Democrats and liberal groups rejoiced over the commission’s demise Wednesday, but in an interview with POLITICO Wednesday night, Kobach said that exuberance is misplaced.
“Anyone on the left needs to realize that by throwing the food in the air, they just lost a seat at the table,” Kobach said.
The Kansas official said he expects officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and political appointees overseeing that agency to take over the commission’s work and begin efforts to match state voter rolls to federal databases of noncitizens. He insisted he was not disappointed with the president’s decision.
“It’s the right move,” Kobach said. “It’s a shifting in tactics from having the investigation be done by a federal commission to having it be done by a federal agency. The agency has a greater ability to move quickly to get the investigation done.”
Kobach acknowledged that ICE has little expertise in other types of potential voter fraud, such as multiple voting or voting by felons who’ve been disenfranchised, but he noted DHS has a broad mandate to address election security issues as critical U.S. infrastructure.
I’m skeptical, for reasons I’ll be explaining in a piece posting soon.