When Kobach employs these proxies as proof of voter fraud, though, he is implicitly suggesting that changes need to be made to the voting system to protect its integrity, such as ensuring that the same name never turns up on multiple registries and voters never use out-of-state licenses at the polls. But those irregularities exist because of the fundamental American values the commission is dedicated to protecting: You can’t easily and swiftly clean up registry errors without disenfranchising millions of voters. And you can’t set up a uniform, nationalized voter registry in a country whose founding values are based on limited federal control.
The problem with proxies is that they do more to demonstrate the complex nature of American values than they do to prove our elections are rigged.