that voter fraught is not as widespread as the president and some of the members of this committee have tried to portray. You'll remember, of course, the president soon after coming into office said he believes several million people had voted illegally in the 2016 election.
[Brown:] Right, and in the confusion you sum this up, Jeremy, but some states are eagerly complying with this it seems and other states say it's illegal to hand over this information. So how does that square?
[Diamond:] Yes, that's right. You know, there seems to be two things happening here. One of them is concern from some of these states over states' rights and not having the federal government involved in elections, which is supposed to be something ruled by the states. And then another part of this is the politics of it, right. Some of these states particularly the Democratic states taking an opportunity to point out that this commission was set up on a flawed premise. The premise that the president believes millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election, something for which of course there is no evidence at all and the White House has not put forth any evidence to that effect.
[Brown:] All right, Jeremy Diamond, thank you so much. And joining me now to discuss CNN senior political commentator, former Senator Rick Santorum, and Basil Smikle, executive director of the New York State Democratic Party. Great to see you both. Senator, I want to start with you. Good morning. This effort seems over before it even began. Does this hurt the president's credibility on these claims of voter fraud?
[Rick Santorum, Cnn Senior Political Commentator:] No. I mean, look, I think the letter was very clear. They're asking for whatever information that can be provided publicly to the commission so they can begin the process of looking through this data and determining the extent of voter fraud. Look, the bottom line is that the system, if you don't have a voter I.D. law in your state, the law is pretty much an honor system. We're just trusting people that they are who they say they are and that they're going to vote properly or not vote more than once or not vote for other people. That's not a way to conduct an election, and what the president is saying is when you have a system that is basically an honor system, there's a penchant, a potential for fraud and we want to examine it to the extent we can whether fraud was committed.
[Brown:] But what about Senator Chris Cobach, who is overseeing this, his own state of Kansas pushing back, the guy who was in charge of this.
[Santorum:] Yes, I don't understand what the pushback is. The letter says as your reporter just reported, please give us all the information you can that's permissible, that's public. They're not asking for any private information. If this information is available in a public forum in your state please provide it to us. If it's not then don't, and so I don't really see the rub that a lot of these secretaries of state are having with it.
[Brown:] Let's ask Basil because Basil, you run the Democratic Party in New York. Right. What's the problem here if as the senator says they're asking for publicly available information? What's not legal about that?
[Basil Smikle, Executive Director, New York State Democratic Party:] Well, part of the problem is this question of intent, because it's not that the president has just said at this very moment that there may be issues of fraud. He is actually made that claim throughout his entire campaign, and against evidence to the contrary. And so there is a concern and our governor has said that we will not comply with this because it does seem intrusive and the fact is that there were reports of voter intimidation last year. So if the president and the White House can't come up with a better reason for why they need this information, I think it's incumbent upon secretaries of state governors, political parties and again, this is bipartisan. This is not just a Democratic issue, that the administration has to come up with a better reason for why they need this information, and we have to tell our voters in our state why we're handing over this information to the federal government. If you're a Democrat because there are concerns about vulnerable populations, yes, I think this voter intimidation does carry a tremendous amount of weight, but if you're in a red state, you're going to be concerned about states' rights and the federal government's intervention here. So I think there's a lot that the Trump administration has yet to discuss with the public about why this is actually necessary.
[Brown:] Because so far, Senator, the president has only tweeted without any proof to back it up this claim that millions of people voted illegally. So what is your response to Basil that the White House needs to put forward evidence to back these claims of widespread voter fraud before states hand over the information?
[Santorum:] Yes. I guess, I would say this. It's been very, very difficult as we've seen to prove voter fraud because, well, let's just use an example, say for example in the city of Philadelphia, which was my home state. We do know that on Election Day there's money put out on the street on Election Day to, quote, "encourage" people to vote. Both sides will put that money out there. Let's say that someone went and they got a list of people who were let's say deceased or people that had moved and they were going to organize something to have some folks go up and claim that they were that person and vote. How would you catch them? So I mean, unless you were actually there and you caught them in the act, how would you catch them? Because you wouldn't know who came in, I mean, the voters the people at the poll wouldn't know. It's impossible to catch voter fraud unless you catch it at the moment it's occurring and that's not happening. There was a study done by, in New York by the New York Bureau of Investigation, they went in and actually had 63 people go out and actually try to vote in an election. And 61 of the 63 fraudulently voting for dead people, people who moved, et cetera, and 61 of the 63 people were able to vote. One of them was caught only because the person who showed up was the son and tried to vote was trying to vote for the son of the person that was checking them in. Otherwise everyone was able to vote. That's the problem with an honor system. You can't it's almost impossible to prove fraud, but it's very easy to commit.
[Smikle:] It's impossible to prove it in part because it doesn't exist in this notion that political parties are throwing money
[Brown:] There have been in some cases, just not widespread.
[Smikle:] Yes, very, very few and significantly not significant actually in statistically not significant in a lot of these studies, so having said that, look, I think when you are looking at, as the senators talked about individual states and their voting laws. Even the Supreme Court has stepped in and said you know what? Particularly states like North Carolina, your laws are too restrictive. The movement isn't toward more restrictions, it's actually toward fewer restrictions to allow more participation. So this idea that the parties are engaged in just throwing money on the street and getting voter rolls of dead voters just doesn't exist.
[Brown:] All right, really quickly, I want to switch topics while I have both of you gentlemen here with me. Basil, about two dozen Democrats are backing this bill that aimed at evaluating president's mental health and ousting him if he's unfit to serve. Basil, constitutional scholars have come out and said that this is completely unrealistic. It is premature at this point. What is the point of this?
[Smikle:] You know, I saw that story. I'm not sure what the point of it is. I'll just tell you this really quickly, I was at a rally in Queens, New York, on Saturday, about 400 people came out on a morning on a holiday weekend, Deputy Chair Keith Ellison was there and spoke, I spoke. Those are the folks that really care about policy and what the Democratic Party will do about being an economic and social justice organization. That's what I think most voters care about and what the party needs to focus on. If these individuals want to sort of take up this as an issue, there perhaps is a philosophical or legal sort of scholarly investigation into whether or not this is useful, but the truth of the matter is the voters aren't looking at that right now and I want us to be more focused on that.
[Brown:] Right, so Senator, are the Democrats playing right into President Trump's hands with this effort in your view?
[Santorum:] I think this is overplaying their hand and dangerous. Dangerous talk, period, and as Basil pointed out look, the problem here is the Democratic Party in their fixation on beating up on Donald Trump is ignoring the problems of ordinary Americans. The headlines in the paper today are how increasing number of states that don't have insurance carriers to offer insurance in the individual market anymore. This is the problem that's confronting America. We should be focused on trying to get a health care bill passed that actually can repeal and replace Obamacare with something that will work for more Americans. That's what Donald Trump and the Republicans are going to focus on here in the next few weeks and I really believe particularly if they listen to our nation's governors that they can get this done.
[Brown:] All right, Senator Rick Santorum, Basil Smikle, thank you both. Coming up, the pope's hospital offering to take in a terminally ill child at the center of a legal dispute. Why the Vatican is stepping in despite acknowledging there is little hope, up next.