Last weekend, Kris Kobach — current Republican candidate for Secretary of State, former chair of the Kansas Republican Party, failed congressional candidate, lawyer, Bush administration Justice Department Counsel, and professor at University of Missouri-Kansas City — spoke at the How to Take Back America conference, an extreme right-wing conference that promised to help us to recognize living under a Nazi government, understand Islam, counter the homosexual movement, and defend the military against feminists and gays, among many other important topics to today’s right-wing nutjob. Amazingly enough, this conference was even more crazy than the Value Voters Summit where activists said pornography turns teenage boys gay and abortions should be held in the public square. Kobach stands among the mighty here.
Kobach is sadly well-known for his anti-immigrant crusades which he takes from city to city. It not only made the New York Times, but The Colbert Report where Colbert, unfortunately, was quite kind to him. Though the University of Northern Colorado paper wasn’t so much (you’ll have to scroll down to September 12th).
In 2004, Kobach ran for Congress in Kansas and took money from a special interest Political Action Committee run by the wife of John Tanton, who works with Wayne Lutton to publish white supremacist literature. Lutton now edits The Social Contract Press, which sponsors publications that claim America has a biblical right to kick people out.I can’t help but wonder: Is that really what Jesus would do?
Kobach is also affiliated with the right wing Gun Owners of America (they think the NRA is a bunch of socialists), whose executive director is Larry Pratt. Pratt used to edit an anti-Semitic publication, participates in militia activities and addresses white supremacist and Christian Identity organizations. Kobach took money from these people to go to Congress.
Thankfully, he failed.
Aren’t you glad he’s running for Secretary of State? But at last weekend’s conference, he gave his five-point plan for eliminating voter fraud (apparently lead by ACORN and undocumented immigrants), and he wants to start right here in Kansas.
According to Kobach, the “hard left” and ACORN are working extra hard to steal elections. Perhaps we’re doing this by not caging voters. Kobach insists they weren’t actually caging voters but caging issues. I would hope the Secretary of State would know the difference between the two (especially in a well-prepared year-end review letter).
No one, said Kobach, is disenfranchised based on the color of their skin these days. He slammed the Obama Justice Department for signaling to states that they’re “on their own” when it comes to fighting voter fraud.Kobach’s five-step prescription for states, which he hopes he can implement in Kansas as a model, includes ramping up prosecutions for voter fraud, enacting photo-ID laws, taking more aggressive steps to “clean up” voter rolls (otherwise known as purging), requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration, and standardizing provisional ballot and recount procedures, which he said “the left” was abusing.
Purging voters works really well for Republicans. Because when ChoicePoint did it in Florida for the 2000 election, some 57,700 voters were purged from the rolls (incorrectly marked as felons based on similar names and race). The official margin of victory for Bush was 537 votes.
He also accuses the left of “abusing” provisional ballots and recount procedures. If this is actually a problem in Kansas, please let me know. How many Democrats in Kansas win in recounts? I know of a few who have lost! But he’s probably simply referring to Al Franken in Minnesota. Given how much change there was in the “final” vote counts, it seems the problem isn’t voter fraud …
Kobach says there is “rampant fraud” happening and cites one woman’s testimony to the Kansas Senate Ethics and Elections Committee. She cited several examples she witnessed while working an election poll, and the supervising judge sort of backed up her testimony. However, the other poll workers did not. From my own experience working three elections, there are more problems with poll workers trying to turn away eligible voters than ineligible voters trying to cast a ballot (on that note: everyone can cast a ballot, albeit provisional, but not everyone can cast a vote). Watching poll workers turn away voters (which varies from poll to poll) makes me really afraid of any voter ID laws. When a measure ran through the Kansas legislature earlier this year, the concern seemed to be more around immigrants voting than white people voting in multiple elections (or in the wrong state, a problem Ann Coulter has, or at the wrong polling place, a problem that’s actually quite common, and quite illegal).
People living in and near poverty, people of color, and students are disproportionally affected by these measures. And Kobach has yet to find even one example of a non-citizen (undocumented or otherwise) voting in an election. He points to ACORN in Missouri yet can’t find any examples in Kansas. What examples of any kind of voter fraud he can find are few and far between. Sure there are problems, some serious problems, with our current voting franchise, but Kobach doesn’t offer any solutions for Kansans – but he does find a few for an increasingly hostile right-wing agenda. I really don’t want to know how much this will cost Kansans.
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