Frank Wilkinson for Bloomberg View:

At any point in the past decade, Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer could’ve said something. When Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was engineering ways to suppress votes, and repeating false claims about voter fraud, Colyer could’ve piped up.

Colyer could’ve pointed out that Kobach, his opponent in the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary, has never produced evidence to back his shameless claims. He could’ve noted that, during Kobach’s almost eight years as secretary of state, his total number of convictions for voter fraud can be counted on the fingers of his two hands — including the wealthy Republicans prosecuted for voting in two states where they owned houses.

At a trial earlier this year, Kobach’s claims of spectacular voter fraud were reduced to this: In a state where 1.8 million voters have cast millions of votes over the past 18 years, the grand total of noncitizen voters amounted to … 11. Likewise, Kobach’s leadership role in President Donald Trump’s voter-fraud commission blew up when the commission was disbanded without producing any evidence to justify Trump’s claims of millions of instances of voter fraud.