Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has been everywhere lately, being promoted for his expertise in the field of voter rights in our nation. Last week, February 7, Kobach presented his plan for dual-track voting in Kansas — a method where you may have to register twice in order to vote in state and local elections.
Kobach, who in that forum cited “incredible” voter fraud, failed to come through with the statistics. Instead he presented possibilities. “There are a large number of races in Kansas that are decided by one vote,” Kobach argued, saying that the wrong one vote could tilt elections and cause immense harm to the election process.
Rather than provide my pre-written testimony, I offered a counterpoint to Sec. of State Kobach — I was an individual who won a race in Kansas by 1 vote. I voted for myself. The concept that there was a push by those not allowed to vote to take over school boards or precinct positions was laughable on face value.
I had assumed that committee meeting, which we felt went negatively for the Secretary, would be the end of it. But, then Trump jumped in.
Kobach took turns going through the national media this week, regurgitating his claims about widespread voter fraud. When asked the same questions about voter fraud by members of the major media, the same answers developed; that is to say, no answers of any systemic fraud.
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He played the snippet from ABC in which Miller said to seek out Kobach for evidence. “We have Kris Kobach here, the Kansas secretary of state, who says he does have proof of widespread voter fraud,” Cavuto then said. “Give me the proof.”
Kobach did not give him the proof.
“So there’s different kinds of voter fraud,” he said. “The kind that Stephen Miller was talking about was people who are registered in more than one state and who cast double votes. They live in Massachusetts and go vote in New Hampshire. … About 3 million people are registered in more than one state. It’s no crime to be registered in more than one state. But it is a crime if you actually try to vote in two votes. But every year, thousands of people do vote in more than one state.”
It’s not clear that’s true. There certainly are not thousands of people arrested for voting multiple times each year. Often, as the Brennan Center for Justice has found, apparent cases of double-voting are actually mistakes in how votes were recorded or confusing people with similar names who are registered in different states.
Kansans, who’ve become desensitized to the latest claims by Secretary of State Kobach, could have told the national media this is how the conversation would go. In fact, several of us have for years. Whether it was avoiding contempt charges, crafting racist laws in other states, or just dodging paying taxes, we’ve spent years following the career of the elected official who seemingly always gets it wrong.
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