Kansas Republicans can give authority and they can take it away. After demands by Secretary of State Kris Kobach to extend prosecutorial power to the Secretary of State’s office, it took only four years and a failure to show large amounts of prosecutorial crimes, Attorney General Derek Schmidt has called on the legislature to take those powers away. From the Lawrence Journal World:
Kansas’ attorney general proposed Friday that legislators should strip the secretary of state’s office of its power to prosecute voter fraud cases, less than four years after lawmakers made conservative Republican Kris Kobach the nation’s only state elections chief with such authority.
Attorney General Derek Schmidt outlined his proposal just 10 days after Kobach lost the Kansas governor’s race.
Secretary of State-elect Scott Schwab, a Republican like Schmidt, endorsed the proposal, as did Democratic Gov.-elect Laura Kelly and the Kansas Senate’s top Democrat. Lawmakers would consider the measure when their next annual session convenes in January.
The story shows a true act of bipartisanship.. in rejecting Kris Kobach’s ridiculous failure of a plan to use the Secretary of State’s office to prosecute supposed crime.
With support from the Republican Secretary of State and Republican Attorney General, it appears a bipartisan agreement can be reached on one major issue: Kris Kobach was wrong.