Bryan Lowry, Kobach’s voter prosecutions draw scrutiny to proof-of-citzenship requirement:
Kansas’ proof-of-citizenship law would have done nothing to prevent the type of voter fraud Secretary of State Kris Kobach alleges three people committed in recent elections.
Kobach’s office announced three prosecutions last week of people he says double voted – casting ballots in more than one jurisdiction – after the Legislature and Gov. Sam Brownback granted him prosecutorial power earlier this year. Kobach is the only secretary of state in the nation with such authority.
The misdemeanor charges against a pair of Republican voters in Johnson County and a felony case against a Sherman County man, whom Kobach calls a serial double voter, come after several years of Kobach warning of the threat of voter fraud to Kansas elections and pushing for stricter voting laws.
Kobach’s critics have argued, with a strong dose of derision, that the fact that he has filed only three cases is proof that the threat of voter fraud has been overstated. But Kobach has said that he plans to file more cases over the next two months.
“If this is why we have been through six years of this to find three people … then it tells me that our secretary of state has been jousting at windmills for the past six years for his own political advantage,” said Rep. John Carmichael, D-Wichita, one of Kobach’s most outspoken opponents in the Legislature.
Kobach said that “there will never be enough prosecutions” to sway his critics about the need for stricter voting laws.
“If we prosecuted, you know, 30 cases this month they would still say that’s not enough voter fraud to worry about,” Kobach said. “They’re never going to be persuaded, nor am I going to try to persuade them.
“I think most people realize that one case of voter fraud is too many.”
But Kobach’s critics have also noted that the three people charged with voter fraud don’t exactly fit the image of a voter fraudster that conservative Republicans have conjured up in recent years.
These weren’t immigrants looking to vote despite their lack of citizenship. These were people with property in more than one state who allegedly cast votes in both states….
Hasen said that voter fraud does happen, but it’s extremely rare, and he said when it does happen it’s usually not by noncitizens.
“There’s a group of people who I call the ‘fraudulent fraud squad’ who gin up all kinds of talk of voter fraud being an epidemic, but then when you get down to it you find that the kind of fraud that happens is not the kind of fraud that’s targeted by the laws that these people tend to support,” Hasen said. “And I put Kobach in that camp.”
Carmichael, an attorney, raised concern about the fact that Kobach is now in charge of both administering elections and prosecuting election crimes, arguing that it creates a conflict of interest.
Rep. Mark Kahrs, R-Wichita, who is also an attorney and backed the decision to give Kobach the power, said that some county attorneys “have bigger fish to fry,” which has left many of these election violations unprosecuted over time.
Giving the secretary of state the power to prosecute ensures that the law will be enforced, he argued.
“To me as a lawyer and as a legislator is just made sense,” Kahrs said. “The Secretary of State’s Office, they’re the subject matter experts on election law.”
Hasen said that many people who vote illegally do so unwittingly, and if Wilson genuinely did think that he was not breaking the law than a felony charge might not be appropriate.
“Kobach’s incentive of course is too make as much political hay as possible because he’s essentially a huckster trying to sell the public on a belief that voter fraud’s an epidemic when it’s a very rare problem,” he said.