Why Americans Who Believe in Free and Fair Elections Should Worry About Kris Kobach

When it comes to vote suppression, Donald Trump and Kris Kobach belong to the same delusional cult. Both have a history of indulging in refuted conspiracy theories about voter fraud. Both extreme in extreme and unconstitutional remedies to imagined problems. Both won elections based on lies. It’s small wonder Trump appointed Kobach to head his Commission on Election Integrity.

Until now, the Republican Party’s effort to disenfranchise people who tend to vote for Democrats occurred at the state level.

That changed on May 11th, when Trump signed an Executive Order “On the Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.

Like Donald Trump, Korbach has a very casual relationship with the truth, as reflected in his debunked 2010 election claim that “as many as” 2000 people took dead people’s identifications to vote in Kansas’ elections. Despite facts debunking Korbach’s claim, he was elected as Kansas’ Secretary of State.

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During his time as Kansas Secretary of State, Korbach convinced the state legislature to pass a strict voter ID law, that disproportionately depressed turnout by African-Americans and newly registered voters.

He sought the power to prosecute election law violations. As the Brennan Center observed, this power grab was unprecedented in any state.

Kobach also established the seriously flaw Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck (IVRC). As the Brennan Center observed:
And with Kobach at the helm, IVRC has produced problematic results. Its methods lead to false positives — like in Pennsylvania, where the system reported more than 300,000 potential double voters. Rolling Stone’s investigation found the system flagged one in six Latinos, one in seven Asian Americans and one in nine African Americans as double registrants. The inaccuracies in Kobach’s database were severe enough for Florida and Oregon to drop the program. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-stealth-war-against-voters-w435890

The combination of Kobach’s highly active imagination and incompetence give reason for concern about the sort of policies this commission could produce. As the director of the ACLU’s Voting Right’s project explains, Kobach has plans to change the motor-voter law. This is serious given a finding by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Fish v. Kobach.

The court ordered Kobach to begin registering the 18,000 people Kobach prevented from registering at the State’s Department of Motor Vehicles. Just the thought of how many people would be disenfranchised should concern anyone who believes in free and fair elections – now that this Freddie Krueger to voting rights has been unleashed to spread the vote suppression nation wide.

Adalia Woodbury

Former contributor.