Manipulation of information is not new. The Greeks and Romans did it.
However, there are new laws, no foreign government will involve itself with a local vote.
Zuckerberg's lawyers may have missed that. Who can blame them with all the money coming in.
However in March Madness parlance, time to short step Facebook.
2
Three words to eliminate potential voter fraud and encourage thoughtful voting by all eligible Americans without lines or I.D.’s: “national mail-in voting.”
‘Nuff said...
3
Q: Mr. Richman, you would flag a name like “Carlos Murguia,” as foreign-sounding, and potentially ineligible to vote, would you not?
A: Yes, I would.
Q: And are you not aware that Judge Carlos Murguia is presiding now, in federal court, in this very building?
Or something like that. But, man, that's good - I could go an entire legal career and not get a moment on cross quite that good. Love it!
9
Mr. Kobach did concede that his own state, Kansas, would not be providing the voter information asked for by the White House Voter Fraud Commission, chaired by Mr. Kobach. Seems the state of Kansas has a law prohibiting the release of the requested voter data.
Amazing that we have such idiots elected to public office.
9
I was in a rural state a year ago and realized just how difficult it would be for some voters to get an ID. The only place to get one is the DMV, and in that part of the state, the DMV was open 2 weekday mornings each week, and might be 40 miles from you. The place you vote, however, is likely to be a nearby school or church. So how does a shut-in, a person without a car, a mom with small children or anybody with a job easily get a morning off and an opportunity to get an ID. And it ought to be restated, this hasn't been a problem, so why is there a fix?
47
I've never quite understood what the motive would be of millions of people to try to vote illegally. It's a long process, easy to detect you are not a legal voter and would be easy enough to be caught doing.
The GOP is only looking for an excuse to deny particular groups a way to vote. I guess they thought that rigging the gerrymandering in many states wasn't enough.
Kobach is like anyone who knows he's doing something wrong. He projects his misdeeds onto others because perhaps he has a conscience buried somewhere.
I suppose he doesn't trust the effects of the GOP gerrymandering as enough of a rigging process to turn elections toward GOP candidates.
How pathetic.
25
The Reagan revolution elevated conservative political opinion over evidence and truth. The 1994 Gingrich takeover of the House completed the task. Arrogant posturing became more persuasive to ordinary people than straight forward evidence based thinking. Trump is what happened to America as a result. If you lie and posture arrogantly enough to discourage being called in public, too many people tend to accept what you say. Trump is the world class shyster that resulted. Read David Kay Johnston's 2016 book about Trump, from his beginning. Then take a shower to wash off the filth.
26
What kind of a person is Kris Kobach? If his middle name begins with a K as well, I think we have our answer.
20
And yet, Kobach and his know nothing partner from Virginia are constantly used on the cable networks as 'expert witnetesses(sp)
19
Anybody who wants to see Kris Kobach in his element, should watch Greg Palast's excellent documentary The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Turns out the guy is kinda of camera shy when confronted with his nonsense.
18
What is most amazing is that Trump and the Republicans are chasing down these fears of illegal immigrants running to the polls to vote so much so Trumps assigns a special election integrity commission. But when it comes to the Russian interference in our election Trump and the Republicans turns a blind eye saying "nothing going on here"!!!
22
America has the lowest voter turnout among the democracies. This last election was worse. What is the cause of this, NYT? We need an editorial on how our political system is non responsive to the needs of the public and this leads to voter passivity and cynicism, as well as to anger.
Sure the Dems are way better than GOP, now an extremist rw party dominating our 3 branches and most states. But what's the Dem platform going forward? Will Dems listen to us, their constituents or to their big money mega donors-- insurance, pharma, Wall St banks, etc?
We get plenty of anti Trump in the media, but that's not enough. An election campaign is upon us, but the Times op ed columns aren't discussing the full range of views and alternatives that should be the center of our democracy. What are they afraid of?
Let’s face it-- our govt isn't working for us. Too many lawmakers are in it for what they can get out of it, and the S. Court interprets the Constitution any way they want. (Citizens United--money is 1st Amend 'free speech')
Polls show the policies most of us want can't be translated into political action---re guns, taxes, jobs, intl trade, health care, retirement, equal justice, etc. It's the 1% elites funding the parties who set policy limits affecting our lives. Otherwise we'd have had true universal health care long ago, like the other democracies.
Enter Trump, authoritarian egotist, distorting every issue. He's a symptom, just like our low voter turnout.
7
How much money have you donated? How much time have you spent on political campaigns? Words just don't seem to cut it anymore.
2
Make it mandatory to register to vote at high school graduation. There you have it. The only solution.
9
We are trying to get close to that in my state, but you need the Republicans to go along with it for it to stick. Guess what they do NOT support.
2
Why are so many Republicans so anxious to deprive others of their voting rights?
17
It would seem that the path to power for Republicans is made by placing large boulders in the road to block voters. If every eligible voter participated, we would be a better nation.
10
The GOP wants government-approved photo IDs to be able to vote? Fine, so long as we require voters to pass a civics and current events test as well. Let's see how Trump's poorly-educated deplorables do with that.
5
Pretrty sure that kind of requirement doesn't pass Constitutional muster.
Reading this article convinced me again that I made a wise decision when I became a monthly contributor to the ACLU.
11
As someone with a non-Anglo (thus, foreign-sounding) surname, whose ancestors came to what is now this country more than 300 years ago, I would be interested to know the number of native-born Americans who have foreign-sounding surnames. My guess is that we are in the majority, Mr. Kobach; and your name sounds rather 'foreign' to me.
Note to Mr. Kobach and others: Many Hispanic family names have been in what is now the US for close to 400 years. The Southwest was not empty land when the "Americans" arrived.
11
I live in New Mexico. I have heard many stories from my friends here about the difficulty their elderly parents, who were born here and are U.S. citizens, are having getting new driver's licenses and ID. They have voted all their lives. Some were born at home. Some have gone by nicknames since childhood ("Manuel" going by "Manny" for example). These new laws are requiring them to prove their identity after they have lived here all their lives and disallowing any documents that do not use their birth name. These laws have really disadvantaged the elderly.
13
Ironically - tragically - the "voter fraud" mindset of people like Kobach is the inverse of how we view our justice system. Our system of justice is - or at least used to be - based on the premise that we would rather let 10 guilty people go free than unjustly imprison 1 innocent person. Kobach and those like him would rather deny the rightful votes of 1,000,000 people than risk one person voting unlawfully.
9
Thank thank the stars above for the ACLU. And yes, I am a card-carrying member.
14
No one knows how prevalent voter fraud is because it is difficult to detect. Most voter fraud involves voter registration, mail-in-ballots and deliberate miscounts, but even voter impersonation may be a bigger factor than supposed. In 2014, New York City’s Department of Investigations dispatched undercover agents to 63 polling places. Assuming the names of individuals who had died or moved away, or were in jail, they were allowed to vote at 61 of the 63 polling places. One of the two agents turned away was simply unlucky. The felon whose name he assumed was the son of an election official at the polling places. In the other case, a poll worker followed the agent outside and advise him that he could probably get away with using his fake ID at a nearby polling place. No poll workers called police or reported the two unsuccessful attempts. Even when voter impersonation is detected, it is seldom reported. The 2014 sting operation showed that voter impersonation is about 97 percent successful and goes unreported when detected about 100 percent of the time. Most elections are not national elections but statewide and city elections. Many are determined by a handful of votes and some each year end in ties settled by a coin toss.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/voter-fraud-a-myth-thats-not-what-new-york-...
2
I agree that we need a fair system to verify the eligibility of voters. Perhaps each state should maintain a secure database of eligible voters including methods to verify their identity such as security questions. Before an election, a unique code would be sent to those on the list to confirm their eligibility and as a reminder to vote. It should be sent early enough so that those who do not receive one would have a reasonable time to register or make any corrections. At the poling station election worker could enter the code and/or security question answers on line to verify the eligibility of a person without proper ID.
Thanks to the ACLU for fighting Kobach in court. This is why I donate to the ACLU. We need patriots like them to fight this out legally before Trump replaces all the decent judges...
13
Another group of legitimate voters that could be kept from voting by strict ID laws are disabled Americans, as well as chronically and terminally ill people, who may not be able to travel to government offices to get the newly required photo IDs. I would like to see more attention paid to this group of voters who could become disenfranchised but who are American citizens, nonetheless.
7
Not just "could be". I had to fight tooth and nail to get my absentee ballot. Enough screaming via email, online, ans facebook, among others finally had one had delivered to me. I doubt it was counted though.
5
They should address the voter fraud of placing roadblocks in the way of people who are legally eligible to vote. That is the real voter fraud. Removing people from voting rolls, if they skip voting in several elections. That would be like stripping someone's Second Amendment rights to buy a gun, if they don't buy a gun for a number of years.
11
"Unfortunately, the courts have not always brought the appropriate degree of skepticism to these laws. The Supreme Court upheld the first voter-ID law it considered, in 2008, even though the Indiana lawmakers who passed it had not identified a single case of fraud that the law would have prevented."
I know, why don't we look at just who was on that court. If we do, we'll find that it included a number of right-wing hacks who helped steal the 2000 presidential election in Bush v. Gore, and who then later helped the GOP again with Citizens United in 2010. Two of the justices, John Roberts and Samuel Alito, were appointed by George W. Bush, who had benefited from the stolen election of 2000.
The Supreme Court got hijacked by the right wing long ago.
11
This is not a difficult problem to solve given today's sophisticated information technology capabilities. However, I think a large portion of the population wouldn't like the solution.
What's required is a national identity card, and of course a national registry or database that goes with that, including biometrics. It's pretty straightforward to implement, and social security cards could be a starting point.
This is exactly how may European countries do it. The ID card is used to identify the individual for any transaction that involves the government, including filing taxes, collecting any government payments, and of course, voting.
But many Americans aren't willing to go there. What would be next, a national firearm registry? The specter of Big Brother is just too frightening, not to mention the possibilities for identity theft.
Also, although implementing this isn't technically difficult, it would require a one time expense to set up, both for computer resources, but more even more expensive, for initial vetting of documents. You'd need either a birth certificate or naturalization certificate to get registered.
And for many elderly rural poor that were born in their homes, there may not be a birth certificate. A particular problem for the black community in the rural south.
4
Given the number of people in this country who don't vote, one would think that all politicians would want to do everything possible to bring out as many voters as they can by making the process as user friendly as possible within the traditional legal framework.
To me the actions of Mr. Kobach reflect a larger narrative that has grown on the right over the last decade or so, an anything goes approach to both elections and governing. It appears they were so incensed by the loss of two presidential elections that they decided it was necessary to abandon all pretense of fair play and do whatever it took to reverse the trajectory.
To put this in context, try to imagine if any sports team behaved in a similar fashion, taking spite and revenge to an entirely new level by abandoning form, protocol, civility and in some cases, the long accepted rules, to further their chances. There's no question that team would be penalized and bumped from whatever league they participated in. In the case of the GOP, no such official reckoning has been forthcoming.
In fact, by achieving a majority, partly through the usual reversals common within a two term presidency and partly through extremely dubious means that in my view have had largely negative effects on the electorate, they have continued apace with their quest for permanent rule without consequences. It does appear however, that having overreached to an extraordinary degree, their halcyon days may well be coming to a close.
5
And addition, they have done a great job at working the refs.
4
"one would think that all politicians would want to do everything possible to bring out as many voters as they can"
So true, for civic minded politicians. But the data is in: as compared to Republicans, fewer Democrats vote with such ID laws. And since getting elected is a huge incentive for any politician...well, the rest can be deduced.
2
Granted, there was never any merit to the claim that voter fraud was a threat to democracy, but let's not assume that the court's decision has put this matter to rest. The real intention behind the Voter Fraud Commission was to deprive certain citizens of their right to vote, and though the court delivered Kobach a much deserved setback, he and his cohorts will certainly be back with another attempt to keep minority voters from the polls. This, after all, is the m.o. that got Trump elected and represents the best chance to keep the Republicans in office.
3
It's interesting that many comments recommend having a voter ID card, some saying even that it's a "no-brainer." Maybe it is a no-brainer, but how many people remember the debates in the 1960s or 70s when our Social Security card was to be used for various interactions with the federal government? In those years there was a huge outcry against what was then perceived as a National Identify Card(!), which were painted as only existing in those nasty Communist countries.
It seems we have now come full circle....
5
Some of these comments show confusion about what is wrong with requiring proof of citizenship. Perhaps it would be a good idea for your series to reference some of the research about how it's beyond the financial capabilities of many poor people to obtain a required legal document. And how some states are making it increasingly difficult to obtain the necessary documents, especially for people without a car or driver's license. And a variety of unguarded quotes by GOP politicians confirming that the real intention of these requirements was to keep them from voting.
I realize this information is out there and has been gone over often, but seeing this confusion, it would be good to add them to your series as essential background.
10
Confirming identity is easy is some states, those that allow different means of confirming (driver's or student ID; electric bill; passport; etc) but in some states a costly ID voter's card is required and in some districts the office "selling" the ID card is open at odd hours on few days, indicating desire to thwart rather than help voters get what is needed for confirmation. Many college students are informed but may be in states that do not allow student ID cards for confirmation and many college students 18-22 cannot afford cars and so have no driver's license.
6
It is time to sue these Republican lawbreakers who violate their oaths of office, at the ballot box and in the courts for the damage they do to American democracy.
1
The Republican party is trying to subvert democracy and turn the United States into an oligarchy on multiple fronts. Trump is one, this drive to make IDs mandatory for voting while at the same time making it as difficult and costly as possible to get IDs (see the testimony by a number of commentators) is another. Republicans can't win elections on the issues so they are trying to "win" by short-circuiting the electoral process. Voters, protect your own and others right to vote!!
3
As a progressive, I believe that a voter ID card would encourage more of our non-participating fellow citizens to vote. That would be a good thing. If the cards were easily distributed, with extensive (and by necessity expensive) outreach done to make sure that anyone is disenfranchised, we would be a much better democracy.
But as long as the Republicans devise these laws to block many of our fellow Americans from voting, as they have occasionally been caught admitting, a voter ID law is destined to be a vehicle for voter suppression. Sadly, their suppression efforts and flagrant gerrymandering has been so successful, they control most state governments.
In the 2017 Virginia House of Delegates vote, Democrats beat the Republicans 53% to 44%, but because of gerrymandering, that resulted in 51 seats for the Republicans and only 49 for the Democrats. Therefore, it is going to take a tremendous effort to route these anti-democratic Republicans out of office so we can reconfigure these districts to ensure a representative democracy. Only after that happens, can we write laws that actually encourage voting and guarantee every citizen their right to vote. It’s not going to be easy.
2
The vote is all we have as citizens. It is our small voice crying out for justice, fairness, moderation and necessary change. Voting is an active commitment to democratic decision making and a willingness to accept the fact that, no matter what, we, as citizens, will not get all we want while the pull and push of the needs and desires of others are weighed against our own.
I am taking up a collection. When Kris Kobach dies, as all men eventually do, I want to put up a huge monument with his name on it: "Here lies a scoundrel, a man who tried to steal away democracy hard won by revolutionary Americans and defended with the lives of hundreds of thousands of citizen soldiers through the centuries. May he not rest in peace."
4
Clearly Mr Kobach is a well educated person who for whatever reason hasn't used his talent to gain any knowledge. Too bad, he might enjoy being human.
2
If voter fraud really is a problem, there is a simple and easy way to counter it. Develop a national ID program with a biometric component and centralized database. Every citizen signs up and gets a card, paid for by Uncle Sam, and every time they go to vote in any election they present it. If they’ve lost or forgotten their card, they just peer into an iris scanner and it’s all good. And there is a backup system to ensure everyone is included properly and to rectify mishaps.
Now go ask a conservative how they feel about a national ID program.
4
Voter fraud is RAMPANT! I heard this on Fox Shun Hanaty a few weeks ago. It was a study from the American something Institute.
When I vote, I always look for people who dont look like Americans, obviously there to elect Democratics. Something is seriously wrong.
1
What do you consider "Americans" to look like?
1
A lot of the commenters here wonder why Voter ID laws are such a bad thing, especially since some many other fully functionaing democracies such as Canada, and countries in Europe seem to have them.
Well, I don't know about those countries, but I am intimately familiar with one country - India - that has extremely stringent Voter ID verification processes. In fact, in India, one cannot vote without a government-issued special Voter ID card. But the difference is that, in India, poll workers show up at everyone's doorsteps, verify proof of residency, take ID photos for free, and hand-deliver the Voter ID cards, no exceptions. The government goes out of its way to ensure that no citizen is disenfranchised.
Compare that to the situation in the US where the government institutions in GOP-led states make it as hard as possible to get photo IDs. If we followed India's example, I don't think anyone would complain about strict Voter ID laws. I know that I wouldn't!
But considering how these Voter ID laws are employed as a fig-leaf to disenfranchise "other-party" voters, the rampant gerrymandering of electoral districts, cash-driven and special-interest elections, it is hard not to be suspicious of these attempts. I think we in the US should eat humble pie and acknowledge that we need to learn from others how to do democracy.
12
Since the enactment of motor-voter, it has been illegal for the states to require proof of identity, or proof of citizenship in order to vote. Since the enactment, I have relocated eight time. Registering to vote requires signing a statement that I am entitled to vote and mailing a form. On four of my relocations it took two or three trips to get a drivers license because I had not met the documentation required.
I am not convinced that I could not have registered for 15 voter registrations per relocation and then voted absentee for 14 of the registrations. And that I could have continued to vote absentee for all of my old addresses.
The emphasis on voter ID for in person voting is
1
Let's not forget that the Republican base needs a bogeyman to rally around. The massive voter fraud meme - despite no credible evidence - provides a way to circle the wagons. But perhaps even just as useful, it provides a mechanism to legitimize elections that base does not agree with.
3
I've served as a poll worker in New York City for a number of years. I was proud to say to a voter no you do not need to give me photo id, just tell me your address and i'll tell you the table for the district where you will find your ballot. There, yes, as you sign in they record your signature in the ledger of your voting presence. Then the ballot the voter is casting is both digitally screened and preserved on paper. This is responsible enfranchisement.
10
It is well and good to condemn the vile shenanigans of Kobach, however late in the day the condemnation comes. But surely, the highest impact distortions of the will of the people need to be investigated and prosecuted. Why, I wonder, was it left to Dr. Stein of the Green Party to raise money to implement recounts in suspicious outcomes in 3 states in the latest presidential election? And why did the Democratic Party REFUSE to share the cost? Why did H. Clinton and B. Obama remain silent. Curious that the NYT expresses no interest in this glaring omission. Curious and infuriating. Is Obama sacred, beyond criticism; and is H. Clinton's shameful conduct in destroying Libya and Syria and toadied to Wall Street overlooked because the official line must be swallowed: The Russian Did It. Tragically, a party can't win elections based on "The Russians Did It". Winning elections requires far more than accepting a convenient victim narrative. For starters, give due coverage to the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. You know, it's the wing that the 99% identify with.
If Democrats return to power in Congress in November their first step should be not impeaching Trump but repairing the defects to the voting rights act section 5 that were overturned in the 2013 Shelby decision and passing that section again in a way that will pass SCOTUS muster.
6
I do not believe that voter fraud is a big issue, however I've never understood the fierce opposition to ID cards.
1
Because not everyone who is eligible to vote has or can get ID for various reasons (lack of transportation, lack of $$ to get new copies of the underlying documents like birth certificates and proof of name changes, etc). It primarily hits the elderly and poor, particularly those who are PoC.
4
Contrast and compare these two statements:
1)"The Supreme Court upheld the first voter-ID law it considered, in 2008, even though the Indiana lawmakers who passed it had not identified a single case of fraud that the law would have prevented. "
2)"The Supreme Court upheld the first assault weapon ban it considered, in 2009, even though the lawmakers who passed it had not identified a single case of an assault weapon being used that the law would have prevented. "
Only one of those is true - they restricted the right to vote.
2
What is so antidemocratic to demand a photo voter ID card ? In Europe having a voter photo ID is part of the normal life of a citizen. When I go voting in France I have to show my invitation that has been sent by my municipality where I have to be registered and I have to show my photo ID card or my photo passport. So voter fraud for European, national, regional, local elections is very difficult. And there is nothing antidemocratic in having to show my picture.
It is very troublesome that the country with the largest number of nuclear warheads has politicians for whom voter suppression is a legitimate politcal weapon and they are still part of one of the two big democratic parties.
And we criticize Putin for his electoral theater.
To become credible again Americans have first to sanitize their proper electoral procedures and neutralise politicians that survive by voter suppression.
17
Republican gerrymandering is the root of that problem.
2
Not everyone has ID and passports are expensive. We still have elderly who were born at home who don’t have acceptable birth certificates. (Births recorded in family bibles, etc.) For those who don’t drive, they don’t need a driver’s license, which is our principal form of photo ID in the US.
4
I lived in France. There is no standard federal id card in the US. Many people do not have a driver's license and therefore no photo id. The process to get a driver's license can be time consuming and expensive. It is discouraging legitimate voters to require a photo id.
5
About 15 years ago I was denied a ballot. I was told that I needed additional documents.
Others in line to vote, were not turned away.
And so I took the remainder of the day off and came back with all the documents I could locate in a few hours. I stood in line – and presented the additional documents to the same lady who would not give me a ballot the first time. She gave me a ballot this time.
A man standing in line asked me -- what is the problem. I replied “My name is Sabah Dabby”.
11
What should be pointed out when mentioning voter fraud is that it is so unlikely because "what person would willing commit voter fraud to cast a SINGLE vote?".
10
People need to remember that the commission investigating the election in Florida in 2000 concluded it was stolen for Bush by calling thousands of Florida residents felons and dropping them from the voter roles. Most weren't felons--some had one name that matched someone of the felon list--but damn near all were black. That got us the worst president ever, until the current one. Notice also that all voter suppression schemes are Republican; a party that only represents 1% of voters has to do what it can to win an election.
8
Of course, when there is nothing to see about ineligible voting, the next step is simply to make stuff up. This next step will surely be taken by the likes of Kris Kobach at state and federal levels of government, as it was throughout the blighted history of the Jim Crow South. This will happen again unless patriotic citizens who treasure the salubrious march of democratic self-governance resist regression with all the legal tools at their disposal.
Democracy does not fail us, but we can fail democracy.
2
With their onerous ID requirements the Republican in many states got exactly the results they wanted. They were able to disenfranchise many they knew would vote for Hillary. If all those who could have voted legally had been able to voted, the popular vote and Electoral College results would have been different.

1
Remember how, as a candidate, Donald Trump claimed the election was "rigged?" Turns out, he was telling the truth, for once. Maybe that claim was strategic, because it propelled Democrats to claim that the vote was free and fair. Hmmm . . .
The reality is that, in spite of all of the claims, there is absolutely no study with any level of credibility into how many illegal voters there are. Numbers are put forward by various groups with an agenda, what eve it may be.
Therefore the only logical solution is a National voter ID system which does verify citizenship. That way there is no red/blue state thing going on. Even then the biggest problem in reality is voter apathy. Voter turn out has stagnated in the low 50% range for decades. That, along with our pitiful educational system, will do more to destroy our democracy than anything else.
2
I lost faith in the PBS news hour's fair and equal coverage when they gave Kris Kobach air time to view his opinions on the events of the day without telling the viewers his speciality of voter suppression. This happened on more than one occasion. Viewers need to to know who is expressing these opinions, or you give equal time to truth and lies and make them seem equivalent. This kind of "fair" reporting has helped enable the present situation of fake news.
3
An article in Harpers in 2016 exposed how the PBS Newshour is produced by a private conservative operation and is no longer any semblance of an unbiased news operation.
Interesting the surname of the judge that the witness had decided was "foreign sounding". It was Hispanic. This shows blatant discrimination against one group. The lawyer questioning him should have read off a list of other "foreign sounding" names of German, etc. white origin and asked what he thought of those also.
1
I've posted this before, but it's still relevant every time voter "fraud" and voter suppression is discussed:
The law locks up the man or woman
Who steals the goose off the common
But leaves the greater villain loose
Who steals the common from the goose.
4
On the right-wing website, Pjm, J. Christian Adams, a member of the now-defunct commission, breathlessly announced that thousands of New Hampshire votes were cast by non-residents (presumably bused in from liberal Massachusetts). Adams didn't retract his claim even after it was pointed out to him that out-of-state students attending NH colleges and universities were allowed to vote in the state.
7
How about guys like Kobach going to jail for violating people's civil rights? That might make them a bit more cautious.
10
"A few months later, Mr. Trump appointed Mr. Kobach to lead his so-called election integrity commission."
Note Mr. Kobach was chosen to lead the commission by its chair, Mike Pence. Both Mr. Kobach and Mr. Pence are Koch brothers guys (I lived in Kansas and follow the Kochs.) In the Koch family tree, the close-in-age Kris Kobach, Scott Pruitt, and Paul Ryan are IMO the three who truly believe in the Koch libertarian philosophy. (Peter Thiel would be their rich cousin on the coast.)
Paul Ryan is the heir apparent - but Kris Kobach is the homegrown in Kansas Paul Ryan 2.0 - the one educated at Harvard, Yale Law, and Oxford; he is meant for much, much bigger things. So it's good news that Kris Kobach is one of the Koch/Trump appointees who seems to fail at every turn.
I give many thanks to the robust state and federal legal system which both seem to be able to see through his moves. (And that's another reason Trump's attempt to stack the federal judiciary will have long-lasting effects if successful.) Kris Kobach was headed for governor or senator territory - but this will slow him down.
The EPA's Scott Pruitt is IMO the success the Kochs hope for at the moment. Never forget that the Kochs have built a multi-pronged machine for their plan; It's always good to hear of at least one part of it encountering resistance.
"The Koch Brothers’ most loyal servants are serving in Donald Trump’s White House": https://www.salon.com/2017/01/11/koch-allies-in-the-white-house_partner/
12
It doesn't matter that Kobach is being exposed in court. It will only make him MORE popular in Kansas. This state is trying to go back to the fifties as quickly as possible. The 1850s. Seriously.
6
Just like Don Quixote, Kobach has been tilting at windmills so long, that he actually believes that the Dulcinea of voter fraud myth actually exists. Nine cases of voter fraud uncovered by this charlatan, and only one of them was an illegal vote. The rest were older Republicans who double voted. What a joke. Unfortunately, this is the poll tax of our era, and the GOP has used it to effectively restrict the vote. It shows where their priorities are, when they want to put more restrictions on voting, than purchasing firearms, even though both our constitutional rights, and should enjoy equal standing.
2
Not to worry, with the naming in federal courts of a massive amount of political zealots, some of them without any Law experience, this agenda will come to fruition later.
The only reservation fair-minded people can have about this excellent editorial and about Kris Kobach is the use of the word “sham.” Some us would have preferred “scam” as a better way to describe a coldly intentional disenfranchising of thousands of voters.
In other words, neither Kobach nor Republican officials in other states truly believed that voter fraud – as opposed to election official fraud – was or is a problem in America.
They cheated American citizens out of disdain for the Constitution, not simply from a mistaken ideology-driven fervor.
2
Kobach is nothing more than a well-paid stooge, a person doing the bidding of others who would in a heart beat squash the Constitutional Rights of ALL Americans to advance an agenda that is an anathema to the very core of this nation's system of government.
Kobach and his "evidence" and "credible witnesses" looked like fools in Federal Court as the presiding judge and ACLU tore asunder their "legal arguments". But that's not where the story starts nor ends. Follow the money and organizational administration (people, places, policy files and directives) and the REAL affront to vile conduct will be exposed.
The heart of this disenfranchisement: J. Christian Adams (Public Interest Legal Foundation and the attorneys who proffer cases), Hans von Spakovsky (Heritage Foundation), J. Kenneth Blackwell (former Sec State Ohio), and Mike Pence (Vice President). But these individuals are the exterior shell - who funds their existence? Follow the money and expose the real criminals.
2
While I agree that the Kobach march to suppress minority voting is despicable and devoid of empirical data to support the effort, we don’t have to look too far to find other examples of this type of nonsensical advocacy. In the pages of your own paper, you advocate banning the sale of “semi-automatic weapons” in response to what a few deranged lost souls have done with these weapons.
You write “ A federal judge once compared such laws to using a sledgehammer to hit either a real or imaginary fly on a glass coffee table.” I invite your editors to come out to the Heartland of America and go on a field hunt or waterfowl hunt so you may understand how responsible citizens cherish hunting. What you’ll find is that a large majority of all weapons used in the field are semi-automatic weapons capable of cycling many rounds in a short period of time. This means each trigger pull results in one load being fired.
While I personally don’t understand the enthusiasm about the use of assault-style weapons, take the time to learn the facts about how conservation-minded, law-abiding, dedicated and successful citizens, who are also legitimate sportsmen, use weapons in the field before you advocate the swatting of a fly with a sledgehammer.
I can assure you that the only one who will comply with a blanket restriction on such weapons is the person in whose hand you would trust such a weapon. Careful with application of convenient intellectual arguments to issues you favor?
1
So.."In his eight years as secretary of state, he has secured a total of nine convictions, only one of which was for illegal voting by a noncitizen; most were for double-voting by older Republican men."
Seems like the data would support a requirement for men who have previously voted Republican to pass a civics test. You know, questions like is it ok for a president to call the media the "enemy of the American people"? or multiple choice on questions like how many people were proven to have voted illegally for Hillary in 2016? If you don't pass no voting.
I'm not joking. I've had enough of the deplorable ignorant voting block As said by ESPN's Granderson "We wouldn’t issue a driver’s license to someone unable to pass the written test, knowing the potential damage that person could do behind the wheel. Why do we look at voting differently"
3
The American way has always been to assume the best of motives, honesty and integrity of not only elected officials but ordinary citizens as well. Yet, Republicans today assume the worst in people, especially minorities whom Republicans feel are undeserving freeloaders. If Kris Korbach had his way, he’d turn America back to the dark days of Jim Crow and separate but equal status. The only thing missing from Kris Korbach is the third K. These three Ks show us what kind of person he really is.
2
Of course, Clinton’s Motor Voter statute was designed to get Democrat-voting non-citizens to be registered to vote, no questions asked.
1
Well the fraud Kobach came up with was older Republican males.
So go figure. At some point Reality needs to be part of your mix.
3
We are losing our democracy.
All fine and good if you are a Republican, except that at some point you will find reason to differ from the party line and they will do this to you.
2
It is the Democrats who are making a valiant effort to unset the duly elected president. It was also a Democrat who politicized the administrative state in a effort to hobble conservatives, to spy on political opponents and to impose regulations in violation of the law.
the election of Trump was the direct consequence of the autocratic dictatorship of his predecessor.
1
At some point we are going to need politicians to take very basic psychological tests.
Mr. Kobach has had a relentless need to investigate what over and over turns out to be dead ends for his conspiracy theory about voter fraud. Mr. Trump calls people liars and cheats while he is so obviously a liar and fraud.
The next step is to look into Mr. Kobach's background- there is surely some sort of fraud going on to prompt his incessant need to find fraud everywhere else.
8
Allow citizens to register to vote with either proof of citizenship or to 'swear or affirm' that they are citizens. The 'swear or affirm' persons are the ones Kobach is suspicious of. He can go through the effort of checking their citizenship, spending the state's time and money.
...and it would give Kobach the perfect data set to investigate his supposed 'voter fraud'.
1
Although the editors note that the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity "folded," it's unfortunate that they don't point out that the work of the Commission continues under the aegis of the Department of Homeland Security -- one of the most opaque agencies of the US government. If sunshine truly is "the best of disinfectants" (Louis Brandeis), then we should not be surprised if Kobach's toxic efforts flourish in the protection of DHS' shade.
57
It is all about paranoia which is why voter "fraud" is the provenance of the GOP. They think everyone is out to get them, the most common symptom. It is unconscious, automatic "thinking".
2
Could there be anything more unAmerican that criminally preventing American citizens from voting in order to benefit your political party (which somehow always is the Republican Party)? Kobach should be arrested and charged with this crime and convicted.
Kobach - that sounds foreign doesn't it?
5
What is more un-American is allowing those not eligible to vote, as well as allowing those ineligible to vote multiple times.
It is extraordinary that Democrats claim that their voters are less able to get valid ID than Republican voters.
1
The word "extraordinary" does not mean unbelievable,
just very unusual.
When I was younger, many states including TN, made it very difficult (often impossible) for blacks to vote if it was thought they'd vote the "wrong" way.
I saw poll watchers in Johnson City and Elizabethton do just that.
1
I wonder if Kris Kobach's middle initial is K? It'd be fitting. But I digress.
I think the real issue here is icebergs. Kris, "you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
4
The whole investigation was a sham--a corrupt and costly search for evidence and solutions to a problem that doesn't exist. A better example of naked partisan politics you'll not find.
3
So federal courts and federal judges are proving that this complaint is nothing more than racism and voter suppression masquerading as “election intergrity and protection of democracy.” Why am I not surprised?
5
What is in that Kansas wheat? A faker for governor and easily led legislature who together nearly bankrupt the state by buying the something-for-nothing argument to cut taxes and finding that roses and revenue did not bloom as promised. This Secretary of State with an approach of throwing voters out with the bathwater scam is a disgrace to anyone's sense of democracy. Apparently his scorched earth approach to voter registration would have only people with white faces vote, and maybe white-faced Herefords. What a joke for an elected official; no wonder Trump was enamored.
5
Conservative reasoning: We have to deny some their right to vote because of the risk that a few may vote illegally / we can't possibly deny anyone their right to own a weapon just because of the risk that some children will be killed.
10
Gerrymandering, Supreme court suppression by theft, Voter Suppression, Propaganda, Move the election into the electoral college, where gerrymandered republicans are waiting to rubber stamp another loser of the election... no matter how dangerous, how unfit.
Government of The People?, Not so.
Government of the Oligarch? Seems so.
Maybe there is still time for America.
The very existence of a free United States of America depends on Mueller, our free press, and the young, marching for their lives. Hopefully together we can.....
"Vote Them OUT!"
Then bring them to justice.
9
This is but the more amateurish end of a spectrum of political behavior that is in essence and outcome a COUP against participative democracy in this country. Yes, we are under the control of a very loosely knit coup that involves a domestic billionaire set against ANY taxation, a small cadre of criminal oligarchs from Russia, and the Russian FSB.
2
Our President was the star of a TV reality show (Still is, some say.)
And there are so many TV shows to choose from.
And so, New York Times Editorial Board--I read this editorial about the egregious Mr. Kobach (who I'd never heard of before)--and I am watching the last ten minutes of "Perry Mason."
Or "Matlock."
I SEE--and ENJOY seeing--the real villain, the perpetrator, the bad guy sitting in the witness box. A skillful attorney peppering him with questions--catching him out in the lies, evasions, and would-be frauds that bedevil today's GOP.
I see him glowering--grimacing--dropping his eyes finally as masses upon masses of INCONTESTABLE PROOF is shoveled onto that guilty head.
You listening, Mr. Kobach?
'Cause it's all about YOU, isn't it.
It's all about you--and the con-men, the grifters, the fraudsters you serve.
Dare I say it? Will I be prosecuted for libel.
THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE.
Oh New York Times! I feel as never before--though I've felt it for many years now. . . .
. .. THESE GUYS HAVE GOT TO BE TURNED OUT OF OFFICE.
If democracy in these United States is to be nurtured and preserved. . . .
. . .these guys have gotta go.
Maybe--in the never-never-land of my dreams, my hopes--the party will come to its senses. And let me just say it. . . .
. .. REPENT!
Of all the dubious ploys--all the dirty tricks--all the chicanery.
But I'm not holding my breath.
Thank you, New York Times. Thank you.
3
There is a cartoon meme that circulates infrequently that show a cartoon rendering of Martin Luther King Jr saying his famous line "I have a dream".
Underneath it, there is a cartoon of a Republican leering at a ballot box saying " I have a scheme".
2
If fraud is a crime why isn't Kobach arrested?
5
With Trump filling judgeships across our land, remedy in the courts against GOP voter suppression may be coming to an end. Trump is appointing the faithful. Judges who are openly conservative, unqualified in some cases but all who have an agenda to promote far right ideology.
Kris Kobach seeks business for his company, Crosscheck, while trying to suppress the Democratic vote or the vote by anyone who is not white and christian. Crosscheck is the cyber program that picks out all those "funny, foreign" sounding/spelled names. Not to mention "black" names whatever they may be defined as.
We need not look further than North Carolina to see the poster child of voter suppression gone 3.0. North Carolina uses any and all tactics, computer models and squiggly lines to gerrymander and wipe out the African American vote.
In a country where we can't get 50% of the population to actually bother to vote the GOP claims bus loads of illegals streaming north into the heartland to vote. You'd think the white christian males would have noticed?
Kobach still needs to sell his business, the GOP will still use any means necessary to stop voters and the courts are being stacked against fairness.
We all need to keep vigilant. It will get worse with Trump at the helm.
7
Thankfully, we have the American Civil Liberties Union, aka A.C.L.U., that continues to fight to protect us from over-reach.
8
Great to expose the voter fraud fraud, but let's keep our eye on the ball - voter turnout. For every person who doesn't vote because of voter ID laws, probably 10 people don't vote because they're too lazy or too turned off. Dems need to put their main focus on getting people to the polls.
54
Agreed, the Congressional members in Congress should put their heads together in order to find a way to get eligibel voters to the polls rather than provide monetary and manpower support to DHS to find a "needle in a haystack. This is such a sham, where is nonpartisan oversight of this committee?
1
The whole truth is that evidence of voter fraud is very difficult to obtain. There is a huge incentive on the part of the democrats to withhold the data necessary to evaluate the true extent of voter fraud. In Nevada and California illegals are issued driver's licenses, from there it is a small step to register to vote, especially with motor voter laws.
Hope some day a news organization will come into existence that doesn't publish majority propaganda.
1
It says volumes about a political entity's integrity when it seeks to prevent bona-fide citizens from exercising their constitutional right to vote. How can they be trusted or believed when it comes to any other matters.
5
Mr. Kobach's attempt at identifying and catching illegal voters is the real "witch hunt" that Trump incorrectly ascribes to the Russia inquiry.
10
Kobach has not been "preaching his gospel of deception to Republucan lawmakers for years." He's been the lead flim flam man for the scam to deny voting rights, undermining our democracy so Republicans can stay in power, which is all that matters to them and their sociopathic billionaire backers.
7
The fraud is america itself. The country has no principles left; it has failed.
#calexit - before the autocracy hardens.
1
Of all GOP shenanigans to undermine democracy this is the most serious because it goes to the heart of the most fundamental component of democracy, the act of voting. Kobach's actions are shameful and quasi-criminal. Maybe he should move to Russia to serve directly V. Putin and his thugs. That's where he belongs.
7
Elections should absolutely have voter ID requirements, since after all the right to vote is one of the cornerstones of American democracy. Here are the rules that I think each state should set:
(1) You must have a valid ID in order to vote.
(2) If any one person can prove that they are an eligible voter, that they applied for an ID card, and they were denied that ID card or were prevented from voting with a valid ID card, then **all ID card requirements should be waived for the next two years** while the state figures out what's going on.
The right to vote is, after all, paramount to democracy. If a state's identity-card apparatus is so badly broken that someone is denied the right to vote then it must focus its efforts on ensuring that right is achieved for its citizens.
Here is an example:
A 2017 study by Ken Meyer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center found that of 293 eligible registered voters who did not vote in the 2016 election, 6% said they were prevented from voting by voter ID laws and 11% said they believed they were ineligible to vote.
If this study's findings were to be confirmed by a court (i.e. if someone were to review and confirm the cases of the people who said voter-ID laws blocked their voting), this would present strong evidence that Wisconsin should suspend its voter ID laws for two years and its elections people should figure out what the heck is going on that is disenfranchising voters.
19
Yes, hear, hear!
1
I totally agree that some sort of voter ID could be a good thing, with a few caveats. Privacy advocates have long objected to anything that approximates a national ID card and unless or until we can somehow get over this hurdle, this issue will remain in the hands of states to work out with a predictable patchwork of results. We also need to be honest about the intent of these laws. If implemented over time, without any special or burdensome application process, at no cost to voters, with sufficient governmental assistance for anyone needing help to register, and waivers for voters who are in the process registering when an election takes place, then maybe, just maybe it would work. We also need to be honest about the level of actual registration and voters fraud, which both research and verifiable evidence has shown to be de minimis. The fact that Mr. Kobach has only found 11 questionable voters since 2000 does not exactly represent the "tip of the iceberg." However, basing Kansas' oppressive voter ID laws on questionable estimates of massive voter registration fraud does carry the distinct odor of voter suppression.
1
The only required Constitutional requirements don't seem to correlate with your argument.
Other than the fact that there has been absolutely no credible proof of voter impersonation crimes, which is the ONLY problem that a voter ID solution can solve.
It is a red herring argument.
1
I've talked to Republicans in private, and sometimes they say that it's not that big of a deal if someone who can't be bothered to get proper identification isn't able to vote, because it's not clear that adding this person's perspective to the voting pool is going to enhance it. Someone who can't be bothered to do the leg work to get registered also probably doesn't bother informing themselves on the issues that they'll vote on.
I don't agree with this argument, but I think that there's something of a philosophical disagreement underneath all the lies that would be good to get out in the open. If you think of voting as tracking the preferences of eligible voters, a subset of the population, then you could call a false positive a case where someone illegally gets to vote, and a false negative a case where someone doesn't get to vote even though they're legally allowed to. Republicans as a party are obviously far, far more concerned with preventing false positives than false negatives, so that they're willing to lose a lot of eligible voters to prevent one illegal vote.
The reason for this, I think, is that they have a theory of the worthiness of marginal voters: people who won't vote under a system that makes it hard to vote probably shouldn't be voting anyway. I wish they would just say this out in the open more instead of obfuscating, because that's a debate we can have as a society. I suspect it won't go their way, though.
2
it’s hard to miss the irony. The Republicans are claiming voter fraud that has not been proven. The Democrats are claiming clonspiracy io commit voter fraud that has not been proven. Two peas in a pod.
2
"The Democrats are claiming conspiracy to commit voter fraud"?
When did that happen?
I though the dems were claiming attempts at voter suppression by the right.
A claim that is easily verified by looking at the actions of Mr. Kobach.
4
Well, actually the Republicans have been proven guilty of conspiring to block people from voting.
At least 2 states have been ordered by the Supreme Court to revise their gerrymandered congressional districts for that very reason; and some state courts have ruled that these laws created by the Republicans to make voting more difficult are unconstitutional.
6
Conspiracy with the Russians. Mueller and all that.
I love reading about Kobach being slamed in this case.
2
It doesn't matter how many laws are passed to safeguard our democracy and our ability to vote. There is a disease in this country that justifies the destruction of the countries foundation. Look at the technology companies selling off private information for profit to the highest bidder,the love affair by this administration with the thugs of RUSSIA, the hatred, racism of the swamp administration. Kansas just a tip of the iceberg of greed and corruption.
Thank goodness we have courts that will investigate and the freedom of information to get to the heart of the lie.
Everyday we get closer to the midterms and if we have to wait for hours to vote we will. This political economic corruption needs to end to maintain and protect our democracy.
3
Our democracy hands on a thread and allowing one party to ignore the Constitution has its dangers down the road. The Republican Sup. Ct. as given our democracy a one-two punch with Citizens United and the striking down of the key part of the voter election law as obsolete. Now that stolen seat will make the difference in determining whether our elections will forever be rigged to create two classes of citizens.
4
It is just the usual leftist nonsense. They won't allow laws that require proper ID (as we expect other countries to have) and then claim there is no fraud because we can't prove anyone voted improperly. Using the same logic, we can end the problem of uninsured motorists, just tell the police they cannot ask for proof of ins. Bingo, no one is uninsured anymore.
3
I like the words of RRD in Chicago who seems to be doubting the veracity of verbal statements.
Additionally, I am surprised that federal law only requires people to say they are citizens in order to vote. Should they lie, they ‘would be subject to perjury.’
Bill Clinton had no problem with perjury, why would anyone else?
I don’t understand why it is so difficult to secure an ID.
One is required for school, drivers licenses, entitlements, hospitalization, check cashing, etc. Who are these that live among us who refuse to say their name?
I love to watch Republicans try to litigate or legislate!
3
How can you screen names based on their sounding foreign? Isn't that the definition of racial profiling? How can this be legal, even in Kansas?
6
This editorial is wrong for several reasons.
First, why are Democrats so pro open borders and pro amnesty for illegals? Because they want illegals to vote knowing illegals vote Democrat.
Connect the dots.
Second, to pretend that if voter I.D. laws didn't exist there would be no voter fraud ignores the history of voter fraud in Chicago, NYC and other Democrat-controlled towns and states.
Third, that Kobach isn't producing much evidence of fraud probably means that anti-fraud voting identification laws in Kansas is working.
What a concept. Is that something Democrats don't want to admit?
A commenter attacks Republicans for a "the results justify the means" mentality seems to apply to the thinking of Democrats who oppose election integrity.
3
Thanks for the "corrections," Donald.
Now back to the real world.
2
I must say I am always amazed at the both the ignorance of history and lack of ability to think critically about issues.
For example, while there has been election fraud in our history, its been done not on the retail level, e.g., having people fraudulently vote, but on the wholesale level, by manipulating the results behind the scenes, e.g., ballot stuffing. And, Kobach has been in office for 8 years, the voter id law in for less than 5. Why could he not produce evidence of voter fraud before 2013.
Finally, connecting this to debates about border security requires mental gymnastics that a contortionist would envy.
3
organize. register. vote. there are more of us.
5
Don't these ridiculous people have more important things to worry about? No one's trying to do voter fraud. Come on dummies. Lies and racism are - or should be - way over. "Fairly unfortunate... " barely says it but it's the truth.
1
Kris Kobach is a clear and present danger to American democracy by his weaponization of bigotry. Only in a deep Red State like Kansas, where the folks vote for labels rather than their economic and personal interests, could Kobach's ideas find a home. That's what this is all about. There is no voter fraud, even Kobach knows that's a lie in a scale that we have not seen in Kansas since the coming of John J. Brinkley, the infamous "goat gland" doctor, who advocated an early form of treatment for erectile dysfunction before the coming of Viagra. This scam, and that's what it is, a scam, is designed to deny minorities the right to vote because they vote for Democrats and not Republicans. Kobach and his Republican allies fear the ballot box like a vampire fears the daylight, since their power is at stake. Just look at who backs Kobach, and you can understand his ultimate objective - the maintenance of Republican power and corporate interests. Just what the Kochs and Mercers want in a politician.
6
This horrible campaign to disenfranchise millions of voters, together with blatant Republican Gerrymandering, are absolute, incontrovertible evidence of that much debated term "institutional racism." That's exactly what it is and it's existence is as obvious as the nose on one's face. No one is being accused of racism, but like George Wallace and Orval Faubus, neither one, himself, racist, the Republican party has built itself for 50 years on this knowledge of how white Americans, and not only in the South, vote.
2
It seems to me that subverting the electoral process is a form of treason. But because it is conducted by white men, it becomes instead a nebulous sort of white-collar crime, or misdemeanor, or no crime at all. Sadly, I guess it's beyond the scope of the ACLU to bring criminal charges against guys like Kobach.
2
As a Kansan, this trial has been equal parts humiliating and hilarious.
1
We have to end the era of alternate reality as an acceptable mainstream choice. As American citizen, no matter the party: your vote counts more if every citizen votes. A low voting rate only excites parties that want to manipulate policy in their paying interests; otherwise, we all band together to vote directly for our interests, however we interpret them. The alternative (the existing) is to let insider money dictate policy, while voter turnout dictates headlines
1
Hmmm...Kobach? German, no...why don't we strike him off the polls - seems pretty foreign to me...
3
The degree of hypocrisy is unfathomable: suppress bonafide Americans voting in the name of protecting our elections, yet allow a foreign power to continue influencing our elections in the name of protecting Trump. Shame on the Republican party.
5
It's always fun to watch an utter incompetent try to litigate or legislate!
1
Only the courts can stop racists like Kobach. I've never felt more in love with judges and honest people--they are practically non-existent in politics.
2
Nothing to see here.
Its why Americans have to seek news from all over the place.
So in places like Boston and Chicago, where scores of dead people somehow vote, all of those stories personally witnessed by thousands of people are merely anecdotal.
Anecdotal?
(we'll see if this gets printed)
2
Printed?
By "scores of dead people voting" in Chicago, do you mean the report that 119 dead people voted 229 times … over a period of TEN years? Do you have any idea what a statistically insignificant figure that is? 229 votes in Chicago spread out over a decade, out of 1.8 million registered voters? That's precisely the point of this article. There are scattered instances that don't affect the outcome of any election.
Really, there are so many more problems that might merit this level of hysteria.
Famously in Indiana, one of the first groups whose votes were challenged under the new voter ID law was a busload of elderly nuns. They had voted for years but suddenly were delegitimized because their cloistered way of life had left them without the required ID.
(good luck getting your comment "printed")
Having learned they can't win on an even playing field, Republicans are using everyt trick to tilt it to their advantage. How? Simple. If you're poor, black, brown or can't drive, you can't vote.
1
If the democrats are going to fight for open borders they must be forced to accept voter identification laws. One has to wonder why democrats are so for open borders and so dead set against voter id laws? If one were to add 1+1 he might just get 2.
3
Unfortunately, Democrats have not advocated open borders.
2
This exemplifies why conservatives hate the ACLU: it actually promotes civil liberties.
3
Kobach, the pride of Kansas. Tells you everything about both.
say what?
The question is will Kansans vote for Kris Kobach for governor?
1
Hmm, voting rights as an excuse for "show me your papers" laws.
Maybe the wall on the Mexican border isn't being built to keep immigrants out but to keep citizens in.
2
GOP the party of:
Gerrymandering
vOter suppression
sPecial interests
1
lets imagine the day when we can all vote electronically via a tamper-proof blockchain process.....I wonder tho, would this utopian system require us all to positively identify ourselves? or would we all be able to, yknow, just kinda say who we are?
The GOP is obviously tryin to gain competitive advantage here. but you gotta admit: they've come up w a good ploy. people should have to identify themselves to vote. its just common sense - like you lock your door when you go away on vacation, even if your house has never been broken into.
3
Actually, not common sense, but simple propaganda working.
In my state, we have a 100% mail in paper ballot. All ballots are sent to people who have been registered by proving who they are. A part of that process requires you to provide a legal signature. When you vote, you sign your ballot, and send it in the mail or put into a state provided drop box. When each ballot is tallied, the signatures are checked by computer and/or a human being. Any discrepancy and you are called at the voluntarily provided phone number to inform you of the problem. You are then given a chance to provided a signature in front of a witness and put the new signature into the system. Some people's signatures change as they get older
The best part of this system is more than a single day to vote, you can vote on any day at any time. No polls to locate. No poll watchers to intimidate you. No weather problems. No transportation problems. No work schedule problems. You can use your voter pamphlet when you fill out the ballot. You can talk about it with your partner or friend while voting. And more.
Kris Kobach and Trump have been dealt their own cards by a federal judge in Kansas who sternly admonished Mr. Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state and gubernatorial candidate "We're not going to have a trial by ambush here" as per your article.
" Ambushing the minority voters" is what Kris Kobach was doing all along until he was literally slapped on his face by a lawsuit filed "by A.C.L.U. on behalf of Kansas minority residents of the state who were blocked from voting under the new state citizenship law passed in 2013 by Mr. Kobach " as per your article.
But the worst thing that these fraudulent Republicans including their illegitimate president Trump did, was legitimizing their illegitimate reign.
And in the end, these depraved human beings from the right have proved beyond any reasonable doubts that they have a fixed agenda : That is to win their elections, at any cost.
We've seen examples of the above by the Republican party's efforts first by flaunting the election norms as set by our writers of the Constitution by striking off the names of the American citizens from the electoral rolls on one pretext or the other.
They're doing that always on the Black and minority citizens, first by filling our jails with as many Blacks as the jails could hold so that those minorities could never vote even after their release.
Next they're stopping the minority citizens from voting with stupid restrictions like photo I.D. laws even though they're illegal as per the Constitution.
2
So maybe this will put an end to the idea that if you can't beat 'em, cheat 'em.
"Kobach" sounds like a suspiciously foreign name to me. How do we know he is who he says he is? I certainly hope he can produce his citizenship papers on demand!
And for a man who insists that everyone has to have the correct papers turned in on time in order to be able to vote, he certainly sounds as if he's trying to institute yet another double standard for himself, by trying twice to turn in new evidence after the deadline has passed.
Tsk, tsk, Herr Kobach. Process your paperwork legally and on time, or you will not be allowed to participate!
5
Democracy has become a sham in this country and will remain so until the people rise up and go to the polls in numbers large enough to overcome the Republican strategy for stealing elections. Kobach is merely representative to the entire Republican scheme for winning elections with a minority of voters: vote suppression, gerrymandering and accepting Russian assistance without hesitation. Throw in a sea of dark Citizens United money, and a vast right wing propaganda machine called Fox News and it is plain to see how our nation was turned into a one-party corporate fascist state with an ignorant, incompetent racist named Donald Trump in the Oval Office. He is there despite losing the popular vote by 3 million.
Voter apathy is a major element in the GOP electoral strategy. Only a massive voter uprising in every election going forward can cleanse our nation of the Republican scourge of premeditated, systematic electoral fraud. Kobach is merely the tip of the iceberg.
5
This disgraceful anti democratic effort will come to an end. Kobach and his malicious gang know that they can’t fool all the people all the time so they desperately try to create legal intimidation.
2
As someone who hails from Kansas, I think I can rightfully say that it is a great place to be from.
Good to see the backlash against Trump's assumptions of dictatorship rule. The checks and balances enacted by our Founding Fathers who had the foresight to create ARE working - if a little late. For some reason the Far Right assumes that they are doing God's work by minding everyone's business but their own.
Let's just hope that if and when the Kobach case reaches the threshold of SCOTUS, SCOTUS will have decided to ignore it's own horrendously partisan decision in the case of Crawford vs. Marion County, and let the matter slink away into the nether regions, along with the Dred Scott decision, of racist history by denying certiorari to Kobach, et al.
Requiring proof of citizenship makes sensed since only citizens can vote in federal elections. Requiring voter photo IDs makes sense since polls workers can’t match non-voter IDs to a voter’s face.
States that require voters to present state-issued photo IDs issue them free to any resident who needs one to vote or register to vote, as long as they can prove they are eligible to vote. They are much easier to get than other types of state or federal forms of identification, such as driver’s licenses, that provide proof of citizenship. For example, to get a driver license, you first have to present the same type of identification required for a state-issued voter photo ID and then pay a fee and pass a driver’s test.
Americans don’t go through life unable to document their citizenship or personal identity just because they don’t drive and have no driver’s license. Most get state-issued personal identification cards, which serve the same identification purposes as driver’s license. People born without birth certificates get court-issued delayed birth certificates or statements of non-availability. They don’t go through life unable to work because they can’t apply for social security cards. They don’t forego Medicaid, food stamps, Medicare, or social security retirement benefits just because providing proof of citizenship is too much of a hassle.
1
A partisan hack of the first order, Kobach is joined to the hip with a certain criminal now occupying the White House.
May they both lose in their efforts to demean our democracy.
2
What we are all (hopefully) learning. Current "conservative" ideas are not really ideas - they are all a sham, created only to benefit business and ultra wealthy. Only complete saturation of hate wing TV and radio (Rush? Hannity? Faux? I am talking to YOU!). It is simply brainwashing and gaslighting - constant repetition which creates a new reality.
And so - low information, low educated, brainwashed voters - and, oh yes! - cheating (see Russia) are the only ways that republicans can continue to win.
Once Mueller does his thing, the only true way forward with hope is for Democrats to wake up and get out to vote in numbers that overwhelm the efforts to steal the elections. Period. We are sick of being dragged backward by those that are stuck in backward, and manipulated to actually believe it is progress. The times that the right wing wish us to return to only exist in their warped imaginations.
It is amazing to citizens of other countries, that you can vote in the US without giving proof of citizenship.
That there is no national ID card or identity number that would enable people to easily establish their citizenship and right to be in the country.
It seems to me if you had an easy, immediate, widespread way of prooving your citizenship that everyone had to carry around anyway, this argument of "voter suppression" would just go away.
It would also eliminate the problem of undocumented immigrants flying under the radar for 20 years and then facing painful deportation after setting down permanent roots.
3
The notion that a person - who could be a Republican or a Democrat - (why do Republicans assume that only Democrats would cheat? Republicans are choir boys? Ha. Ha. Ha.) would go to tremendous individual trouble and effort and risk federal prosecution in order to vote ONE EXTRA STINKING TIME is just hysterically ludicrous.
As for non citizens voting, it's rare as we've seen, but let's play that game.
Democrats need to come up with a voter registration and voting proposal that counters the Republican voter ID laws.
Something reasonable like registration at birth in this country. Birth = citizen.
Registration tied to one's unique social security number. Or some other, new type of citizen number.
AND a secure way to make registration changes.
Next, voting on Sunday.
Voting on a workday is STUPID!
Other countries don't do that.
More voting places.
Mail voting. (like Oregon - very popular)
Picture ID or two forms of printed ID.
(Bank statement, Utility bill, work ID - picture, credit card or statement)
Newsflash-- you CAN get on an airplane with two forms of non picture ID. My girlfriend did.
Nobody is going to bother to forge your bank and utility statement so they can impersonate you on election day!
For one lousy extra vote!!
Who in their right mind would bother and risk prosecution!
If you are a voter fraud freak, tell us: how does it occur? Be specific.
And, if it DID occur the Republican fraud would cancel out the Democrat fraud.
So, all even anyway.
2
"Tip of the iceberg"....
So, if 90% of the iceberg is underwater..
8 years, 11 convictions... 10%....
Voter suppression and gerrymandering have caused the problem we see witness today, when far more Democrats come out to vote, but the GOP still wins.
The other HUGE problem we have with voting right now is our President is doing nothing to prevent the Russians from meddling again in our mid-term elections.
He refuses to protect America from cyber-crimes.
2
Kovacs is a demagogue trying to ride this ridiculous hobbyhorse to higher office. He got his GOP buddies to go along when it became clear that they could repress the probable Democtatic vote. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)--industry sponsored right wing authors of legislation for dumb-as-rocks state legislators who can't draft a bill--provided the money and the muscle to ram these junk bills through.
The losers? The American people.
3
These laws are just the most reincantation of the old poll tax laws or the laws that made blacks recite parts of the constitution back in the old days in order for them to vote. Voter suppresion is nothing new, just the same old pig w/ lipstick.
My take: Making citizens show an ID to vote is unconstitutional. A government ID costs $30. This constitutes a poll tax. The 24th Amendment prohibits poll taxes.
A stretch? Perhaps. But note this; The 24th Amendment was ratified because some states – mostly in the South – were finding ways to circumvent the 15th Amendment.
As per the Pew Research Center: "Poll taxes were among the devices used by Southern states to restrict African Americans (as well as poor whites, Native Americans and other marginalized populations) from voting."
It is not a stretch to say the intent of Kobach is the same as those in the state's in question. Keep the poor and marginalized from participating in America.
It's voter suppression. Call it any other name you want, it suppresses the vote, and the number of documented attempts to vote fraudulently is so minuscule it is, as the judge said, using a sledge hammer to kill a real or imagined bug on a glass top table. This is really an example of the blatant racism present throughout the GOP. Make America White Again. So delusional.
3
The only "fraud" in all of this witch hunting lies squarely in the (deliberate, intentional, voter blocking) minds of the GOP.
2
Let me state the same thing in two different ways.
Mr. Kobach is a liar who traffics in conservative nonsense for ulterior motives.
Mr. Kobach is a Republican.
4
OK, that's cute. Anything helpful to say?
You can add something helpful, if you're so inclined.
People who are not citizens do not vote, they don't try and vote, ever, nunca baby. This is such a no brainer. The last thing an undocumented person wants is the attention of the civil authorities. They do not vote and they want to stay undetected. The sole purpose of these laws is vote suppression. The R's play dirty. Why anyone would argue otherwise speaks to their mendacity or their utter ignorance. We're dealing with knaves and their fools.
5
Kobach's voter suppression efforts are but one of the methods Trump and Co. are using to dismantle our democracy. Others include attacking the free press as "fake news", installing far right wing judges, taking huge amounts of "dark money" into campaigns in the wake of Citizens United, and undermining any sense of truth, fact, dignity, respect and civic responsibility within the electorate. The big picture shows we are rapidly losing our democracy and sliding towards autocratic rule.
3
Yes, the SCOTUS (Stupid Court of the United States) has made a number of stupid decisions: this 2008 voter suppression law decision, the decision on the Voting Rights Act, and the mother of all stupid decisions - Citizens United! Apparently being really smart doesn't prevent one from being really stupid.
6
Okay, thanks for the special insight.
This stupid voter fraud conspiracy lie goes back to President Clinton's 2nd term when the GOP refused to believe America had the gaul to elect him again. Since then they cry on and on that "real Americans would vote the they we, the white Christians say," so there must be illegal voters.
That's probably about the same time frame that I realized that the evangelical church I had grown up was just a political organization and quit.
6
All Gaul is divided iin three parts.
I think you meant "gall."
1
good for you!
The laws said to be aimed at voter fraud have another purpose beyond vote suppression, as detailed in the editorial. They are also intended to, and do, distract attention from widespread failures, and in some cases outright refusals, to secure the process by which votes cast are protected and then counted. Republicans in Congress, and now in the White House to an even greater degree, have failed repeatedly to give attention or sufficient resources to secure the vote and protect it from intruders. That is an ever greater scandal than the one being perpetrated by Mr. Kobach and his confederates.
19
Election integrity would be enhanced by the system that a number of states, including Washington and Oregon, use. Paper ballots and voting information is mailed to registered voters weeks before the election date. Voters can fill out their ballots and drop them into a secure ballot box convenient to their residence up to the day of the election. This convenient system increases the number of included voters and provides a paper record that can be tracked.
42
It would also give us a chance to better research and understand what and who are being voted on.
I have found that most European countries, as well as our neighbors Canada and Mexico, require an I.D. to vote.
6
Most of those countries issue national health cards. Most mail voting registration confirmation cards. In Canada, if you show up w/ out an i.d., an elector with an i.d. can vouch for you, both of you swearing by oath that you are who you claim to be.
Most other countries encourage people to vote. UK has only in 2018 begun to require i.d. - and it can be the national health care everyone is issued.
Let's have national health care. We'll use our i.d. cards to vote.
18
We're addressing a non-existent problem. Though, I don't find any reason why a person shouldn't have an ID when they go to vote. If states are passing laws that ban people without IDs from voting we need to have an early campaign with a minimum of a year to register. Also, like the census, we'll need people to visit the resident's homes to make certain everyone who should be registered to vote has done so. There are disabled people and invalids who need to be counted. There also needs to be a mechanism to provide a means to check the background of those who claim to be citizens and have no proof.
1
The issue is how reasonable is the form of ID. Making getting the ID difficult or costly is equivalent to denial of the right to vote.
21
.
People "who tend to vote Democratic."
This phrase makes it sound as though "these people" are voting for a particular party. You know: Are you an R or a D? Are you with us or agin' us?
Let's instead look at what our goals as a nation are. Are we - in the main - a democracy? That is, where the vote of every citizen counts equally? Does every bill from Congress help those less-well-off as much as the (already) well off?
We need to look at each government act as whether or not it helps the vast majority of our citizens. And - ALSO - we must make sure that those unfairly injured by the new act are provided with remedies.
That "little d" democracy means all of society is trying to improve the lives of EACH ONE of us. Words to live by.
15
There's significant satisfaction in watching Kris Kobach lose in court over the issue of supposedly insuring voting integrity. But being schooled by a federal judge may be a fleeting victory.
Congressional Republicans, with the complicity of a know-nothing president, are busy reshaping the federal court system. They know their time may be limited, but they want to give lifetime appointments to as many hard core conservatives in the mold of Kobach as possible.
Just like they want the power to choose their voters, Republicans want to choose the judges they or their backers may face in court. Congress, with complicity of both Dems and R's, made a big mistake when it eliminated the filibuster rule for judgeships. Most of the current crop couldn't get bipartisan support. And that's a shame that may play out for many decades.
33
For years the GOP has argued that voter ID laws, and other restrictions, are to ensure the "integrity" of elections. Shouldn't Democrats now argue that that is purpose of the Mueller investigation? There is certainly more evidence of Russian interference than there is voter fraud.
27
In essence, this article clearly shows that right-wing GOPers cannot win an honest election, and must recur to fraud, lies and false pretenses.
31
And Gerrymandering.
Many young people today are no longer enameled of cars. So maybe many of them don’t even have a driver’s license. Also, many people who live in cities use public transportation and also do not have a driver’s license. If they’re poor, they likely do not have a passport.
So consider how much work such a person must do today in order to have “proof” of citizenship in order to even register to vote, let alone at the polls:
Instead of a simple registration to vote, instead of a simple visit to the polling place to vote, there’s a THREE STEP Process:
First, get a birth certificate. Request by mail or by the web. Pay the fee. (Hopefully you have a credit card or checking account. Otherwise, add another step! Go to Post Office and get a money order.)
Second, take your birth certificate to get your ID or driver’s license. (If you lack a driver’s license, then add more steps! You have to learn to drive. Take a learner’s test. Then take your driver’s test.)
Third, now you can go and register. And you have your ID to show at the polling place.
It should not be so hard to vote!!!! Or register!
Everyone, at birth, should be GIVEN proof of birth in the form of an ID. An ID that also gets you healthcare, by the way.
If the person is naturalized or born abroad to an American parent, then the ID should be given at a US Consulate or Embassy for the latter and right at the swearing-in ceremony for the former. Green Cards should also serve for healthcare.
14
Without an id they cannot get their government freebies. Don't buy your argument that id's are so difficult to obtain.
1
In a study, the great sate of Texas found only 800 flagged cases over 10 years, and only 80 of these were actionable. Hardly worth the money spent in the investigation.
18
Kansas also pays teachers poorly,
right near the bottom of the pay scale in good company with West Virginia, Oklahoma, and North Carolina, all voter suppression states.
27
They believe "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is a truism and only the rich should be educated.
Before Colorado Secretary of State, Wayne Williams, shipped my voter information off to Kobach, I called and wrote to his office repeatedly, begging him not to participate in this farce. His office's response to me was, basically, a big "middle-finger" in which they insinuated that I was crazy for worrying about the good work that Trump's election integrity commission was doing. As far as I'm concerned, Colorado's Mr. Williams, and every other secretary of state who participated in this travesty, should do a little jail time! Nasdrovia, Mr. Williams!!
30
Fine piece of irony that this trial is in Kansas. The last time the United States had a Regression v. Rational bout was in the smackdown about evolution. The heart of America, it seems, is the lagging end of humanity's developmental bell-curve.
23
The US seems the only highly developed country where mass shootings supposedly can’t be prevented but voter fraud supposedly is rampant.
The same people who are all concerned about infringement of fabricated second amendment rights are the same who disenfranchise 100 thousands of voters for reasons of fabricated voter fraud.
The same people who sacrifice school children for unrestricted gun access are the same who think it’s reasonable to bar legitimate voters from their civic privilege in order to prevent non existent voter ID fraud.
It’s easier to purchase a deadly weapon than casting a vote.
What a strange country the US has become.
45
What a fine editorial (and not an Op-Ed as another commenter referred it)! I'm certainly glad I got in at the beginning. I also hope the paper will attend to what I feel is the real, clear and present fraud being committed regarding candidates trying to get our votes.
Perhaps the very privacy that is supposed to be guaranteed the voter aids in a certain air of distrust around campaigning and voting. The problem, as I see it, is that candidates soon create a lot of dirt on their way to election day. Claims of bad acts by opponents are not uncommon, even though no such acts might even have been possible. Yet the fake news gets spread, eagerly. Wasn't it shown that fake news especially in social media but also in more traditional reporting is believed more than the truth by more than a few. In fact, a majority of those reading information or hearing it said are convinced of the lie's veracity.
The current occupant of the White House has been caught in making statements that did not comply with the facts of the particular situation. Yet, other than losing credibility which he never had, what penalty or punishment has been assigned? None. I say this is fraud, to be making false witness about or against another person, idea or entity. My religion counts God to be present in every bit of Creation. So this is sin. Also malfeasance. Also high crime.
Why are he and his ilk still lapping at the public trough?
19
Voter fraud is to Kobach what birtherism is to trump. He hopes to ride his racist undertones all the way to the top.
Neither actor, nor their audience, cares that they are wrong.
22
Your conclusion might better be stated that the spurious aims of such “voter fraud” laws evaorate in the BRIGHT light of a federal courtroom. There is nothing HARSH about the truth except to those intent on deception.
11
The Culture War is in its critical final phase, and the coalition forces of racism and wealth will not go quietly. Indeed, they will spend any amount (Kochtopus), and embrace any tactic (Bannonism, Trump race-baiting, McConnell's sustained obstruction and outright, public theft of the Supreme Court), to maintain their hold on power. They will gladly destroy our most cherished institutions and most fundamental traditions of democracy in that quest.
Do you get that?
The rest of us must be prepared to take resolute action that pulls us out of our living rooms and comfort zones, in order to prevail and protect the American Experiment. That will include massive marching on March 24th, and making it clear that there will be a National Strike if Trump fires Mueller and the GOP does nothing to remove him.
If not Now, it will surely be Never.
23
It is difficult to NOT see a Republican strategy beginning perhaps with their Southern Strategy to their current use of Facebook data (today's NYT) to Citizen's United, to Trump's innovation in divisiveness as a concerted effort to destroy the idea of "America" and capture it for their own.
11
Why is is that all the truly "fake news" seem to come forth from Trump and his supporters, one way or another? Is it just beyond their ability to deal with reality?
12
Kobach may have tried to submit his additional evidence one day late and use that later as a ploy with his Rublican base to state he did not receive a fair hearing in court. That the liberal court prevented him from submittting his evidence. His base will eat it up.
11
Right. Courts are now asking questions because judges are finally being convinced that political shenanigans are not always done in good faith.
What is the penalty for cheating people out of their franchise? What does Kobach pay for his midirection?
As long as the only penalty for cheating voters is the future judgment of the voters, political hacks will stretch the bounds of propriety and credulity.
9
Voter fraud is a farce. The penalties for committing voter fraud are pretty severe considering the benefit. Fines from $500 to $10,000 and imprisonment from 1 to 5 years. Ask yourself this question, what individual in their right mind would risk such a stiff penalty, along with committing a felony, to cast a vote that in the end will not have an effect on an election. What is there to gain. Mr Kobach tries to convince the general public that people en mass are willing to become felons and go to jail for nothing to gain. If we have that many criminals in our society I am sure they could find other federal felonies to commit that would benefit them more then casting an insignificant vote.
12
Men like Kobach are as real a danger to the health of our democracy as Russia. Where is the Voting Rights Act? How are people like Kobach circumventing those Constitutional guarantees? The shame in this is, it does not (apparently) reach a level of criminality that would require legal action.
Voting rights have been under increasing attack since Nixon's "Southern Strategy" and his silent majority, tapping into the very real racism and fear held deeply within the American psyche.
15
Claims of voter fraud are just a fig leaf that allows the minority party to be the majority party by perpetrating real fraud on our democracy. And restricting voter registration is just one of several tactics the GOP uses to stay in power -
gerrymandering, making voting inconvenient in Democrat precincts, use of social media postings to misdirect Democrat voters, false attack ads, hacking and release of politicians' emails, etc.
The integrity of our voting is being undermined. The solution is sufficient voter turnout by the true majority to vote them out of office and overturn these laws and practices.
10
Kobach is at the heart of a program by Republicans to instill their oligarchical agenda via gerrymandering and intimidation. America is at it's worse when one party controls everything; no one stops to think and argue the pros and cons to legislation. His state Kansas, is the example of stupidity through the GOP majority there. Oklahoma, has done the same and faces the loss of doctors and teachers through the GOP's cuts. America works best with divided government. Sure it slows things down, but you know what, we prosper when people think. We lose when one party forces their agenda on us all.
3
Voter suppression efforts are now commonplace. They take place by the hundreds in every major election.The perpetrators are often shut down by the courts, sometimes in time and sometimes not. All the perps suffer is an injunction. I would like to see certain types of voter suppression efforts criminalized. That would deter the most egregious abuses, and it would be fitting to punish Americans who are so disrespectful of their fellow citizens' fundamental rights as to try to prevent their voices from being expressed at the ballot box. Enough! Send vote suppressors to jail.
8
"Mr. Kobach’s game may work with partisan lawmakers, but not with federal judges. "
Until the courts are packed with partisan stooges - the process of which is well under way.
15
Thanks for your article. Kobach has wasted America's time and money and one wishes he would just go away and take Donald with him.
7
When it comes to separating the fakes from the reals, may there be no doubt where Mr. Kobach belongs. He and others of his ilk who follow the Trump Manifesto (that is, if Trump were literate enough to pen a manifesto) - attempting to find lies in truth and vice versa - deserve scorn from fellow ethical endorsers of fact Republicans. The problem is the cancer which has metastasized to such a grave stage in the GOP, finding such a person seems highly improbable.
DD
Manhattan
6
California Democrats arce openly advocating voting rights for non-citizens,open borders..many believe voter registration is in itself an act of voter suppression..the parallels between how Venezuela watered down voter requirements to achieve permanent political power and what Democrats advocate should raise an eyebrow.
Can we get a republican to chime in and defend these tactics? I am really interested in how republicans see this. (Being ok with working hard to keep minorities from voting - which is the end results of these so-called anti-fraud rules).
3
Kansans who are more conservative often believe the inflated threat of illegal voting and often "boil it down" to, why wouldn't you have to show an ID to vote. In Kansas, in order to get Medicaid or KanCare, you have to submit a birth certificate. Especially when this started, often a child's access to health care was held hostage to getting this piece of paper. There is no doubt this particular hoop was designed to hurt the poor and the disorganized the worst. Many Kansans have no clue about how expensive or time consuming this can be and some of them just don't care.
But sooner or later, it will harm someone they care about.
I suspect Kobach would look marvelous being run out of town whilst covered in tar and chicken feathers.
7
"The Republican Party has a platform that can’t prevail in democratic competition. When highly committed parties strongly believe [in] things that they cannot achieve democratically, they don’t give up on their beliefs — they give up on democracy."
David Frum VOX interview
Vote, America. While you still can.
4
It is too bad that the limited intellect of our 'American' president keeps him from seeing he is a walking metaphor for irony. Gee, maybe Trump was worried that outside foreign influence would tilt the vote toward the Democrats next time around? Nah.
The Trump fraud commission had funding before Congress even got into their appointed seats which is strange to me seeing how very long it takes this Congress, under the GOP, to get things done. This alone is a mystery.
I am glad the Judge put the kibosh on Korbach who is a thinly disguised racist working to suppress Democratic votes.
5
I've been a Wisconsin voter since 1973. The "at least 17,000 voters" was an estimate of student's only. One GOP analyst said that "at least 50,000" legal voters had been kept from the polls by this law.
I remember the "observers" from the Young Americans for Freedom sitting at official looking tables at my (urban) polling place in 1973. The liberal mayoral candidate won, but several of us felt that the presence of the YAF was meant to intimidate.
Thank you.
8
A certain minority of Americans believe in widespread voter fraud. They follow and cheer charlatans like Kobach, listen to Fox News and bemoan the fact, most in secret, that the age of the white, blue collar male dominating America is fast passing into history. Trump gives them but a short reprieve. The facts, not alt. ones, prove that you are much more likely to be struck by lightening than to encounter voter fraud in this country.
Witness the latest special election in Pennsylvania. When the GOP candidate didn't win, cries of fraud and threats of lawsuits filled the alt. right airwaves. This 68 year old white male, granted not blue collar, cheers the passing of this minority from the American political scene. We have nothing but our country to lose by encouraging the status quo and ignoring voter suppression which is precisely what Kobach and his ilk are attempting.
136
When Romney was running against Barack Obama, Mike Turzai - the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives in PA - was caught on tape stating "Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.” A very clear case of an attempt to unfairly influence the elections in the favor of the Republican candidate. In my opinion, and the opinion of others, this should have been cause for his removal from office, at the very least. A glaring example of putting the Republican party ahead of our constitution. PA is one of the most gerrymandered states in the country; when the state Supreme Court ruled that the districts must be redrawn to allow voters to choose their representatives, vs. the other way around - Turzai threatened to impeach the State Supreme Court justices. Once again, for Republicans, the end justifies the means. Including tearing up our Constitution
23
Please run for office so these people will scurry back into the shadows. This is not who we, as a country, should aspire to. Our politicians are failing us. Remember the old saw: "When the people lead the leaders will follow."
12
It's not the specter of fraud that has caused these stricter laws. That's just the excuse. At the root of these laws is the Republican goal of shaping the electorate just so, so as to maximize its chances of winning. These laws are one tactic in the larger war they have waged against democracy, another tactic is gerrymandering.
41
In Australia, you need a valid reason for why you failed to vote. The first offender fine is about $20 and it more than doubles if you do it again. The fine could be up to $110 plus court costs.
Voting Day is aways on a Saturday when most people are not working.
Your name is crossed off in the registry when you say your name and confirm your address to a poll worker. You are then handed a large paper ballot.
The election office goes through the register and sends letters out to people who have failed to vote
asking for an explaination. You need to return a form with either the fine or a good excuse.
The Australian system, by design,
punishes people for NOT voting, not for trying to vote.
52
I am not sure I would like the system of being 'required' to vote or place a penalty if I do not. It seems to take away a freedom rather than enhance freedom to choose the leadership of one's town, state or country.
I like the 'I want to vote' rather than the 'I have to vote or pay a fine' method. Voting would be a 'burden' placed on me. If I don't submit my taxes, I am penalized monetarily. If I don't get my dogs license renewed, I am penalized monetarily. Enough in my life that places a burden on me to do or face a penalty that involves money.
Voting is free and involves freedom of choice. I couldn't wait to sign up to vote when I was first eligible by age. I have never missed voting every four years since then. Then again, I came of voting age in the era of war demonstrations here in this country.
I see that if I lived in Australia, I would be in court for life. Or, even if I didn't choose to take that route, I would show up, get my ballot, draw a big X through it, toss it in the box and mutter on the way out 'there! - you can't fine me now'. Ahh, I see that no matter how many years have passed, and how many election cycles I have voted in, the freedom fervor of my youth is still with me.
It is normal around the world for voters to have to prove the are elegible to vote. There is no rational argument against voters having to demostrate that they are citizens resident in the voting district, state, city, precinct, etc. and provide acceptable ID.
3
It is normal in the United States, too, to provide proof of residency when registering. You’ll note that the federal government does not issue a national identity card; there is no single, universal proof of citizenship.
In lieu of convenient proof, Americans attest to citizenship under penalty of perjury. That system works, as evidenced by the near-zero rate of noncitizen voting.
7
It depends on what your aim is. The existing systems to prove eligibilty do a fine job of limiting the franchise to legitimate voters, as evidenced by the vanishingly small number of cases of fraud discovered by those rabid to prove a point.
On the other hand, if you are trying to create obstacles to voting that disproportionally affect people who do not fit your ideal of a "true" citizen, and are also more likely to vote against your party, then Kobach has just the plan for you.
I find him beneath contempt and truly the source of voter fraud that must be rooted out of our elections.
3
Hmmmmmmm,
Something tells me that if ghost voters were voting Republican, there would've been feds at every poll 30 years ago!
Some examples of de facto "real" and impactful voter fraud:
1. The Electoral College - what's wrong with the idea of every individual's vote counting equally? (i.e. using the "Popular Vote" to determine who is elected President)
2. Inequitable representation of states in congress -- at a minimum, the number of House seats need to be increased to account for and mitigate the huge increase in population since the last adjustment to number of states. (which would also help with the problem of the Electoral College should it not be repealed)
3. Citizens United decision -- and failure of Congressional response to keep dirty money out of elections and provide accountability for all campaign funding.
These constitute the tip of the iceberg ... the rest being unfair and discriminatory practices at the state and local levels.
56
The EC is a bit of federalism in the presidential elections. Hillary lost by 3 million popular votes outside of California and New York City. California and New York City do not get to choose U.S. presidents, as Trump's large victory in the EC showed. Trump had a larger EC margin than JFK or Jimmy Carter.
2
and he achieved the requisite electoral votes because of gerrymandering and the vote suppression addressed in this piece.
7
you team belittles Californians and new yorkers. but never explains why we should be disenfranchised in favor of the relative handful of voters who reside in for instance, Montana and South Dakota.
2
As a Kansan, I can tell you that nothing that has happened so far in any way impairs Kobach's viability as a gubernatorial candidate, as utterly astonishing as that might seem. I do not proclaim this proudly.
As for me, I'm continuing to struggle to see the integrity of voting in Kansas as authentic and intact. It is not apparent to me that even if this trial hands Kobach a much deserved loss, that much will change.
And Americans should be aware that Kobach's infamous "program" for facilitating voter marginalization--Crosscheck--has been exported to many (often Red) states and so very possibly your state has also been tainted by Kobach's machinations.
Though we may exorcise Trump at some time, it is the complicity and the behind the scenes machinations of many Republicans and some Democrats that has eroded our democracy. I cannot help but feel that our democracy is forever eroded.
56
I understand that Florida has stopped using Crosscheck. I'm confused on why, since the Republican controlled State government and legislature has consistently tried to suppress non-Republican voters from influencing elections through blatant gerrymandering, despite a State Constitutional Amendment approved by citizens to prevent that exactly.
5
Crosscheck isn't even a well designed program. Under the rules, James A. Rodriguez in one state was _assumed to be_ James R. Rodriguez in another state. It was always simply a way to kick people off the voter roles. And various constituencies are organizing to get rid of it in different states.
11
My daughter, a student at Hunter College in NYC and resident of Kansas, presented her birth certificate at the election office in Johnson Co., Kansas before leaving for school in 2016. When she printed the request form for a mail ballot in the 2016 elections, she was required to include a driver’s license number, military ID, KS state-issued ID, KS university ID, or passport images. She’s not a driver, or a soldier, attends an out-of-state university, but fortunately has a passport. Getting access to it, bringing the documents together and submitting them properly caused a delay, and her ballot didn’t arrive with enough time for it to be returned by Election Day.
Kris Kobach is running for governor of Kansas. This very public display of his ineptitude - in spite of his educational pedigree - has come at a fortunate time for Kansans. Let us hope this is the end of Kobach’s assault on voters everywhere.
243
Hope everyone eligible to vote in Kansas votes! It's the only way to keep Korback from winning.
4
A voting fraud that piggy-backs on top of the voter suppression described here and other tactics that keep minority Democratic voters away is the electoral college coming into play in presidential elections and giving all electoral votes to the states' winners vs. the winner of the popular vote. This allows small minority rule over the much greater majority, a legal gaming of the system, an ultimate form of gerrymandering, giving us a president Trump who is described as "elected" although millions more voted against him than for him. Multiple lawsuits have now been filed to invalidate state winner-take-all laws while state legislatures are slowly enacting the National Popular Vote Bill. See https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/. As mentioned in the present article, it's red states and their Republican loyalists who want voter suppression and party over country at all costs to the country. Those costs are becoming higher every day.
34
Poll tax, anyone? This was ruled illegal in the '60s and so will all these substitute laws passed to suppress voters.
21
How about a tax for not voting?
I would think Kobach's argument is a non-starter under certain voting systems. Oregon for instance automatically registers any eligible voter with a drivers license. Utah has an opt-in box on the license application form or you can register through the DMV online, in-person, or by mail. We don't need to worry about non-existent voter fraud when voter registration is handled automatically. Whether you adopt an opt-in or an opt-out system, you can't really argue with the simplicity of the idea. The government office responsible for issuing government IDs is also responsible for determining voter eligibility. Both states adopted mail-in ballots as well. Postage paid. The only fraud around here is Kobach.
40
What this article does not unfortunately touch on is the logical argument against the existance of fraud by voting. In the case of noncitizens who we can reasonably assume want to remain in the US, they have a great incentive not to commit a crime, especially one with no material payback. Criminal noncitizens get deported. Citizens who would vote twice or more are similarly affected by the possibility of being found out and criminally charged. This is a case where the possible punishment can be seen as logically detering the crime which has little economic or emotional payoff.
Another useful thought experiment is to ask why - if as Kobach and others imply - this alleged fraudulent voting is somehow organized, not a scintilla of evidence thereof has ever surfaced. Widespread conspiracies are notoriously leaky enterprises, especially when the rewards for secrecy to individual conspirators are scanty.
114
Excellent point I've recently pondered: why would an illegally resident non-citizen, or someone awaiting elevated legal status, such as a 'green card', risk swift and certain deportation in attempting a vote? The least likely to invite attention to themselves via criminal behavior are those needing to stay below ICE radar. And toward what end the risk? Material gain? It would have to be beyond significant, and it simply isn't happening - at all. Strange that we find resources and fervor for problems that clearly aren't, while proven and persisting Russian electoral meddling constitute relegation to <fake news>.
4
Best line in this Op-Ed piece: "How does it feel to have your papers out of order, Mr. Kobach?" Yes, how does it feel Kris? I am hopeful the ACLU prevails in this case and voting rights are restored in Kansas. I have been a poll worker in my county twice now... and come May it will be three times. I am quite impressed with the efforts made by my Board of Elections to preserve voter's rights (inspite of nasty stuff going on with the GOP controlled legislature) and what it takes to run a fair from party influence voting day. Nothing is done without a poll worker from each party present. Takes a fair amount of manpower to carry the day. I'd urge everyone with the time and energy to get involved. Long day, but quite educational.
42
Now we know that "conservatives" - aka Robber Baron Steve Bannon and friends - stole OUR personal data from facebook to try to manipulate our minds/votes. Unfortunately, it worked on too many unsuspecting Americans - including some of my family and friends.
The Robber Barons tried to interfere with MY votes because I am Progressive and usually vote for Socially Conscious/responsible democrats. I made the mistake of voting for Kim Wyman (R) for Washington's Secretary of State and election chief. This year my voting address suddenly changed from my P.O. Box, which I had been using for 20+ years for all official mail, to my street address. When I contacted King County Elections they said the P.O. box could not be used for voting information. It's a bold-faced lie - it was simply "conservative" interference in my personal business. I wrote the State Attorney General with copies to Secretary of State, King County Executive and Kind County Elections director and told them to put my P.O. Box address in their records, wipe my street addresses out and that I would sue them for for invasion of privacy if I receive one piece of voter mail at any street address.
The only "voter fraud" is if someone votes more than once. The rest of this is simply voter manipulation.
Some of my progressive/independent/democrat friends also did not receive their State voter guides in the last presidential election so couldn't make informed voting decisions. Not acceptable.
36
Yes, the GOP finally realized that the country's changing demographics boded ill for them and embarked on this tactic of trying to get in the courts what they could no longer get at the ballot box. When you couple this with the massive gerrymandering that good old Tom Delay (remember him?) foisted onto the country about 20 years ago we have to admit that those tactics did work (some are still working) and that likely a not negligible part of the GOP electoral success in the past 10-20 years has been due to these tactics. In other words, the GOP has been stealing elections for a long time, long before Donald stumbled into view. The real problem is that a significant percentage of the country countenances these tactics and will continue to support and advance them in one form or another. The GOP is dying, that much is becoming clear, but its not dead yet. We can expect more of this kind of fraud and deceit before the final nail in driven.
30
It seems to me that voter registrations drives are not what we need. What we need are ID drives to help potentially disenfranchised voters to get govt. approved IDs.
People who don't drive can still get non-driver IDS. I feel like the only way to fight this fight is to actually play their game.
89
@Karen: Yes, I've been thinking along the same lines. Helping people to obtain proper identification will enable voters to make an end-run around the obstacles-to-voting laws passed by Republicans.
3
No, the way to fight this fight is to look to the existing law "which requires only that prospective voters attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury." The voter ID proponents do not have any evidence that a great number of people vote/attempt to vote illegally!
Voter suppression takes many forms. Voter ID laws are only one of them. We would be playing whack-a-mole all the time if we "actually play their game." Republicans will simply huddle together and come up with more ways to restrict people from voting.
They have been working on these voter suppression tactics for decades. Our highly gerrymandered congressional districts didn't happen overnight. First they had to achieve control of state legislatures/governorships to seize control of apportionment bodies. That took a while to do! Once accomplished though they could draw redistricting lines pretty much any way they wanted to. They developed software programs to do this! And once the initial apportionment was completed, they could maintain their control with minimal effort.
But, that wasn't enough for them. Hence the voter ID laws and a host of other ridiculous hoops that poor and minority voters cannot jump through easily!
The point is they have no real evidence. The courts are the appropriate venue to address these undemocratic, power grabbing laws!
Where would we be today if we had played King Geourge's game? We would all be British subjects. No, we need to stand and fight these injustices.
1
Not everyone can easily get to the motor vehicle department offiecs in their states to obtain an ID.
Some of the southern states enacted the ID laws and immediately shut down the
motor vehicle department offices that were located near large black and/or latino populations, forcing the people to travel long distances to get an ID.
3
We need a federal law or constitutional amendment that states that all US citizens age 18 or older have a right to vote. Period. Just as we are presumed innocent until proven guilty we should be presumed eligible unless proven ineligible. A person’s eligibility should be determined individually, not lumped together because they have foreign sounding names or don’t have a driver’s license.

22
Most of the advanced countries do not indulge in the game of registering to vote, which in itself is a form of voter suppression.
Citizens have a unique ID number which they receive at birth and is all that is required for voting.
20
Kris Kobach is a shameless thug, trying to block anybody that may have the appearance of not voting republican. This individual is a vicious cynic and must be stop. How about reversing laws already in the books, intent in suppressing the vote on minorities? Lying 'a la Trump' about the existence of underground 'illegals' trying to participate in the electoral process doesn't make it so. This is malicious nonsense and the courts must stop it.
33
It’s been proven time after time that the incidence of voter fraud is nearly non existent. This is VOTER SUPPRESSION pure and simple. Republicans, yes, again it seems to be a republican frenzy . They worry about voter fraud amongst untold millions of minorities ie primarily black, voters because they tend to vote democratic. When was the last time a democratic governor was touting voter fraud?
If these yahoos are so concerned about ID, and background checks- how about extending it to gun possession?
37
Kris Kobach cannot litigate competently. In his time in the Kansas legislature, he never legislated competently.
He was a Brownback Republican and nothing more.
28
A fairly large number of white men just don't want to give up their political power. Maybe no group does. But our democracy is not supposed to be run like that; maybe a full-throated fairness is nigh impossible in America or anywhere else, eh? Nonetheless, we must continue to strive for the ideal. It's how the best, most successful, and happiest nations roll. The battle for these goals, however, is admittedly exhausting and frustrating. Why can't stuff just work right, first time, every time?
7
When I went to vote in the Hollis, NH, municipal election this past Tuesday, I refused to present a driver's license.
I could vote, because the town's moderator vouched for me, but one of the poll workers told me he had "no sympathy". One wonders what that portends.
18
Republicans know the only way they will get what they want is by cheating:
1) McConnell and the illegitimante Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch,
2) vote-suppressors like Kobach, and
3) all the sleazy Republicans behind the extreme gerrymandering
4) their efforts now to pack Fed. Courts with extremist life-time appointments
It is high time we put a stop to all this, or else their duplicitous moves will be baked into our system, just the way they wanted.
40
Kobach has won “converts” because the goal of the Republican Party has been to reduce through any means the numbers of non-Republican voters. This isn’t rocket science but it is duplicity at its best and, despite having the studies and facts in front of them proving it wrong, thousands of citizens wrapping themselves in the faux patriotism presented by the party continue to believe this bunkum and continue to support an incompetent, owes his soul to his corporation President and his Party. Like bad governments everywhere, this one operates through fear: fear of “the other,” and fear of the loss of economic power.
28
The Republican Party controlling all branches of Govn’t needed to restrict voting to win and they did. The Republican unstated credo: Govn’t doesn’t work, elect us and we’ll prove it. 45 won Kansas by 23000 votes. Amazing.
In Kobach’s “eight years as secretary of state, he has secured a total of nine convictions, only one of which was for illegal voting by a noncitizen; most were for double-voting by older Republican men.”
20
Ironically the NRA is fighting gun owner ID and registration laws, and conservatives in general are opposed to national id concepts on the grounds of too much government intrusion. Funny how that works.
35
Wonder what the requirements are for voting in our neighboring countries, or in Western Europe. I am told that both Canada and Mexico have much stricter requirements for Voter ID than we do. And I’m also told that several nations idolized by NYT writers for their “equality”...e.g. Finland, Sweden and Norway...have even tougher ID requirements. Could it be that they have a reason for imposing such strictures? Would we all be happier if we did so? Why not give it a try?
9
Those countries have a requirement that everybody has to have a government ID line a passport. That historically has not been the case here.
Beyond that, I those countries everybody is assumed to be eligible to vote, they don’t have to register.
9
In England you only need your National Insurance number to register to vote, You get given that before you turn 16. It's free. You then register at the address you live at. No proof needed but periodically a letter comes through the post asking you to declare who lives in the property. Replying is free and can be done by post or online. If you are homeless you register at an address where you spend most of your time, could be a hostel, friends house, day centre.
21
You are "told". Many people say...
7
I implore The NY Times to write informative articles on how and where we must go volunteer to help in voter registration and car services on Election Day. It is time to be proactive in a more meaningful way than just march. Give us resources to contact - the work begins now for the November 2018 midterms and never is too early to register for 2020.
24
Join your local League of Women Voters. They are non-partisan and their goal is to urge people to become informed and to participate in the process.
2
Kobach's voter hysteria reminds me of the legislative attempts to keep out Sharia law, which republicans insist is another creeping menace in our land!
Republican voters seem to love the thrill of fear, and a nice, clean "other" to explain those (highly exaggerated) fears. FOX and powerful people like Kobach feed them well.
My Irish mom used to warn me about powerful people playing a game called: "Let's you and him fight". Division need not be our response to people like Kobach. Refuse to be suspicious of your fellow Americans in general, and focus on real damage to our nation.
18
I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that Kris Kobach turns out to be greater threat to democracy than the mythical voter fraud he pretends to oppose. Maybe Kobach's punishment for promoting this ruse should be to have his own name purged from the voter rolls...
18
Young political activists are innocent and naive. People love them as does the media. But those with power generally dismiss them because they are nothin but kids.
1
For now.
A huge mistake as many will be 18 and voting in the mid-terms!! By 2020, many more of these "kids" will be 18 and voting......
If the GOP has it's way, elections will soon become a thing of the past.
7
This is discrimination. There is no other word.It is intended to prevent voting by those who are "others." Those who are not members of the reactionary Republican right. That these people suppress honest voters in the name of voting honesty is Orwellian. And it's criminal. They should be in jail. Without any voting rights. When are we going to take our country back from these criminals?
7
Kobach and his republican allies on the supreme court seek to keep the minority party (in terms of popular vote) in power as long as possible. They use the tools they themselves have created: Citizens United, Voter Fraud allegations, and Gerrymandering. They have been quite successful... SAD!!!
7
Republicans in Pennsylvania are already challenging Democrat Conor Lamb's win, alleging many incidents of voter fraud, illegal tampering of voting machines and other assorted evils. There is no proof of any such violations, but these days, in the fantasy world of the GOP, truth and fact take a back seat to blatant partisanship and not-so-subtle racism.
7
“Kobach” sounds vaguely Eastern European, maybe even Russian. By his expert’s standard, he should be flagged and stripped of his right to vote and his right to hold office as a noncitizen until he can definitively prove his citizenship. And no, a long-form birth certificate won’t be sufficient evidence in this case; I mean, after all, we are just holding him to the same standards he’s been imposing on everyone else.
7
Mike, Kansas was settled by immigrants. I'm 61 years old and my aunts all spoke German accented English. I know someone whose mother did not naturalize UNTIL she wanted to vote for JFK and it was no big deal.
And yet, I have relatives that are my age that DO NOT look at the plight of the immigrant and see their own family a short generation or two ago.
Arguably compassion is in short supply in the country.
5
In Wisconsin, SUDDENLY!, anyone who lives in a retirement community - even in a separate, independent living residence! - can no longer receive an absentee ballot in the mail!
Instead, that person, still driving probably (I am), active, fully competent, able to travel or write cogent comments in the Times, is treated like a “nursing home patient”! Yes, I’m not kidding!
So, that person, who maybe might have planned to travel, can ONLY vote when a “trained voting specialist” comes to the “nursing home” - on ONLY a couple of specific days, during specific hours!
I think there is some kind of “test” as well. To make sure the person is still - according to the state - able to cast a vote. Mind you, it’s just a regular citizen who makes that determination. Not a court! Which is the usual way to deprive anyone of their legal rights.
So then, the person is allowed to fill out the ballot. Probably the “trained voting specialist” makes sure they do that themselves. (Even though it can’t be illegal for someone with macular degeneration to get help, for example. Or arthritis.)
This is my latest Scott Walter peeve! But I could go on....
17
Kris Kobach does what he does because he can.
He knows that it is a scam but it has worked in some cases.
And I can guess that Fox News and talk radio will not keep quoting him so that all their audiences will still believe this is a problem.
MASA - Make America Smart Again
6
Correction:
And I can guess that Fox News and talk radio WILL keep quoting him so that all their audiences will still believe this is a problem.
So Kobach is just making things up. Isn't that what Republicans want? Their guy in the White House is the best at it.
9
So I am I total agreement with the main point of this editorial and agree that these thinly disguised voter registration laws are bad for our country.
I disagree however with the rhetorical strategy of comparing this bogus voter fraud witch hunt to “faith” and the “gospel.” It’s rhetorically clever, but has the effect of falsely equating religious faith and fraud. It’s this kind of reflexive dismissal and mocking of religious faith in the media that makes people of faith dismiss the MSM as elitist and anti-faith. The truth is that equating voter fraud laws with religious faith is a false equivalency at many levels. The cleverness of the rhetorical strategy does not outweigh the significant disrespect this shows to people of religious faith - I’m sure quite unconsciously and unintentionally. But please - think before you write. Everyone benefits from a media that is fair and truthful and respected - I don’t believe the rhetoric that all MSM are lying leftist propagandists. But for heavens sakes, think about the metaphors you choose to employ and how they will hit all segments of your audience.
1
The point of this metaphor is to emphasize that once we get to court, faith-based arguments are no longer heeded. No one wants to be convicted by a juror who claims that God or the devil told him the defendant did it, and no one wants their judge to rule on the basis of divine inspiration. The very notion of scientific evidence has its roots in the concept of legal evidence. The faith metaphor here also resonates with the obvious fact that when charlatans like Kobach appeal to religious faith, they are lying to you. Maybe you should be more concerned about the hypocrisy of our conservative politicians than the 'tone' of NYT editorials.
2
"When the A.C.L.U.’s lawyer asked him about his methods for analyzing the state’s list of suspended voters, Mr. Richman said that, among other things, he flagged foreign-sounding names. What about a name like “Carlos Murguia,”
I would venture to speculate (just as my NCAA bracket was speculation) that none of the "foreign sounding names" flagged by Richman included Amstutz, Britsch (Swiss) or Van Jidk (Dutch or any name Kobach may identify as not aligned with the alt-right.
3
His "game may work with partisan lawmakers, but not with federal judges." The longer we have the current president, the less one might be able to say this. He will always appoint judges with a partisan bias. The courts will follow the executive office, the congress to corruption and tyranny.
8
Thank you NYTimes for reporting on Kris Kobach - one of the biggest frauds in the GOP. His sham campaigns to disenfranchise voters should be a punishable crime. After all, deliberately preventing legal voters from casting a vote is in fact, a form of stealing. When it involves hundreds or thousands of citizens it’s theft on a grand scale. It brings a smile to my face every time I read about the courts catching this slithering creature with his bogus methodology and putting a stop to his nonsense.
360
Kobach may be a fraud, but he's no outlier. Every Republican in Congress, and most in the state houses have supported voter suppression laws. The tip of the iceberg isn't 11 unregistered voters… the tip of the iceberg is Kobach ― and it is a very, very large iceberg...
4
Yes it is a crime to disenfranchise a legitimate vote, but we a lawless country now. The rich and especially the GOP no longer pay for their crimes so they will try to get away with everything they can. Maybe if one day if tRump and others are disgraced or thrown in jail, then maybe the rich will clean up their act. We have a long way to go to improve the justice system in this country. It will be impossible when the courts are totally stocked with conservative judges.
Why not register everyone when they get their Driver's License
or when they graduate from High School or College or when
they get their State Income Taxes back and put
pre-paid stamped form aat Grocery stores.
2
Noting that of the enormous nine convictions secured by Kobach, "most of them" were of older Republican men trying to vote twice.
Maybe one of the reasons that Republicans are so convinced that voter fraud exists is because they themselves perpetuate it.
Once again, the public suffers because of projection on the part of law-breaking Republicans ("If I do it, everyone must be doing it!").
Why can't they be as draconian when it comes to passing laws to prevent crazy men from murdering their families and shooting up schools?
7
@Tom . . . you ask "When will the Republican party abandon fraudulent ways to win and begin to court voters with a platform that is good for our democracy?" I like your question even though I think Republicans will never court voters with promises that are good for the rank and file. By gerrymandering and tuning their message so it is pitch perfect to the ear of white nationalists, they selected voters who fear and hate non-whites and the poor to propel themselves to power across the country. The Republicans gave up representing Americans, in general, and their voters in particular, in favour of the tiny group of wealthy people who fund their campaigns and employ them outside government. Their legislation rolls back democracy for the benefit of the wealthy so this group can accumulate more wealth at everyone else's expense. The danger is that people focus attention on what the Republicans say and debate it endlessly rather than coldly evaluating what they do, from which intent can be inferred. Whether sufficient numbers of people are ready to understand the truth and vote their self-interest is an open question. Until they do, the Kris Kobaches of the world will continue to work feverishly to disenfranchise and punish those who stand in the way of American oligarchy.
9
One can picture Mr. Kobach as a very loyal, successful, and effective state functionary in the Moscow Electoral District, #1., the pride of Putin's Russia. Perhaps an educational sabbatical, paid by the Kansas Republican Party to that far flung capital, could be arranged. Never know what new, cutting-edge procedures might be learned to further protect the integrity of the ballot, back home.
3
Nothing need be arranged. Consider the possibility that like Trump, all Trumpists have already been inculcated.
Republican’s always veil their real agenda with phony nonsense and exemplary deportment, including a nice suit and modulated speech. Anyone who dares to point out the real motivation of their actions is branded rude and in need of counseling. Dear NYT Editorial Board, please continue to follow your path. It is rational, accurate and greatly appreciated by the intelligent.
8
Kris Kobach needs to be criminally prosecuted and jailed for the role he has played in denying people their constitutional right to participate in the electoral process. Same goes for his fraudsters like the political “scientist” Jesse Richman.
7
The world will never be void of those dedicated to having the world be a place which works in the way they see fit.
"Intelligent Design" anyone?
2
These laws are an attempt to return to the days of the poll tax, and the ridiculous "citizenship tests" required of blacks in the South. The number of people prevented from voting, when combined with the number of "felons" barred from voting for life, usuallyare greater than republicans margin of victory even in their carefully gerrymandered districts. Time for the Federal Judiciary and expose the true vote fraud, which is the laws designed to restrict it.
5
Copy Oregon! You're 18, you're registered.
1
Simply put, Mr. Kobach has devised another form of racism under the guise of good.
3
Deliberately preventing people from voting — and make no mistake, that is what these people are doing, no matter what they claim — strikes at the very heart of what America stands for. There is nothing more despicable than taking away the most fundamental right of American citizens. And then they wave the flag and talk about "making America great again?" The hypocrisy is breath-taking. As Joseph Welch said to Joe McCarthy, "have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
6
Another very odd feature of the extreme right's obsession with
voter fraud is how it uses the principle of evidence for constructing
policy. The amount of evidence that global warming is increasing
and that it is due to human (and cow) behavior is beyond enormous by now.
Yet the funders and actors behind the vote fraud scam not only
deny these mountains of evidence, they just don't see any of it
as an issue to concern oneself with (i.e. the latest nonsensical meme about
the "climate is always changing").
On the other hand, given the essentially non existent concrete evidence
for "massive" voter fraud, they have insisted it exists and something
just has to be done about it.
How is it possible to be a denialist about one thing in the face of
massive evidence, and then turn around and be a blind believer about
another thing for which essentially no evidence exists? And these people never
lose face and media placement time despite such manifest
contradictions? How is this possible??
I just don't get it. Is it a fault of the educational system that creates
a pool of unreasoning zealots who reflexively line up to support such
idiocy? Is it a fault of the general infotainment big media culture that reduces
everything to emotion generating/manipulating popular little narratives and never anything more substantial/analytical, rewarding the likes of
f-x news, breitbart, limbaugh with ad revenue that keeps the wheels of disinformation well greased at all times?
4
I’m a perfect example of what’s going on here: I am an elderly white woman, born in the US. For over 50 years I’ve had a Hispanic last name. Due to my European spouse. That was never a problem for many, many years. The idea that my last name might be a problem at the polls never entered my mind.
Till maybe 8 or 9 years ago.
Around that time I got concerned about absentee voting. What if someone questioned my vote? Due to my last name?
Around that time many were suggesting you vote ahead of time. But that vote in our state was counted like an absentee ballot. You put your ballot in an envelope to be counted differently than a personal vote on Election Day.
Now I fear every election! I’m anxious that my last name could result in some kind of interrogation or further need to prove I’m a citizen.
It shouldn’t be this way! I have a Ph.D. I’m retired. I speak English with no accent. But still.... I’m worried.
They have caused me to worry!!! They want me to worry.
And if I, a white old lady, with no accent, am worried, imagine the fear of an immigrant! An immigrant who is now a US citizen. Scared of being challenged at the polls. Scared to perform the greatest sacred duty of a citizen.
Propaganda has done this! Vicious, cruel propaganda. (It’s not faith! It’s a kind of terrorism!)
570
and denying the vote to felons who have served their time ?????
Heinous!!
And even more so when the biases rampant in our systems are considered...
7
think of it likes this.... First, as the article state, the " legislation violates federal law, which requires only that prospective voters attest to their citizenship under penalty of perjury"
Second. it's a step toward requiring people to carry IDs....
Third, it makes it more complex for those who can't read and/or who are confused by additional complexity.
Fourth, the ability to legislate against 'problems' that don't exist is a slippery slope that further empowers those in power...
I think it easy to imagine that this requirement would pose absolutely no problem for wealthy white voters.... but for others, perhaps not.... and that is a form of discrimination....
Research the issue, my friend...
1
If one is looking for a fraud, one need look no further than Kris Kobach himself.
12
How many voters can describe the roles of the branches of government? How many know how to get a bill introduced in any legislature at any level? Etc, etc.
Let's license voters, with minimum knowledge requirements.
1
And keep the President from voting? How dare you!
2
I wonder... Merely a token, but could we ban elected office holders from voting?
Kris Kobach could not argue out of a wet paper bag!
2
Thank you, ACLU.
10
"How does it feel to have your papers out of order, Mr. Kobach?"
This is the best line in this excellent article in league with Dirt Harry's famous line, "you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, punk?"
Does Mr. Kobach feel luck?? I don't think so!
5
You beat me to it! I thought the same thing - a sly and subtle dig.
1
The Brotherhood of Liars are running the government. For a while longer.
4
Kobach is Joe McCarthy with a bible.
8
Only idiots tolerate idiots. Regrettably, though, Kobach is no idiot-he is a graduate of Harvard Law School, as was Barack Obama and tens of thousands of other brilliant lawyers. So, Kobach's real destiny was not to use his law degree or presumption of integrity for the good of the people. Instead, it was to use it as a mallet to bop people over the head who were not from the now defanged ruling class of white, Christian men who drink martinis and play golf at restricted country clubs. Voting is a fundamental right, but if men like Kobach continue their quixotic ways, they will have eroded, somewhat, that right that so many Americans fought to do. Shame on him and shame on Trump for once giving him the recognition he so cravenly asked for.
290
North Dakota has no voter registration. Nor do they have any voter fraud. Why?
Kobach may not be an idiot but he is clearly a demagogue.
2
Pretty sure that all Harvard Law School graduates are brilliant. Kobach would be a prime example of that.
This is nothing more than the bland, legalistic, bureaucratic side of fascism in the Trump administration.
Impeach NOW!
7
The Putin threat to American elections pales in comparison to that of bigoted American public officials who have no qualms about stealing the franchise from eligible American voters.
5
This reminds me of a book called " The making of a Sociopath".
2
Kobach has an agenda and we are pretty sure it is to keep anyone other than white Americans from voting. Of course he came from Kansas. Where else would he be believed... well, I can think of a few more states. This man needs to be prosecuted. He is poisonous.
4
There's plenty of voter fraud, if your definition of voter fraud is "black people voting."
7
The GOP has shown that their primary goal is to win at all cost, including deception and dirty tricks, democracy be damned. It appears that they are trying to establish themselves (I am talking about party insiders and upper-level politicians here, not average Republican voters who stand to be taken advantage of as much as everyone else) as a ruling cabal. They show little interest in average citizens, but fall all over themselves to benefit American oligarchs. No wonder they show such admiring fascination for Putin and Russian oligarchs.
3
"How does it feel to have your papers out of order, Mr. Kobach?"
This is a sick burn of the highest order.
4
Kris Kobach's vile ideology, a republican fever dream dissipating in the light of day. The Russian worshiping republicans will have to find another way to undermine our democracy...
4
Still, the choice for Kansas gov. Split Dem Indie vote puts Kris in the mansion.
Kobach's witch hunt.
5
Our democracy would be more robust, give us more reason to be proud and secure, if we did not have to place so much reliance on judges to beat back attacks - on the rule of law, one person one vote, and equal opportunity. All of us are well advised to do more heavy lifting, as parents, teachers, neighbors, employers, especially as voters.
6
I can’t help but see the inconsistency in treatment by our politicians between voting rights and gun rights. It seems there has been very little concern or resistance to regulating and restricting the fundamental and constitutional right to vote versus the incredible political resistance against any form of gun regulation. If we can legally justify a voter registration process of any sort, why not the same for gun ownership?
18
"There has been no epidemic of noncitizens voting".
Isn't the real problem the epidemic of citizens not voting?
31
Also of gerrymandering and voter suppression, last minute moving of voting locations, inadequate voting booths in poorer neighborhoods etc. all of these and more dirty tricks will bring down the vote of your opponents.
1
We up in NH are fighting off a slate of voter repression laws inspired by Kobach and being written by groups like Americans for Prosperity and ALEC. They are spearheaded by a right wing voter suppression avatar, Senator Birdwell, who seems to file a new law a minute in our State. The most recent attempts are now to restrict the voting rights of students who don't have NH driver's licenses. It's disgusting to see the constant attack on the right of people to vote go on relentlessly in this State of ours that has only had a couple of voter fraud cases. The one conviction was for a woman who completed an absentee ballot for her husband who died two days before election day but asked his wife to make sure that she would register his vote for Donald Trump.
12
Voter suppression and gerrymandering will destroy American democracy if they are not eliminated. That is the truth.
26
Why don't we allow citizens a three day weekend to vote ? A one day holiday isn't enough. There must be many concerned citizens who would volunteer to work at the polling locations in order to save the right to vote from the malicious efforts of the Republicans.
12
This is why who appoints federal judges that are independent from political games matters and why what is reported or not reported in the news matters. That Kobach's witness he referenced as a political scientist flagged "foreign sounding names" and one was a federal district judge tells us all we need to know about the intent in his operation.
12
There is fraud. It's called voter suppression. Its proponents don't believe in democracy. Anyone who intentionally and fraudulently seeks to deny another his or her constitutional right to vote should be prosecuted. Oh, and if convicted, lose the right to vote.
10
Justice Stevens and Judge Posner erred because they underestimated the malevolence of the Republican Party. These Voter ID laws have been a sham from the very beginning.
11
"Voter fraud" claims are not motivated by "faith." They are purposeful, deliberate, and calculated. Every so often, a slightly less-clever Republican politician acknowledges out loud what they ALL know quite clearly: that these initiatives are strictly, and only, for the purpose of disenfranchising as many younger and poorer people as possible. And why do they do this? Because those groups tend more than most to vote Democratic.
There IS voter fraud in this country. It occurs every time the Republicans try to claim "Voter fraud!" and then make voting harder for demographic groups that vote for their opponents. This conduct - of Trump, Kobach, Hucklebee Sanders, Sessions, and the rest of them - should be a crime for which they should be prosecuted.
8
I am in complete agreement. They want to intimidate people. Make them afraid to vote. Afraid their vote will be challenged.
It’s all based on propaganda. And those who swallow the propaganda are not the ones who are affected. They are the bully-wannabe type.
The ones who are affected know full well what’s going on. They understand their vote is not wanted. They understand their voice, their vote, is under attack.
1
When you think about it, what possible motivation would individual voters have to go to the trouble to vote fraudulently? It's hard enough to get legitimate voters to get out and vote. Even when we do make the effort, the effect of our individual yea or nay seems depressingly minuscule.
Effective voter fraud would require massive organization, and 10's or 100's of thousands of motivated fraudsters, an effort that would be monumentally difficult to achieve in secrecy. Mr. Kobach's racist Republican motivation is painfully obvious: voter suppression and disenfranchisement of American citizens. It is Kobach who should be on trial for conspiracy and fraud.
12
Kris Kobach's principle (if one can all it that) might be that "It is better to stop a million citizens from voting than to allow one non-citizen to vote."
Actually, it is much simpler - "Our goal is to suppress Democrats."
14
Don't you mean undocumented Democrats? Apparently from your view, voter registration laws only cut one way. I'm sure young Republicans would take issue with that or perhaps they views their right to important enough to ensure they can.
Thomas Jefferson is purported to have said, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance"...an awful lot of people haven't been very vigilant for quit some time now.
3
Voter count fraud, - not often discussed or audited, is a much larger potential abuse than mere voter-casting fraud. The country needs ironclad assurances of vote counting integrity.
In last week’s Lamb-Cassone contest, notice that precinct level votes for the largest Republican county were not provided on election night; only the county totals.
Electronic counts can be manipulated or the systems can be hacked.
5
The corruption and fraudulence of Kobach and the GOP make the blood boil, but the deeper and more ennobling emotion that should come from this episode flows from the heroic efforts of some of the disenfranchised. In Texas, people of limited means, largely black, have spent untold hours and desperately needed resources to recover the right that was taken from them. They have fought harder and more persistently for their right to vote—now, in this decade of the 21st century—than Kobach and Trump and all the other Republican partisans have for anything in their entire lives. I hope the Times tells their stories too. The deep abiding pride and patriotism of those that are the targets of this plan for voter suppression is as inspiring and uplifting as the cynicism of the GOP is disgusting.
6
Kobach got Bush in office in 2000 with a similar voter suppression scheme in Florida. See where that got us? He got Trump in office in 2016 with a suppression scheme "Interstate Crosscheck" in 29 states. Just because his bogus voter fraud campaign is debunked, he and the reds will not stop. No Jim Crow voter ID laws. Equal distribution of polling places and voting machines with paper trail that cannot be rigged. End the elite Electoral College voter suppression system. Instant runoff voting that allows 3rd parties a chance to be elected. Once it is proven that Trump and most of the other red candidates around the country were not elected legally, reverse his appointments. particularly Gorsuch the Supreme. TAX THE RICH. Redistribute the obscene wealth of our corrupt new royalty. See how great America can be again.
7
Wealth Redistribution and Social Democracy are great if it's not your check the money is pulled from.
When our voter ID law first went into effect some elderly nuns from the convent arrived at their usual polling place and were not allowed to vote because they lacked a drivers license. Some weeks earlier I had visited my senile mother who was in a nursing home and found her wearing a sticker that said "I VOTED". Mom had no business voting because she was too senile to even recognize family members. I wonder who came to her room and with an absentee ballot and "helped" her vote? Our state law does not require ID for absentee ballots.
8
I am finding myself more and more concerned that people who support the Kobach's of this country, do not care about actual impact of this type of attack on our Democracy. Kobach and his kind have manipulated with lies and leveraging of people's ignorance and base fears to gain and hold power. I have been amazed that such a large group of people are seriously willing to put a loaded gun to our Democracy's head. I see it as due to the brain washing and lies they have been willing to believe and defend. I have lost patience with the Kobach's in this country and the supporters who keep them in positions of power. We are past differences of opinion and are now fighting for basic human decency and to keep our Democratic institutions. There is more than enough evidence that proves that the lies and motivations of these people are meant to get and keep power. All done by feeding hate, prejudice and the fear of others to do so. I do not feel the need to try and reason with my fellow voters who support the Kobach's any more. They aren't interested and can no longer present an argument that has any relation to the truth. The actions and beliefs that they support are laid bare for what they are. There is no reasonable defense for them in a Democracy. I cannot forgive the blatant abandonment of civility and regard for others. Nor can I forive the willingness to defend that stance as an American who loves my country. VOTE and stop this madness.
6
The only way Republicans can win is if they suppress or gerrymander.
6
And even that won't be enough if the Democratic Party manages to pass their illegal immigration policies.
Granting citizenship to 20 million, with a path for tens of millions more to come, is going to cement their political power.
While I agree with the Democratic party on 99% of the issues such a naked power grab sits uneasily with me.
I prefer political power to be based on broad support throughout society- not on the importation and creation of voters to create an artificial majority.
1
I want both parties to stop messing with the electorate.
The Republican party has got to stop obstructing the right to vote.
The Democratic party has got to stop trying to import illegal immigrants with the intent of making them citizens.
If the Democratic Party gets a majority in Congress they will legalize and grants citizenship to 20 million illegal immigrants. Many of whom will be criminals. Each of those people will bring in every person they have ever known.
When 129 million people vote (last Presidential election) creating 20 million votes, out of criminals, makes a big difference. It is called stealing political power. It is as un-democratic. It is wrong- taking political power from citizens and granting it, unilaterally, to illegal immigrants.
1
The only thing you have said that holds water is that the Republican party has to stop obstructing the vote.
The rest you have made up of whole cloth.
WillT26, what data do you base this argument on? Your 20,000,000 immigrants claim sounds as though it comes straight from the pages of Breitbart, Alex Jones and other alt-right conspiracy theory mongers. I am more than happy to have a spirited debate about immigration, but some baseline facts have to be the starting point, not wild accusations.
Would somebody please remind me ... how many members of Trump’s immediate family were discovered to have registered to vote in two different states?
(And no, that doesn’t include Russia.)
10
You've listed 4 qualifiers, so I'm guessing you actually know the supposed answer to what you are alluding to.
The fear of Non-Caucasian voters and the lands where Trump prevailed are the same.
Harnessing that fear for malicious and odious purposes is a trump and friends speciality.
Their intent, Ken Paxton of Texas, Koback of Kansas and others to peddle that fear and exclude to preserve. A little John Birch Society conspiracy theory and a dollop of Father Coughlin their cue cards.
This Nation is a polyglot of it’s Citizens. Celebrate those differences and the diversity becomes dynamism for the betterment of the commonweal, common good.
2
With the close Gore v Bush race in 2000 and the Franken/Coleman Senate race in MN in 2008, one would think that brining more integrity to our elections would give the public more confidence that the right person won the election.
As it is now, the majority of people have more confidence in the process of who won the Powerball vs. who wins an election, and I don’t see too many states taking proactive steps to reassure the public that they know what they’re doing when it comes to election integrity.
Don’t you want to know how many dead people cast votes for Bush in 2000? If it turns out that several hundred dead people voted or Bush, or several thousand snow birds voted for Bush in NJ, CT and NY as well as in FL, don’t you want to know? And out of state college students attending school in FL? Don’t you want to know how many voted for Bush back home in 2000 while also voting in FL?
Give everyone a photo id. If they can’t get to a photo Id, take a digital picture of them when they arrive at the voting booth. And..unless they have a real good reason for not voting...make them appear in front of a precinct to cast their vote.
Voting integrity is crucial to EVERYONE having a fair shot at winning an election. We should accept standards significantly less than those used in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq..yet here we are.
Saddest part of this whole story is the people charged with rooting out fraud aren’t even looking for it..which allows them to report that there isn’t any.
1
My mother would not have been able to vote in the 40s and 50s because she didn’t have a photo ID- she didn’t drive until about 1960. Her mother, my grandmother, Never drove. Many women didn’t drive and couldn’t have voted. Funny no one thought anything of it back then. Republicans can’t win on ideas so they perpetrate this fraud to win. Sad.
6
You can, in Kansas, get a legal ID that is not a Driver's License. However, it carries the same requirements for documents. Many poor, young and elderly people do not have the wherewithal to gather up the supporting documents.
Of course, this is deliberate.
Is it only me who finds the irony in the constantly used argument against gun control that it can't be done because it's a constitutionally guaranteed right even if we all know there are 'costs' associated with such free access yet voting, something that has never killed or injured anyone can have barriers set up to make sure only the 'right' people vote. We already have such low turnout rates that it hurts democracy. I don't think you can have it both ways.
4
Kris Kobach says 11 votes since 2000 is "the tip of the iceberg"?
So Kris Kobach is telling the people of Kansas that he is too incompetent to be trusted with any position of responsibility. He made rooting out this type of thing a trademark of his years in office there. So he's a miserable failure or he's making it up.
But I think Kansas voters have given themselves a lot of practice in the realization of voting for hot air. They got wise to the ineffective, showboating failure-to-govern the got from voting in Tea Party types like Tim Huelskamp, and they've voted a bunch of them back out.
They just got hit with a report on school spending requirements that was supposed to bolster Brownback's fantasy-driven gutting of state education funding (standard wishful thinking that giving the wealthy money means "unleashing the job creators"). Brownback was very wrong.
http://www.cjonline.com/news/20180316/reality-is-setting-in-gop-school-s...
Keep waking up, Kansans. Throw the liars out and lock the door behind them.
4
Kobach is also the author of most of the anti-immigrant local and state initiatives that have been found to be unconstitutional.
One wonders if he slept through Constitutional Law as a first-year law student.
4
How does a political party with the smallest number of voters registered as Republicans manage to take power of the White House and both the House and Senate? Since they are in the minority, they must stoop to other means.
It does not surprise me that the Supreme Court upheld the firs voter ID case in 2008. This court is a sham and a disgrace. I used to actually read about their decisions and try to understand the underpinnings of their interpretations of the Constitution. I don't do that anymore because I believe they are not guided by the Constitution but by a conservative political agenda which rubber stamps all things Republican.
1
Kris Kobach shouldn't hold any elected or even appointed office that requires integrity or responsibility. I don't think we really needed this article to demonstrate the sham about voter fraud that Trump and Kobach are selling. It's painfully obvious not just in Kansas but across the nation that Republicans rig their districts for the desired results.
Much like their tax policy, Kansas has regressed in most areas of democratic thought. Voter's are a reflection of those they elect.
Whatever happened to Kansas?
1
When your electoral success depends not on your policies, but on gerrymandering and voter suppression, you might want to stop and ask whether you're pro-democracy or anti-American. Republicans, it seems, don't want to ask - or don't care what the answer is.
3
Every sociopolitical advance in African-American life has been met with a nasty white backlash. There are too many stops on that path to relate here, but the last three make the point. Brown vs Board of Education lit a fuse; the passage of the Civil Rights Act ten years later was the explosion; the election of a mixed race man as president was an atomic chain reaction. White Fright became the glue that primarily bonds the republican party in 1964. Obama solidified the irrational fears of those who have been so upset by the change in their perception of the social pecking order. The Tea Party and it's aftermath was born.
A sociopolitical movement requires a leap of faith that the movement is morally right. Once that leap occurs the movement can justify whatever machinations it takes to advance the cause, like the cop who plants evidence to foil the 'bad guy'. Tactics of voter suppression certainly aren’t new, but they now have the sophistication and power of data analytics and electronic media propaganda. Many republicans are not racists, bigots -but they are white and republican. The power of one’s peer group is immense and many republicans will go along with things they likely don’t feel in their hearts to be a part of that peer group, to advance other causes they do believe in. Trump is the ogre at the bottom of this slope, swinging clubs and chains at the imaginary threats to the diminishing white majority. Kobach is a transparent minion in a gradually dying cause.
3
Juxtapose this information about voter suppression with the information about the use of Facebook data to manipulate voters' opinions. Add in gerrymandering, dark money, attack ads and political contributions. Think about Russian meddling and the lack of security around electronic voting.
If you're not concerned about democracy, there's something wrong with you.
2
“Richard Posner, former federal appeals court judge who upheld the Indiana law, later said that voter ID laws are now widely regarded as a means of voter suppression...”
That was the core of plaintiff ‘s argument in Crawford v Marion County Election Board. It was obvious what Republican controlled legislatures were working to accomplish, voter suppression.
1
False charges of voter fraud, along with gerrymandering are key elements in republican election politics. They depend on these tactics to given them majorities at the state and local level. How else is it possible that democrats in the House got more total votes and and still found themselves in the minority? Legislative districts drawn to resemble garden implements which allow farm animals and corn fields to have more electoral impact than where people really live. There is nothing democratic about any of this. There are more of us than there are of them! The answer is to vote. If it has a D behind it's name and is breathing in it's own...vote for it, early and often. We blow this one and it's over!
2
This isn't just about Kobach, but about the sham that is the Republican Party. The party consistently creates policy based on myth and fantasy. The fact that this party has fooled the US electorate is a sad statement and one that makes me want to move to Canada. Most GOP politicians seem to only care about keeping their political positions, not truth and honesty. It is truly sad. If Kobach becomes governor of Kansas, the state might as well just cease to exist and become part of Oklahoma.
Kobach surname arguments reminds me of when I was young and all long hair was dirty,and haircuts were the rule at work.
In the court case they used this line of reasoning when the defense asked “should women also follow these rules?” The case fell to pieces.
1
Once again the Supreme Court rules to dismantle democracy. Citizens United and upholding Voter ID laws just show that the Roberts Court is the worst one since the Taney Court.
1
Democracy is such an impediment to the right wing's Master Plan.
4
Voter disenfranchisement, propelled through these anti-voter fraud laws, allows a Republican party whose core principles and evident actions are against a better life and well-being for the majority of Americans to exist. 'If you can't fool them, make sure they can't vote' - or gerrymander them into a few concentrated districts where their votes are ineffective in changing who holds power... The Republican party competes only secondarily (if that) on the quality of its policy ideas, and the benefits of its governance, such as that is. The Republican party fails the public with its ideas and policies, so it resorts to chicanery and deceptive, restrictive laws to exclude voters it knows will not be persuaded by lies and advertising. The endless parade of wedge issues, to 'divide and rule' by splitting the public into groups, fighting each other instead of realizing how their common enemy is Republican policies that damage all but the 1% - this is a core Republican strategy. Voter disenfranchisement is one of three pillars Republican party strategy stands on.
What else is Mr. Kobach to do? Republicans cannot win fairly so they have to block voters and create rigged districts via REDMAP gerrymandering, to guarantee victory with a minority of votes . . . not a viable long-term strategy in my opinion. And, as if that were not enough, they have the chaos of this administration hanging around their necks. Talk about a tough sell in November . . .
1
I was a poll worker this last November , sitting at the desk with the signature book voters sign before going to the booth. Several African American voters had their ID in hand and presented it as they approached the table. They were happy to hear that it was not necessary to do this. I did not see one single white person feel the need to show an ID. I think theres a message there.
2
So the illegal president boasts about lying to the Canadian Prime Minister to "his people," but maintains that lie even after exposed. So too with allegations of fraudulent voting, statements that all migrants are criminals, that women testifying about his sexual assaults are lying, that he will "drain the swamp," that the tax bill is for the middle class and on and on. His denial of connections to Russia and protestations that there was no collusion are just more lies. He is nothing by a con man, surrounded by liars and criminals. Hopefully he will end up in jail, or fleeing to Russia.
1
Hawaii has a voter ID law. I know this may sound odd as Hawaii is probably the most liberal state in the country. It is fairly permissive however and does not require a proof of citizenship and is only enforced at the polling place and not at registration where an oath suffices. I think you an actually show your electric bill to vote.
My first drivers' license, issued in 1958, had no photo on it. I wonder how this republic survived from 1789 to last year without photo i.d. required at the poll.
333
My first driver's license was in 1974 and it didn't have a photo either. I don't think mine had a photo until the late 1980's.
2
My birth certificate has no photo on it nor footprint, fingerprint, DNA or any positive identifiers to me. Nor do any of the duplicates I have obtained by mail, yet it is a positive form of ID. Go figure.
1
These dozens of strict new laws which unnecessarily restrict voting access can only be overcome by rendering them ineffective. The proponents of them need to be voted out of office. This will require turnout by people who believe in an open and transparent process.
Register yourself and others then make sure you vote in local, state and national elections.
3
Republicans are trying to prevent people from voting. I do not support that at all.
Similarly I do not support the Democratic Party plan to grant citizenship to 20 million illegal immigrants. They will then push for the most expansive family reunification process allowable- essentially opening the door to another 20 - 30 million.
We had 129 million people vote in the last election. Creating 20 million new votes, out of foreign criminals, is an electoral coup. 20 million new voters, and the additional 20 - 30 million 'family members', is enough to ensure victory in any election.
The Republicans are making it harder for citizens to vote. The Democrats are making it harder for citizens votes to even matter- by diluting them to nothing by importing millions of criminals and giving them the vote.
I support neither position but see the Democratic one as the more threatening to our democracy and democratic principles in general.
1
The Parkland activists are mobilizing the youth vote. Proof of citizenship will likely be an obstacle for young people. We need to help youth exercise their civic responsibility by running voter registration drives. We also need to educate young voters about absentee voting.
9
The tragedy is that these voter suppression laws can be put in place and implemented because the procedure for challenging them is time consuming. This highlights the improvident decision by the Supreme Court in Shelby County v. Holder. Since denial of the right to vote in a single election can have profound and irreversible consequences and since suppression laws have proliferated since Holder, preclearance should apply to every state.
5
Ah, voter fraud is as hard to find as a "welfare queen" driving from state-to-state in a Cadillac. Both are figments of the febrile, demented imagination of closet white supremacists.
When can we get back to being a reasonable country where people with experience in their field are appointed to cabinet positions and Congressional leaders stay in D.C. on the weekend to have dinner parties at each other's homes without regard to party affiliation? How about when they treated each other with respect and listened to their voters, not their donors? You know, the way we were before Newt Gingrich broke Congress.
2
Kobach is from Kansas. Is there any way to determine who funded his efforts in restricting votes? Is there a link between Kobach and the Koch Brothers? Who are the well heeled people behind this effort to restrict citizens from exercising their right to vote.
9
A US born male is required to show only one "proof" document- a birth certificate. Every US born married woman is required to show at least two-a birth certificate and a marriage certificate. A woman must add additional certificate for each additional marriage. Both my husband and I have been married 3 times. To vote he must show 1 document, while I must show 4. In my state those documents are required to get a driver's license. I finally lost my temper and got a passport. I vote and renew my driver's license with the passport. No woman should ever give up her maiden name!
In my state, it is NOT possible to vote illegally since all the documents must be certified. But all married women must bare additional costs to drive a car and vote.
127
I took my passport as proof to get my new driver’s license. I figured they could not challenge the US government!
And I’m 73, and have been driving since my mid teens.
2
Tarsan--You need to move to a more progressive place. As long as their regressive politics, and social mores, continue the same, I wouldn't live in TN, for anything.
2
Let me fix that for you:
"No woman should have to give up their maiden name."
Can't you imagine a circumstance in which a person might want to distance themselves from their birth name?
Let's see how well Federal courts work in the future, when 45 has finished appointing unqualified right wing ideologues. And let's not even talk about Mitch McConnell's Supreme Court.
17
A--It will take decades to undo the damage tRump has done. He should pay, bigly, for his destructive actions.
I would not be surprised if the Mr. Korach loses this case he will follow Gov. Scott Walker's example and argue that elections are not needed at all since the people can be served by the existing legislative staff.
6
Trump is counting on this to become president for life. Permanent republican control.
Kobach's "solution" is legally upside down. If a person claims citizenship and a right to vote, the burden of proof should be in the challenger. That is why provisional ballots exist. The presumption of innocence is with the person claiming their citizen's right to vote. To prevent their casting a ballot is prior restraint.
Allow the provisional ballot, which could later be the basis for prosecution if the person is not in fact qualified to vote, but who casts a legal and timely vote otherwise. Kobach's approach is itself criminal, obstructing some citizens from their exercise of a fundamental constitutional right.
27
The concerns about illegal voting were manufactured to enable voter suppression. Two classes of people argue that it is a problem: the manipulators and the conned. The former should be prosecuted whenever their intent can be proven.
The process of voting should not be political and especially should not be designed by politicians seeking political advantage.
The basic problem, the missing safeguard, is that America allows voting to be controlled by the elected and this makes corruption of that system almost inevitable. Instead, the judiciary should be tasked to oversee an independent commission to maximize ease of access without any consideration for voting outcome. Checks and balances, we need some for voting.
12
One problem with your process, as pointed out already, is with the judicial appointments Trump has now plagued us with. We will need to come up with another way to counter voter suppression which this all is. Our democracy will die if R’s are able to discredit the notion that our elections are free, led by their leader Trump. That will be his most devastating legacy.
Photo I.D., birth certificate required? Then the State must furnish
the documents free of charge to any person who needs same.
It's costly and cumbersome for folks who are of limited means, or
don't drive to get proper docs. Church groups, or local League of
Woman Voters could help with arranging for those who want to
participate in voting, get the proper "papers" to allow them to do
their duty to vote.
22
I’m prepared to support a national voter ID card as long as it’s the same card we use for our (taxpayer-funded) national health care system
1
Denying Americans of their right to vote through new Jim Crow voter ID laws enacted by Republican politicians based on the premise that voter fraud threatens our democratic elections must be punished with laws that cause the perpetrators to spend time in jail. These practices are not victimless crimes.
In the 21st Century age of Artificial Intelligence gerrymandering to perpetuate minority rule must be outlawed.
Citizens United, giving "property" (corporations) human political rights, must be overturned just as the Dred Scott decision was reversed in the 19th Century.
Make every person's vote count. Tampering with vote counts through voting machine manipulation is the today's true voter fraud and must be prevented and punished with jail terms, not fines.
The Constitution must be amended to require the direct election of President and Vice President by popular vote. The Electoral College indirect election of President and Vice Presidents must be repealed.
The FCC "fair and balanced" requirement for radio and TV broadcast news organizations should be re-instituted and enforced.
Anti-monopoly laws should be enforced to prevent the concentration of ownership of radio, TV, print, and internet news organizations in the hands of the few.
The identity of any contributor and the amount given to any political campaign, politician, or PAC should be entered in the public record at the time of the contribution.
33
JMT, I would vote for you!
1
Lovely ideas, all. How do you propose they get implemented?
Depending on the courts to save our votes and voters in a meaningful and timely fashion is nether hopeful nor inspiring. Between Dred Scott and Brown there was a Civil War, a Reconstruction and a Jim Crow era. Followed by a brief winning Civil Rights legislative revolution era that the courts have inexorably and inevitably been eroding ever since. Victory in disparate impact as opposed to disparate treatment cases is never certain nor clear.
9
Voter fraud, of course, is only one of Kobach's self-professed causes--the most nationally high-profile one due to his connection to Trump. How about an investigative article on other initiatives he mounted while Secretary of State in Kansas, especially now that he is running for state Governor?
23
Time to pull back the curtain of this manipulator from Oz.
All of this so-called-fraud in voting is simply a method by which the GOP hopes to tilt the elections to their side, nothing more, nothing less. They seemingly cannot win any way except by gerrymandering, claiming fraud, and preventing entire groups of people from voting bases on junk theories. It is my opinion that the GOP has a whole raft of people who do nothing but sit in a room and try to come up with methods by which they can prevent people from voting. Of course the people they want to exclude from the right to vote are those who would be most likely to vote against them. They keep coming up with more and more cockamamie schemes to keep people away from the voting booth, in addition to concentrating on making up stories about their political foes which attempt to sway elections. Of course they also over blow their candidate's attributes (think Roy Moore) and ignore their blaring issues(again think Roy Moore). This is not reasonable paranoia about voter fraud it is an brazen attempt to keep whole groups of people from exercising the right to vote. If Kobach or anyone else is really interested in securing our voting systems they would concentrate on keeping people like Putin and tRump from having anything to do with it.
34
"It is my opinion that the GOP has a whole raft of people who do nothing but sit in a room and try to come up with methods by which they can prevent people from voting."
That's my opinion, too. They (the GOP) are dangerous people, politically speaking.
They have to keep a whole bunch of people in a room plotting for ways to prevent people from voting.
It’s the only way to counter the whole bunch of Democrats sitting in a room plotting for ways to cheat while voting, including arranging groups of people who vote multiple times using names of the recently departed.
It’s a perfect crime really. Dead men don’t talk..but they do vote. Who’s going to complain?
Mr. Kobach, go back and come again as a decent man. There's still time to pursue life and liberty as an honest person.
22
How soon before our current Supreme Court, laden with "original intent" conservatives, signals its willingness to entertain a reinstatement of the law allowing only landed Gentry to vote? The majority of Republicans would endorse such a move without hesitation.
24
You have to admit, there ought to be some litmus test on basic civics before being allowed to vote.
For instance, if you can’t name the Vice President, you don’t get to vote.
If you can’t name 2 of your City Council members, you don’t get to vote.
If you can’t name 1 person on your School Board, you don’t get to vote.
If you can’t name your State Rep and State Senator, you don’t get to vote.
If you can’t name your County Commissioner, you don’t get to vote.
I swear...we demand so much of legal immigrants to know these things...but our own electorate is ignorant until it comes to Election Day when get out the vote efforts include a free ride to the polls...a pack of smokes and free lunch at McD’s.
If someone is civically engaged on either side has their vote negated because of some person voting who hasn’t a clue who the candidates or issues are...do we really want to allow them to vote?
Should we continue to get rid of Civics and Politics classes in high school becuase they’re ‘triggering?’
1
Lee, yes, they would. The supporters would include landless Republicans. In the past, the landless (poor whites) were OK with not being able to vote since blacks were also prohibited from voting. They trusted their "betters" (wealthy whites) with making sure their supremacy as white men was upheld, so it was all good.
1
That will come when the renter society becomes the standard. Thats why Red Lining Mortgages is gaining speed, which follows the filling of jails and the permanent loss of voting.
I do not think it is unreasonable to as citizens to prove that they are who they say they are with an ID. The people that complain about this are the same people who try to effect the vote by taking a bus full of people they harassed into registering by pounding on thousands of doors in bad neighborhoods to the polls and making them vote. Someday we may be able to conduct a vote by fingerprint on a cell phone, but we are not there yet.
6
It is too much to ask when at the same time the state government closes the DMV offices and other facilities in towns and counties with large black populations making is difficult for them to obtain the IDs or charging for the IDs. The ID isn't the issue - obtaining the ID is.
30
Agreed. We need a national ID that indicates voting registration, guns owned and carry permit history, mental health history-and veteran status.
2
Mark, please provide proof that people have been harassed into registering, and forced into voting.
The fact is that the busses of people come from churches, and the reason is because transportation to the polls can be an issue, especially for the elderly, so some churches provide transportation after their church services to their members. Where is your proof that they have been forced to board the bus or to vote? Have you asked them?
7
My hope would be once these unfairly restricted voters get to vote, they will remember the party that is trying to suppress their vote and go Democrat from now on.
23
If we were intent on assuring that only citizens vote, and people only vote once, we'd be funding vast numbers of centers to help people get the paperwork they need to vote. We'd have expanded hours six months before the deadline. We'd have no fees to do a records search across states to find the documentation, and no fees to process the ID. We'd locate he centers near populations and make sure the centers are open whee needed.
If we were intent on preventing voting by a class or group of our citizens, we'd put such laws in place, set fees to replace paperwork, be sure to not accept IDs like old military cards because of expiration date or lack of photo, be sure to set up places to register in places with little public transportation, and be sure to have them open only until 3 in the afternoon.
How does Kansas compare to the standard? Don't argue numbers. Look at implementation. It is always apparent when marginalizing a person is the goal.
30
I'll go further and say we'd vote by mail so the voter can get the ballot two weeks before the election, study it, vote, then drop it off at a ballot box located in every post office. No standing in line and missing work on a Tuesday.
12
Putting the USPS in this would sign the death warrant for it. Look to Washington State for ideas.
When will the Republican party abandon fraudulent ways to win and begin to court voters with a platform that is good for our democracy? So far they have been rewarded because of their control of the SC. But eventually the court will turn with less political members.
20
@Tom . . . you ask "When will the Republican party abandon fraudulent ways to win and begin to court voters with a platform that is good for our democracy?" I like your question even though I think Republicans will never court voters with promises that are good for the rank and file. By gerrymandering and tuning their message so it is pitch perfect to the ear of white nationalists, they selected voters who fear and hate non-whites and the poor to propel themselves to power across the country. The Republicans gave up representing Americans, in general, and their voters in particular, in favour of the tiny group of wealthy people who fund their campaigns and employ them outside government. Their legislation rolls back democracy for the benefit of the wealthy so this group can accumulate more wealth at everyone else's expense. The danger is that people focus attention on what the Republicans say and debate it endlessly rather than coldly evaluating what they do, from which intent can be inferred. Whether sufficient numbers of people are ready to understand the truth and vote their self-interest is an open question. Until they do, the Kris Kobaches of the world will continue to work feverishly to disenfranchise and punish those who stand in the way of American oligarchy.
In Ohio you could previously renew your driver's license by presenting your current one and filling in a few forms. Now you have to present additional proof of citizenship or legal residency to renew your license.
Has there been a wave of people falsely claiming citizenship in order to drive an automobile? I seriously doubt it. But this is one of the subtle ways Republicans have devised to suppress the vote of people who do not support them.
If people don't stand up for their rights in this country they will lose them, as proven by the current Republican administrations in many of our states.
209
And Ohio is one of the leaders of purging voter lists.
1
I had a similar experience in FL. I couldn't believe the hoops I had to jump through -- especially when I had to get a certified copy of my marriage license to prove my name change which was different from my birth certificate. They wouldn't even accept my military dependent identification.
I thought if it is this difficult for me, how hard it must be for people who may find it difficult to tackle the bureaucratic maze you have to go through to get all these documents from your past.
2
And the core "principles" of the Republican party and many of its members remains the same: 1. The end justifies the means (meaning they have no real principles), 2. We are not in this all together (it is a culture war of us against them - whoever them is.
65
Whited Sepulchers R Us
The bottom of the American barrel: Kris Kobach-GOP 2018
8
Mr. Bailey, I disagree with your point 2. Republicans are making a grab for money and power (and succeeding) disguised as a culture war
Vote in every election because every vote really really matters
Local elections really really matter. The school board, city council, state legislatures. All of them - show up and dot our civic duty. VOTE.
71
New Jersey (Camden, Trenton and Newark) are great examples of where if you can get one political party in control for 50+ years, spectacular things can happen.
Deirdre, you're so right! All elections and all individual votes count. So please please VOTE.
What is the most common form of ID in the US? The driver's license. Which people in the US rarely have cars, and therefore rarely have a driver's license? The urban poor, particularly in places - like Arlington VA - that have functional mass transit systems. In 2016, the 70 y.o. African-American woman in front of me at the polling station had no driver's license [or any of the other ID forms accepted, which include photo college student IDs, from colleges in VA only]: she had to sign an affidavit and fill out a paper ballot that went into a special box for provisional ballots. She then had until the following Friday to submit proof of a photo ID, or her ballot would be discarded. This woman, who presumably had voted for about 50 years, now found herself disenfranchised by VA's new voter ID law, for no other reason than being poor, urban, and, yes, let's admit it, African-American. According to press reports in November 2016, more than 13,000 Virginians had to cast provisional ballots. Worth noting that Trump won Michigan by fewer votes than that.
124
Funny that. Al Franken won his Senate seat by 350 votes because Minneapolis and St. Paul did a poor job at managing provisional ballots. Every one of the 93 counties (except those 2) used rigorous standards to align the ballot and the envelope the ballot was provided in for auditing purposes.
Only after the 8th recount did they find enough votes in Minneapolis and St. Paul to finally make Franken the winner...and the 60th vote to give the entire nation ObamaCare.
Interesting what you don’t say is how many of those provisional ballots were discarded because someone couldn’t prove they were both a citizen and a resident of VA. You went right ot the # of ballots that were considered Provisional..which is an empty straw man argument.
I contend that the voter fraud crusade isn't based on faith but rather on rascism. this is modern day Jim Crow and poll tax. the practice of gerrymandering, voter ID and the restriction of early voting is nothing more than voter suppression in attempts to keep minorities away from the polls.
151
You are 100 percent correct.
Republicans think "universal background checks" are a great idea, but only for citizens exercising their constitutional right to vote, but not their constitutional right to own guns.
446
Hey, bonedoc, despite what it says above I now live in CT and was stunned to find them requiring a photo ID to vote. Shall we challenge that in our own state? Lets.
2
This comment made me laugh and nod my head but it could easily be flipped around: liberals want universal background checks on guns but don’t want folks to prove citizenship for voting. Both are Constitutional rights that should have equal burdens.
Funny that. I just bought a 9MM pistol and had to once again submit to a universal background check.
Maybe in CT they don’t require it..but here in the rest of hte country, we take gun laws very seriously.
Among Trump's past "successes:" a Syrian airbase attack with 66 missiles that didn't strike a single runway, plane, munitions storage, or barracks, and gave the Russians advance notice. Bomb sorties flew the next morning! Trump claims victories that hide the details and lies about the results. The same with tax cuts, expiring for the middle class (how much larger is your paycheck?), permanent for the rich, paid by healthcare.
In his mind, a man's claims of innocence about domestic abuse or sexual misconduct trumps women's reports collaborated by co-workers, friends, and family. Yet he denies what he admits he coveted and desired: a consensual sex affair. His lawyer paid $130,000 for silence on something Trump claims never happened!
He governs by tweet. Forgotten is his attack against transgender military personnel whom he slandered and smeared, lying about the cost of their healthcare--less than the aggregate cost of condoms, military-wide. Rarely mentioned is his bogus claim 3,000,000 voters committed fraud, endorsed by some Republicans. Overshadowed by his staff changes is his promise to raise the age of ownership for weapons of war, bought in any gun store.
The staff changes indicate he is spirally down as he punches up. As with the tariffs, where he cannot follow the logic or common sense of trade, he attacks allies (BMW's largest plant is in SC!) and professionals who reject that his delusions and conspiracies come before country, in their work to keep America sane.
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The absurdity of trump's claim that the 2016 pres. election counted 3M illegal votes is 'trumped' only by the absurdity that these supposed illegal voters -- every single one of a mythical 3 million -- voted for his opponent. (Statistically ... as 'likely' as flipping 3 million coins, each with a head and tail, and 'producing' 3 million of one and none of the other!)
Reading of a woman who lost her driver's license (as in misplaced, not traffic offense) made me realize how such laws can disenfranchise anyone. Until recently in Illinois, any moving violation meant that the driver's license was taken usually for several weeks until required DMV drivers' re-education class was taken. The carbon copy of the citation, which could be used for driving, would not have served as adequate ID - more people potentially disenfranchised in states with voter ID laws... all to solve a non-existent problem (purportedly).
68
That’s an urban legend, particularly in IL where anyone can vote provided they do it early...and often.
Remembering my years in Venezuela right after Chavez first won election, is illuminating.
For decades the two opposition parties- AD and Copei- had been in control of the vote and the process.
Imagine, if you can, the distinct difference between poor, rural citizens and upper middle-class citizens, when faced with the requirement of obtaining a national I.D. card in order to vote.
The poor citizen, living out in the country, without a car, was required to go into town, pay for buses and taxi's, lose a day's pay and wait in long slow lines to obtain a cedula in order to be able to vote.
An educated, upper middle-class citizen understood the process and could do it without breaking a sweat.
Chavez was shrewd, if economically naive.
He equipped large vans and trailers with computer equipment which would be connected by cable to the file systems in the major cities, and sent those vans out all over the country to facilitate the process.
And then, of course, most of them voted for him.
We are becoming an old-fashioned banana republic.
24
Kobach-ism will not last. We - Democrats - need to win elections by wider margins and we will, thanking Trump and his folks that have energized us to do this.
46
This is why it is so urgent for Trump and the GOP to stack the courts by appointing conservatives. If they succeed in this quest, what recourse will the people have?
64
couple this outrage with any redress of gerrymandering abuses, especially with the Census of 2020 looming, and it's a bleaker picture.
2
It's only through sustained media and the American Civil Liberies Union like voter education and judicial campaigns only that the disenfranchising Republican policies could be countered and the canard of the voter fraud could be exposed.
39
I am a Kansas voter. My driver’s license expires before the election, and to vote I have to renew it. So far I have spend about 10 hours researching what I need to renew my license, tracking down the documents, and driving to far-flung offices, including the DMV which was closed on the day I went (even though it was listed on the state web site as being opened 5 days a week,) and spent $70 trying to navigate all the private commercial web sites Republicans have allowed to flourish to replace government functions in order to obtain necessary documents.
I am a natural-born citizen, and yet Mr. Kobach has acted if all people in the state are illegal immigrants. Why am I having to prove my innocence rather than Mr. Kobach having to prove my guilt? And if this isn’t only a ploy to keep people from voting, why isn’t the state doing all it can to facilitate the process?
I was brought up in Kansas as an Eisenhower Republican. Back in those days we would have condemned Mr. Kobach as being a McCarthyite.
704
If it’s taken you 10 hours + to just figure out how to get your drivers’ license renewed, you may have bigger problems that trying to figure out how to vote.
Sorry the DMV was closed the day you went.
If only there was invention somewhere that would allow a person to check to see if a government office is open or closed before getting in the car and driving 2 hours..
2
Kansas is no longer the Kansas of Eisenhower, or William Allen White, a progressive Republican (remember them?). Brownback and Kobach are the types of "true-believer" Republicans that are now spewing from the sunflower fields ... and the fallout has carried over to Missouri -- once a common-sense bellwether state, now a GOP loony farm with a governor accused of sexual terrorism (so at least it's fashionable).
The trial has been fun to observe, though, with Kobach displaying all the legal skills of J. Cheever Loophole. And it will surprise me not when he's elected governor.
5
One can assume you'd want to renew it in order to be able to drive. But one would think a license or passport expired within a few years would constitute proof of eligibility as long as the address is unchanged.
4
Republicans cheat. They love cheating. It works for them.
Solutions:
1) Making voting a national holiday. Everyone gets the day off to vote.
2) Free national Identity Cards at age 18 that prove citizenship/or easier ways for people to verify their legal voting status
3) No gerrymandering (for either side).
4) No more electronic or mail-in voting until the system is examined and certified.
There are solutions, of course, but just like immigration, the rich and powerful don't want reform that allows us to exercise our "rights." They want to keep things in chaos.
60
Suggestion: make voting a multi-day event; not everyone is given every national holiday off: hospitals, police and law enforcement, essential services such as utilities, etc.
Of course this STILL may not cover every citizen's ability to make their way to the polls no matter how many days they are open; mail-in ballots must be an option.
24
If you notice, that country we are being taught to hate has its election on a Sunday, today, so that more can vote.
Why not two weeks of early voting? Here in CT the Secretary of State proposed it but of course it was talked to death in committee. By who you ask? Republicans of course.
The question I would like to ask Mr. Kobach is, "Which is worse, to allow an improper vote or deny a citizen's proper vote?" At the over 1000 to one ration of denied to fraudulent, i would hope the answer is easy.
72
For all the people pointing to other democracies with voter ID laws, it’s important to remember that everyone who is a citizen of a majority of those countries are issued an ID without having to go to an office open on the fourth Wednesday of every month. Which means 4 days a year. Voter ID laws would make sense if it wasn’t so hard for poor people and minorities to get IDs. Food for thought.
50
Most democracies put the burden of registering voters on the state, not the voter. Those governments have an affirmative obligation to register all their citizens.
Personal registration is the most anti-democratic method for determining who is eligible. Look to Oregon as an example of a government that wants to encourage voter participation not suppress it.
8
“More recently, courts have gotten better about questioning the evidence and rationale for these laws,”
Given the large number of judicial appointments so far made by Trump, should we wonder just how much better the courts are going to get at this?
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Good point.
"Koch-Funded Group Focuses On Lifetime Appointments Of Judges"
https://www.npr.org/2018/03/14/593413198/koch-funded-group-focuses-on-li...
31
It’s interesting that the same people who want to put restrictions on the right to vote resist any restriction on the right to bear arms. In a way, it tells us which is the more powerful weapon.
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In the Constitution there is a poor worded ammendment that allows the right to guns, but no similar right to vote. We need a new ammendment.
2
Claire: your concise two sentences say it all. Very well stated. May I use your words in a future letter to the editor in my city?
1
With only 77+K votes between Trump and the Presidency, we need to look at an insecure voting system and barriers deliberately put in place to prevent voters from voting. Trump squeaked into office with only 26% of the vote (if the total number of eligible voters are considered). His E.C. win was predictable given that that GOP-controlled states, by design, held sway over 70% of the Electoral College. This control was achieved through systematic gerrymandering (Operation Redmap), unlimited dark money (Citizens' United), gutting of key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, and GOP efforts like Kris Kobach's criminal but successful operation to disenfranchise over 1.1 million--mostly minority voters--in 7 battleground states. An embarrassingly insecure voting system and assistance from Russia also didn't help. And we wonder how someone like Trump could gain office? (And his arrogance: meeting with Kobach just days after the election!!)
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-stealth-war-agai...
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/trump-blows-the-gops-cove...
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/voter-suppression-may-have-...
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A federal district court judge slapping down Kris Kobach in the interest of protecting voter rights should make any decent person feel good. But in a few years that judge won’t be Julie Robinson. It will be some Republican ideologue appointed by Donald Trump from the ranks of the Federalist Society. Then the story will be quite different. Republicans will not rest until they have exploited every conceivable trick in the book for maintaining a minority party in power. From gerrymandering, to voter suppression, to attacks on the Voting Rights Act, restricting the right to vote is the cornerstone of Republican existence. It also guarantees that Republicans will never support any measure that could conceivably result in any illegal immigrant ever obtaining citizenship and the right to vote-not Dreamers, not Haitians granted temporary protective status that can never be revoked without imperiling them, and not the 11 million illegal immigrants who can never be feasibly be deported. Fear and hate. Without them, the Republican Party cannot exist.
65
Let me see if I have this right. Voter registration laws massively favor Republicans. District gerrymandering massively favors Republicans. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by almost three million votes. You have a transparently incompetent reality TV star running the country. The rest of the world is supposed to view the U.S. as a beacon of democracy.
Does anyone else find it odd that all of those things are true?
467
What isn't true is that the rest of the world sees us as a beacon of democracy. They see us as the canary in the coalmine of popularism.
2
Most of us down here know that now!
But do you know that the US is a constitutional republic at the federal level.
The word democracy is not even mentioned in our constitution.
Most Americans don't care about the rest of the world.
British Columbia is a very place nice but not the real world.
1
Follow the money. This isn’t “odd.” This is the natural consequence of Citizens United which allows corporations and the super wealthy to have a bigger bull horn in politics than any individual ordinary citizen. This is why we can’t get reasonable gun control legislation, it is why the tax bill gave billions to the rich and will stick the bill on ordinary citizens, it is why women are losing the civil right to control of their own bodies and medical care, it is why we have lost face across the world — the Russians and the Chinese aren’t “winning,” WE ARE LOSING, here first and then everywhere else. Our global businesses are paying for their advancement over our national sovereignty and Republican legislators everywhere welcome it because it means money in their pockets too.
I've long been amazed that one doesn't have to show ID in order to vote. You need to show ID to purchase alcohol, board an airplane, even pick up some prescriptions at the pharmacy. Needing ID is a fact of life in many areas of public dealings. It's not unreasonable to ask that it be applied to the most basic underpinning of society, i.e., to elect those who will represent us and enact laws that will affect us all. Just common sense.
25
I don't think you read the editorial, Patrick. It ends by saying, "These laws masquerade as common-sense measures, but they are in truth anti-democratic shams." As the editorial notes, there is simply no evidence that voter fraud is a problem. There is scads of evidence that voter ID laws prevent citizens from voting.
48
Patrick...put yourself in the shoes of a poor person, a minority or a university student, or an elderly person, and you might just get a clue.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/getting-a-photo-id-so....
Just a little compassion and understanding for the less fortunate instead of viewing the world from your own perfect navel, if you can handle it.
105
The laws should encourage voting not discourage it with added red tape, especially when there largely has been minimal problems with voter registration the way its been done for hundreds of years. If its not broke don't fix it. I have asked poll workers in my city, many who have over twenty years experience whether they have ever had someone masquerading as a voter with another person's name. None can recall this happening even once.
43
The Republicans only win by cheating: voter suppression and gerrymandering. Both of those scams are now under close judicial scrutiny and in a few cases like Pennsylvania, justice won out.
You can be sure the Republicans would never push Voter ID if it stopped conservatives from voting. They'd scream to high heaven about thwarting democracy and the rights for everyone to vote.
But only the poor, the young and dispossessed are affected since they tend to vote for Democrats. That's why the GOP targets them and allows hunting licenses to be used for voting but not student IDs. The scam is starting to run out. When it happens, what will the Republicans do to keep their clutches on power?
110
The 15th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits the federal and state governments from denying citizens the right to vote based on a citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude".
It was ratified in 1870 as the third and last of the Reconstruction Amendments.
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Kris Kobach and his Jim Crow Republicans refuse to recognize the 15th Amendment or the 1st Amendment since voting is a fundamental form of free speech.
It would be hard to be more unAmerican than Kris Kobach and his merry band of nationwide right-wing vote suppressors, but millions of fake Americans continue to cast their votes for these criminal political pirates.
Add in reduced polling places, reduced voting hours and limited voting machines in poor and minority neighborhoods vs. expanded polling places, expanded voting hours and an abundance of voting machines in milky white neighborhoods, and you've got tyranny of the white Republican minority.
https://goo.gl/9bnTv6
https://goo.gl/C7RGAv
Who hates democracy with a passion ?
Who hates America so much that they work full time to defeat democracy ?
Radical Republicans.....destroying democracy....and pretty much everything else.
D to go forward; R for reverse.
388
Thank you for pointing out there are more amendments than just the second. People can buy guns with fake names & don’t have to prove citizenship but a person can’t exercise their other rights.
5
Republicans make up fictitious voting threats to disfranchisement Americans citizens from voting while ignoring - even assisting - actual attacks against our democratic process by a longtime foreign enemy. And it is no coincidence that in both cases Republicans benefit.
Anti-Democratic and Anti-American - that about sums up the current Republican party.
105
The Republican Party leaders fear honest fair elections and thus do everything possible via their PAC's, hidden money, Mercer's, Koch's, et al, to ensure victory. How many Wikileaks harmed republican candidates? The national popular vote is out of their reach, thus gaming the electoral college system is paramount.
It has been a highly successful cynical Republican "long game" going back roughly 30 years to Lee Atwater on to Karl Rove, et al, right up to today's fraudsters like: Trump, McCONnell, Kobach, Bannon, Miller, Nix/Cambridge Analytical, et al...
Their tools include gerrymandering, restricted voting, blatant lies, etc. Last and definitely NOT least, virtually unlimited cash (thanks Citizens United). We all KNOW this. At least those of US who live in reality getting FACT based news from legitimate outlets. NOT fakebook, tweeter, Faux News, and myriad right wing bozo's on the web or cable.
The best hope we have in the short term (midterm elections) and then 2020, IS if all who didn't bother to exercise their right to vote GO out and VOTE -- preferably for Democrats! They may not be 100% perfect candidates or to your liking on every issue, but are GUARANTEED to be WAY better than the Republican status quo. (Unless of course, you are personally worth multi-millions to billions, or are a major polluting corporation, defense contractor, and such). Then Republicans have your (special) interests at heart. That and remaining in power.
VOTE Them OUT.
81
Make that forty years. The "War on Drugs" was mainly a plan to disrupt civil-rights and anti-war organizations and incarcerate black Americans and "hippies."
What is a shame to me is that we have to spend so much time and energy defending and protecting the country from Republicans instead of using that time and energy to solve real problems.
We are the richest industrial country on the planet GDP / capita.
We have parts of the country with infant mortality worse than Botswana.
We have poverty that the other countries don't have.
We have the highest incarceration rate in the world.
We do notably worse in education for the working class.
76
If fraudsters like kobach and walker (or any of the many in Texas) were really interested in eliminating the chance for fraud at the polls they would
spend the money on setting up a state id system over an extended time that would insure that every state citizen had the means of producing the needed
information. They would spend state resources canvassing all
neighborhoods so that those who are housebound or find transport
difficult would have no difficulty exhibiting citizenship. If it is that
important they would find the money to do so.
But since they are only using this issue as a never ending refrain to rally dollars from the extreme right funders and political support from the faithful nativist true believer core via faux news and talk radio recycling the story, the issue will never go away until either courts consistently
find their bills unconstitutional, or the majority supporting such
bills in state legislatures are voted out.
I'll believe it when I see either actually occur. In the meantime, don't be
surprised by kobach unilaterally declaring victory no matter the court decision,
while the boys on talk radio go on and on about federal courts
robbing states of their authority.
In the meantime, electoral security matters are overlooked, underfunded,
and neglected by the boys on talk radio, naturally.
27
Agreed. Gov. Walker's criminal malfeasance and arrogance on display in Wisconsin-(backed by nine Koch Brother PACs to test and refine their approach)--even went so far as to try to oust the state's independent ethics and elections chiefs. In the 2016 Walker succeeded in disenfranchising sufficient numbers of voters to give Trump a win despite the face WI hadn't voted for a Republican since 1984 and state polls showed Clinton with a significant lead with less than a week before the election. Between 12,000 and 23,000 registered voters in Madison and Milwaukee—and as many as 45,000 statewide—were deterred from voting due to an onerous voting ID law. “We have hard evidence there were tens of thousands of people who were unable to vote because of the voter ID law,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison political scientist Kenneth Mayer. Like Paul Ryan, Scott Walker takes his marching from the Koch Brothers--and it's harming the state.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/10/voter-suppression-may-have-...
http://www.electionprojection.com/latest-polls/wisconsin-presidential-po...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2015/02/18/scott-walker-c...
22
We have a census coming up. Can we somehow connect that activity to providing national IDs to citizens?
When local authorities refuse to administer the law, it doesn't matter that the courts are more strict about the truth than they are.
When judges are put in office to do the bidding of entities like the Kochtopus and the Mercers (Cambridge Analytica being a record example of the real "deep state" of wealth and power), it's not enough to have truth on your side.
We have to overwhelm this massive and wide-ranging vote cheating, and put honest authorities back in place, not only in safe places but across the land.
Cheating is not OK. There are no adults in the Republican authority room any more. I suspect the rank and file contain a few holdouts but many of them are leaving their party like Charlie Crist did.
Suppression, intimidation, manipulation, jail as the new Jim Crow, the list goes on and on. And it is staggering that voting machines results are still not reliable - thanks, one cannot help thinking, to the fact that the top echelons of the companies producing the machines are in bed with Republicans. This is not OK.
58
Susan:
Did you forget who controls all the weapons of war in America?
Whenever laws try to suppress or deny constitutional protections, courts should always - always - put the burden of proof on the state or the federal government to show conclusive proof of its reasons/assertions for trying to deny people's rights.
In the current case, the test would be quite simple: Kansas must show conclusively that there is demonstrable, significant citizenship-based voter fraud before being allowed to enact its strict voter ID law. While this may well be happening in the Kansas case (hopefully), courts can be inconsistent (and some judges have ideological biases), so it doesn't always work out that way. It should.
22
I do not really understand the objection to voter ID requirements. Obtaining an ID takes some preparation and effort. But not as much as it takes to becoming an informed voter. If someone will not go to this minimal effort, do we as a society really want that person to vote?
I understand that this comment will invite scorn, ridicule, and name-calling. But after this initial reaction, give it some thought. Do you really think that a person should be able to show up at the poll, give a name, and then vote without any confirmation of identity?
22
Not scorn, but puzzlement that you continue to ignore the vast evidence that cheating is going on, and how difficult it has become for many working-class voters to get IDs. Short hours, arcane requirements. That's not true everywhere, but all too often the poor, the elderly, and even veterans have trouble getting qualified to vote. Add to that short-notice disenfranchisement that people only find out about when they show up to vote. Check out CrossCheck, which has a terrible reputation. It may be that where you vote these problems don't exist (like where I vote), but there is a lot of evidence that some areas make it very difficult to get ID and to vote, and there is also intimidation.
26
Citizen,
From what I and many others have read and understood, it is not so much a problem with requiring voter ID as it is the sometimes nearly impossible task is it to obtain the ID. There are story after story about people having to go 100s of miles to obtain such ID, or having done same, finding that whoever is in charge refusing to accept the ID offered. In some states, ID costs $40, more, and many people in poverty cannot afford that. There are more examples. If it were as simple as providing some form of valid ID, that would be one thing. Invariably, these voter ID requirements affect people of color, those who are elderly and on their own, and people in poverty.
27
To Susan Anderson: You are correct, there is cheating, and it is not the kind that Kobach (and the American public) believe.
My dad served in the Big One. He died in 2009. He badly wanted to vote in 2008, but he was disabled by then, and no longer had a driver's license. He was in an assisted living facility. Whether he succeeded in obtaining the identification necessary to vote, I never will know.
OTOH, my career involves serving undocumented immigrants, and many are personal friends. I never have known a single one to have voted, or expressed the remotest desire to risk getting in trouble for doing so. Put simply, there is nothing farther from their minds.
I know there are a few instances of individuals who grew up in the U.S. and didn't understand that they weren't citizens or that they weren't allowed to vote. And I don't doubt that there are a few individuals who attempt this out of protest, or a sense of challenge. I'd be surprised if these totalled 100 a year, nationwide.
OTOH we all know there are many older citizens, mostly Af-Am but not all, who can't reasonably get birth certificates because they don't live in the state where they were born, maybe 60 - 80 years ago. In some cases, certificates may not exist for the time and place where they were born, or were not always made.
33
Don't complain that Kobach holds the position that he does; it could be much worse. There are a lot of federal judgeships open, and the Party of Lincoln's senators, who are in the majority, have not shown any willingness to deny Your and My President anything that he wants.
Pray for Justice Ginsburg's continued good health, and for Justice Kennedy to choose not to retire. Would Trump try to put Kobach there? Of course, I don't know.
29
There has to be some criminal penalty for denying citizens the vote. This is the real voter fraud, Kobach has to be held accountable. He he and the other Republican legislators who have an agenda of keeping Democrats from voting are remnants of the KKK, this what it did to Black voters for a century.
We need a new voter right law,. fortunately there are not too many people left who were born when birth certificates we not recorded at the state level. Unfortunately Republicans have shown themselves to be dishonest, they are making every effort to rig elections, they must be made to pay..
A fine for every qualified voter that was denied the right to vote should be high, it should cost those responsible, enough to make such behavior hurt.
In fact it should disqualify them from holding public office.
we can not have a free democracy when these kinds of people are allowed to decide who can or can not vote.
These are the people who should be in Club Fed, they are the most criminal element in society.
148
"Not too many people left who were born when birth certificates we not recorded at the state level." -- Still, only hundreds of thousands, by reasonable estimates, don't have adequate proof..
16
Had Pennsylvania applied Kobach’s ideas more effectively, Saccone would be headed for the House today. It is better to stop a thousand citizens from voting, says the GOP, than let one non-citizen vote. Let potential voters ‘swear or affirm’ that they are citizens, and let the exceedingly few non-citizens who vote (or the greater number of older GOP people who vote twice) be found and prosecuted.
36
Why do you concede anything to the corrupt political machine that is the GOP? That's what they want you to do --compromise with unjustifiable demands.
14
Kobach has been getting away with this for years and he really should be in jail, not in court trying to justify this sham. Just prior to the 2016 election, he was caught "red-handed" with a voters list by a local news team that turned to be primarily African-American in which he was matching up names that were the same in other states and although they were common in nature, he insisted, without any proof whatsoever, these were individuals whom had registered in multiple states, hence, in his opinion, they were illegal and removed from the local voters list he had in his hands.
When he was confronted by the local news reporter and on camera as to where was the proof of his unilateral actions, he just smirked and never responded. This is just another confirmation why ANY Federal Election should be under the control of an independent federal authority and federal common standards and strict monitoring in every state. If this isn't proof of corruption, I don't know what is.
Some of these states are playing too many games with the voting process which is decimating democracy.
213
Americans: We need to demand true election integrity, of the kind Kobach doesn't even have in his sights and is actively working against: We need paper ballots and paper receipts for every voter. The old scantron systems worked fine, and should be re-adopted everywhere.
Also: Thank you, ACLU, for pressing this case against Kobach. He is a fraud, through and through, and must be known as one.
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Excellent takedown of Kobach and the Republican strategy to restrict elibible Americans from voting. However, it carries less weight that a single featherlet of goose down with Trump's base.
24
Honesty and good intent must constitute some segment of a viable democracy. In the instance of Kris Kobach and his ilk that is clearly missing.
Should that trend continue we will assuredly have more administrations like the current one and American democracy, always a challenging goal to begin with, will slip beneath the waves.
My prediction? In the absence of civility we are certainly headed down a trail of tears to civil war.
28
Ironically the GOP, in trying to keep certain citizens from voting is actually hurting themselves. Some of these citizens would vote for them, not the Democrats. I do enjoy it when blind stupidity shoots itself in the foot.
30
These voter id laws merely represent the latest attempt to prevent ethnic minorities from voting, a campaign that dates back at least to the jim crow era in the south. In those days, state lawmakers relied on bogus literacy tests or poll taxes to deny suffrage to blacks. Today, in addition to the id laws, states use mass incarceration, which entraps primarily black and Hispanic Americans, to target minority voters. Only two states allow convicted felons to vote, and a number even deny the suffrage to those who have completed their sentences or make it difficult for them to recover that right.
The legitimacy of our constitutional system rests on the principle of the consent of the governed, and voting has become a vital method for citizens to register that consent. Throughout American history, however, there have been groups who sought to deny the suffrage to citizens whose interests clashed with their own.
The battle for a democratic society is never permanently won.
87
Let's face it. Between gerrymandering and and voter ID laws in the southern and western states the Republicans plan to control state governments, control the senate and have the magic number of electoral votes in the presidential election even though they don't get the majority vote. The 2016 election of Trump is a good example of this strategy.
66
The only way to combat this is to get out and vote. If they try and deny you the vote, holler, scream, and otherwise cause a major ruckus. Make them arrest you . Expose them for the un-American operatives that they are. Expose voter suppression wherever you find it...
1
Gee is it only a coincidence that the party pushing voter-ID laws to prevent voter fraud is the same party that can see no election interference by foreign countries and corporations? I guess it’s voter fraud no and election interference OK. Does this party by any chance take any stand on democracy in general? Could it's stance be - we only believe in it if we win.
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Under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure a judge may apply sanctions, including imposing fines, on a lawyer who brings a meritless case to court.
If the ACLU is the plaintiff, it is probably not possible for this judge to sanction Kobach as the defendant,
But the judge could inform Mr. Kobach that in the event that he brought a meritless case before this judge, sanctions (including fines payable by Mr. Kobach personally) would likely be imposed.
25
Joe, you need to look at FRCP 11 again. It applies to any claim or defense, asserted in a pleading signed by the attorney, which is not well founded in fact, not consistent with applicable law or a good faith argument for the modification or extension of existing law, or that has been propounded for an improper purpose, such as to impose unwarranted cost or delay on the Court or opposing parties.
The Rule is not limited to plaintiffs. Alas, however, while Rule 11 was applied rather often in the years immediately after its adoption, in my experience Rule 11 sanctions have become increasingly rare and the Rule has done little to prevent frivolous lawsuits, claims, defenses, motions and discovery.
16
chambolle:
I agree with your reading, but I think in this case, because Kobach is the D, he can argue that he is presenting data known to him. It is very thin, and hardly supports his position, but since he did not file the case, he is allowed to present a defense, as bad as it might be.
Now if HE brought the case, the shoe is on the other foot.
You are right that Rule 11 is rarely applied. It could certainly cut down a lot of frivolous suits (and hold down threatened suits that have little factual basis).
Kobach is like so many of these contemporary conservatives - driven by ideology rather than evidence.
The problem with the likes of Kobach (and the climate change deniers and supply side evangelists) is that an honest search for truth becomes impossible once you are convinced that you already have it.
And their faith in their right to rule is so firm that they are willing deprive others of their right to vote.
They deserve Trump - but the rest of us deserve better. 2018 and 2020 can't come soon enough.
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Kobach doesn't believe there is voter fraud any more than Rush believed that the Clinton's had Vince Foster murdered. The conspiracy garbage about Foster earned Rush two, ten year, $400,000,000 contracts. These people are the garbage!
5
A different topic but with a similar result of Republicans winning more elections than they should is Gerrymandering.
For the recent Alabama Senate election, Doug Jones won 50% to 48.3%.
If those same votes had been counted for the US House of Representatives, Republicans would have won six seats and Democrats one seat.
The finally got Pennsylvania. I hope they get Alabama next.
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The lesson from Pennsylvania is that the best path to stopping Republican gerrymandering is through state law. Vote for state legislators who will re-district, or be willing to see complaints through the state courts.
31
Doug Jones gained office because of widespread African-American citizen turnout. that was able to overturn efforts b Alabama Sec of State, John H. Merrill and the state Republicans to remove minority voters to an inactive list. Merrill mailed non-forwardable notices to registered voters in Alabama, asking voters to confirm their address. Anyone whose mailer was delivered but did not respond was moved to the inactive list. Alabama Republicans also 1) Aggressively redrew statehouse and U.S. House districts to forge enduring red supermajorities; 2) Closed dozens of state motor vehicle offices in so-called "black belt" counties, making it difficult to impossible for people to get newly required state IDs; 3) Added paper proof of citizenship as a registration requirement for state elections — a separate and unequal standard seen in only two other states; 4) Ran a campaign to purge legitimate voters from the rolls (Merrill's deal) and 5) Made it harder to verify votes in a recount. Fortunately legal cases, including those brought by the NAACP helped bring these shady voter suppression tactics to light. Ohio's similar campaign is before the SCOTUS.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/08/this-republican-candidate-ha...
https://www.salon.com/2017/12/01/how-the-gop-has-already-hijacked-the-al...
11
Elections have consequences. We now have a Supreme Court which is more interested in the rights of corporations and oligarchs than the rights of individual American citizens.
If you love your country, vote while you still can. We need to clean house starting with Congress (2018), then the Presidency. Please don't think that we can afford to wait until 2020...
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PJDI’m not sure this will wait for November. This weekend Trump got rid of McCabe. His next move will be on Rod Rosenstein so that he can appoint someone who will fire Mueller. In this regard there is little difference between this and the Saturday night massacre of Richard Nixon — except that Trump has a quiescent, supportive Congress that will NOT even attempt to impeach him. I’ll lay odds that these traitors to their oaths of office and to the Constitution, go on FOX to justify Trump’s actions.
1
Vote for any and all democrats. It doesn't matter if they are perfect in your eyes, vote for them. They can be trained once they get to Washington.
Vote like your life and the lives of your children depend on it. Because they do.
2
The consequences of the 2016 election were ordained and ordered by James Comey, Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange. The Supreme Court and Congress are both House of Lords for corrupt crony capitalist corporate plutocrat oligarchs.
See 'An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution' by Charles Beard
1
I live in a fairly affluent neighborhood in Southern California which strongly leans Republican on most issues. When it comes time to vote, I simply walk a few blocks to the neighborhood school which is set up to cast votes and am in and out in less than 10 minutes. Couldn't be easier.
If I were forced to travel and wait in long lines for hours (as is common in less affluent neighborhoods which tend to vote more blue), how often would it simply not be feasible for me to vote? Yes, I could mail in my ballot, but often the choice is determined in the last few days. Instead of a National Voting Holiday, are there other alternatives to reduce this type of barrier to voting (e.g., creating more voting locations)? Shouldn't our democracy be encouraging people to vote?
250
Even better: in WA we all vote by mail, except for a few who take their mail ballots to a box somewhere. This system is pretty much the opposite of the new voter regulations. No polls, and the postmark by election day is good enough to get your vote counted. We followed OR's lead to this inexpensive system that is hard to defraud or beat.
84
California has mail in voting. I fill out my ballot and stick two stamps on the envelope. I can sit and fill out the ballot as I read about the numerous propositions that appear every vote cycle. There is no problem with lines, times, or crowds.
26
Alas, even with voting by mail, a significant portion of the voting age public here in Washington neglects to vote. That's inexcusable.
2
NY Times, as part of your series on voting in America, I look forward to a piece on computerized election theft. There is a vast amount of statistical and pattern evidence from exit polls which indicates that votes are being shifted to the right. A handful of far right companies count our votes in secret on proprietary software. That’s undemocratic. We must return to counting ballots by hand at polling places on election night (before the chain of custody is broken), with observers of all interested parties present.
Mark Crispin Miller: Can U.S. Elections Really Be Stolen? Yes. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NxXKr2hKCz0
"Election theft in the United States involves an enormous one/two punch. One of these steps is permissible to talk about. The other is dismissed as conspiracy theory. Step one, and this is permissible to talk about, involves shrinking the pool of eligible voters. The second step, the crucial step in a way, the very precise step, the one we're not allowed to talk about is computerized election fraud. So once you have limited the pool of eligible voters then you are able through computerized voting machines to fiddle with the numbers from precinct to precinct. The system is both computerized and privatized. Private companies tell us what the vote is. And we have no way to check it. We have no way to tell if it's honest. That’s the real danger here."
#DemocracyDemandsTransparentVoteCounting
#SayNoToFaithBasedVoting
217
Jonathan Simon: How Much Faith Do You Have in the Vote Counting Process? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TY6FCsVWGlM
More interviews: http://codered2014.com/. While there is some overlap you will learn new information from each one. Simon is the author of "Code Red: Computerized Election Theft and the New American Century."
Exit polls are the international gold standard. Our State Department uses exit polls to verify elections in other countries. A discrepancy above 2% raises a red flag and an investigation and recount follow. As a result, elections have been overturned in Ukraine, Serbia, and Georgia.
Why exit polls matter:
https://tinyurl.com/hkwvxts
Josh Mitteldorf: Intro to Election Theft in America (part 1 of 4)
https://tinyurl.com/yanc473c
"Are votes in American elections being counted fairly and accurately? In an open democracy worthy of the name, this should not be a question for forensic science. The U.S. is unique in the developed world in counting votes with proprietary software that has been ruled a trade secret, not open to inspection, even by local officials whose responsibility it is to administer elections.
"There is stiff resistance to looking at the ballots with human eyes So we are left looking at statistics and anecdotes, trying to determine whether vote counts are honest and reliable. The evidence does not inspire confidence. But whatever you think of the evidence, there is no justification for a system without the possibility of public verification."
66
Let me just copy part of my reply to a similar comment in response to the NYT article 'The Myth of the Hacker-Proof Voting Machine', published Feb. 21, 2018:
"What's the argument against paper ballots without any optical scanning, that is, read the old-fashioned way by hand at the polling location by election workers? Try that it's hard enough to find poll workers who will spend 13 hours or more (minimum 14 hours where I work) working the election with voting machines or optical scanners and paper ballots. Add in the extra hours to count ballots by hand and you would be looking at an extreme poll worker shortage.
Working the polls is not the hardest thing in the world, but it is not a bowl of cherries either. Almost everybody who does it in my county is doing it out of a sense of civic responsibility, not for the whopping $160 or so we get for the day's work and the required 2 hours of training.
I have worked an election that involved hand counting ballots where there were about 10 races. We had pitiful turnout for that election of only about 50 voters. It still took about an hour to count those ballots because it is very easy to miscount, requiring going back and recounting. Just imagine how much fun that would be for 400 ballots, after already working 14 hours before counting."
There was more, but I need to limit this to 1500 characters.
6
Sonia,
Other democracies manage to count their ballots by hand. I’m certain that more people would volunteer if we bring back transparency to our election process. Election integrity advocate Jonathan Simon said that he has spent 11 days on jury duty. He says that if people were required to do the same for our elections they would only need to serve 4 hours over their lifetime.
Our number 1 priority should be making sure our election results reflect the will of the people. The details on how to handle election day can always be worked out
12
"In his eight years as secretary of state, he has secured a total of nine convictions, only one of which was for illegal voting by a noncitizen; most were for double-voting by older Republican men.
That's rich. I love it when liars get caught open-mouthed.
Voter ID laws--what I simply call the plan to suppress the vote--should be called out for what it is: a naked power grab.
It's stacking the deck for your party (note it's only the GOP who's obsessed with denying voters their universal franchise). It's, when you think of it, downright theft.
I think we should give voter ID campaigns a new name: "rig the vote" schemes.
It feels as if finally courts are catching on to the GOP's more egregious tactics to fix results for their party: voter ID laws, gerrymandering, and minority neighborhood new voting rules and hours legislation designed to make it nearly impossible for some voters to get to the polls.
I hope the next article the Board writes in this series deals with the need to bring voting rules up into the 21st century: different forms of voting (by phone or mail), extended early voting, weekend voting, even a national voting holiday to ensure shift workers don't have to choose between their paychecks and voting.
451
Automatic voter registration. States know who files income taxes, who pays property taxes, who pays into or receives Social Security, who has a driver's license and/or owns and registers any kind of motor vehicle, who uses health care. Also, who is ineligible to vote because of being incarcerated. If they want to, states can compile a comprehensive voter database. Some states obviously would rather prevent legitimate voters from voting, though. Kobach is a fraud.
21
I agree with your ideas for bringing voting rules into the 21st century, and especially this last one,
...even a national voting holiday to ensure shift workers don't have to choose between their paychecks and voting.
My employer has always made Election Day a paid holiday. It is fun! You vote early in the day and then you have the whole day to putter around, go for a long walk, and meet with friends. Voting Holiday 2018!
22
The courts do appear, in some places to be "catching on to the GOP's more egregious tactics to fix results for their party". Which explains the trump supporters rush to put right-wing political hacks in lifetime judge appointments all over the country.
And the corruption marches on...
19
"...political scientist, Jesse Richman testified that up to 18,000 noncitizens have registered or tried to register in Kansas"
I guess Mr. Richman gets a pass on making false and misleading statements in testimony under oath in a court case.
His reputation has already been trashed by Trump, who Richman argues has falsely cited his study as evidence that 3 million illegal votes were cast for Clinton in 2016. And reputation matters in the academic world, as opposed to the Presidency, where you can do anything.
Glad to hear that this case made it out of the political arena and into the court. Eventually the same will happen with illegal and politically motivated actions by EPA and Interior Secretaries to overturn rules to protect the environment, public health, land and waterways.
93
Can we afford to wait till “eventually” arrives?
How much irreparable damage will be caused in the interim?
1
Between 2000 and 2015, more than a billion votes were cast in all federal, state, and local elections. Among those billion votes, less than 12 people voted in person with the wrong id's. If the stats remained the same, that means in 2016, out of more than 130 million votes cast, 2 or 3 people may have voted improperly. In 2016, 10,000,000+ potential voters were inconvenienced by laws past by Republicans to make sure those 2 or 3 did not vote.
Rest assured that if it was easy to register and to stay registered and easy to vote -- less than 5 minutes in majority Democratic controlled precincts within Republican suburban counties instead of over 2 hours as ii was in MI, OH, PA, and WI -- Hillary Clinton would have won the electoral college as well as the popular vote.
252
Every last vote counts. Conor Lamb won a House seat by several hundred votes. Trump won the Electoral Collage by 77,000 votes in three swing states, a fraction of the total (set aside how clearly the popular vote went).
Republicans would rather disenfranchise citizens than appeal to a broader demographic. No wonder Kobach spoke of screening surnames.
We have to fight every voter suppression effort, tooth and nail. Power goes to the undeserving when our voices are muffled.
877
Agreed. Worth repeating, the GOP has worked hard to enshrine one party rule and limit Democrats winning seats. Tactics have included: 1-Pass Citizen's United to gain unfettered access to dark money; 2-Flood state races to pick-up seats. gerrymander districts and cut regulation, A.L.E.C. style; 3-Purge 1.1+M minority voters from voter rolls in GOP-controlled states ("Crosscheck", Kevin Kobach); 4-Gut the Voting Rights Act and pass onerous voter ID rules targeting poor, elderly, African Americans, Hispanic voters; 5-Close tens of thousands of polling sites in Democrat-leaning districts and reduce voting poll hrs & days; 6-Practice outright voter intimidation and vote caging; 7-Underfund Democratic-leaning districts and install broken, non-functioning and fewer machines; 8-Use voting machine software that can be hacked to flip & lose votes; 9-Shunt voters to provisional ballots (with no proof votes will be counted) or to the wrong places to vote; 10-Legalize methods to prevent votes from being tracked, fail to secure votes, keep counting methods secret; 11-Employ expensive law suits to contest a recount/results in court; 12-Suppress news of Russian influence via targeted ads, social media, fake stories; 12-Fail to fund a forensic investigation into Russian hacking into vote machine/count software or secure the integrity of our our vote. All of the above were documented in the 2016 election. Without voting integrity, the will of the majority is effectively nullified.
35
NM, the sad thing about all of this is Americans have been sounding the alarm about what the republicans and Kobach have been up to for years but those that were not effect did nothing.
They pretty much said, "it if does not effect me it does not matter".
Well November 2016 did effect them in a very big way.
Gerrymandering, Voter Suppression, lies, cheating and stealing effects all of us in the end.
11
Trump & his authoritarians pose an imminent threat to our democracy. We need a blue wave to support Mueller's investigation & prosecution of authoritarians who would steal our democracy.
10
It is clear that the modern American crusade against voter fraud is NOT, as claimed, propelled by faith. This is what its proponents claim, but the real motivation is to suppress the vote of people who may not vote for Republicans.
498
"Can U.S. Elections Really Be Stolen? Yes." Professor Crispin explains how.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NxXKr2hKCz0
"How to Rig an Election"
https://harpers.org/archive/2012/11/how-to-rig-an-election
8
Voter fraud can be important. The most famous recent case was in 1960 when voter fraud helped JFK win Illinois. And under the rule of law, courts have shown substantial deference to laws trying to protect the voting process for many reasons. But there comes a time when Judges have to apply a more exacting test. Statistics and human ingenuity (perversity) have enabled those seeking to discriminate against minority groups to do so in more effective and seemingly more neutral ways. The law and the courts will have to change to address this dangerous threat.
9
Myth. The Washington Post did a great article about this and the county and the state results during that 1960 election in Illinois. Based on the demographics of 40% of the constituents were Catholic and 30% or black, Kennedy won the votes that he should have.
The other big Takeaway was that even if JFK had lost Illinois he still would’ve won the election.
157
Not only has the Washington Post debunked this Chicago fraud claim, but also before that several noted that even if the claim had been true JFK would still have won more actual Illinois votes. The rural Republican precincts in Illinois in 1960 were themselves the sources of fraudulent ballots. Maybe there were no more than a few fake Nixon votes per rural precinct, but there were a lot of rural precincts.
73
The most egregious act of all is this one, "The Supreme Court upheld the first voter-ID law it considered, in 2008, even though the Indiana lawmakers who passed it had not identified a single case of fraud that the law would have prevented."
OUR U.S. Supreme Court found against WE THE PEOPLE.
WE must DEMAND a Constitutional Amendment that clearly takes OUR justice system and courts at all levels out of the hands of politicians and money.
OUR court system is all that stands between WE THE PEOPLE and dictators.
592
The Supreme Court, starting in 2000, has shown us that politics drives its decisions not jurisprudence.
18
Unfortunately all too many judges, including SCOTUS justices, are appointed by politicians. And one of our major political parties is obviously corrupt; perhaps under the influence of a foreign dictator; and finally is anti-democracy.
The Constitution does not envision such a situation. The idea of so many traitors is so appalling as to nearly be unbelievable but here we are.
Exhibit A: Mitch McConnell, who refused to do his Constitutional duty and thus bequeathed SCOTUS to the far right.
That is shameful and it's frightening.
16
You know, the supremes were given lifetime appointments to prevent them from having allegiance to party or patron. We see how well that worked out in this age of hefty "speaker's" fees at Koch-created and funded "conventions" or weekend hunting trips at the estates of wealthy patrons. Those boys know which side their bread is buttered on. Do they care about the appearance of corruption? Doesn't bother them in the least! Welcome to Ameristan, a Russian satellite.
13