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Kris Kobach and Kansas Voter ID Saga

Tsukasa Buddha

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Tsukasa Buddha
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Sep 10, 2006
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For background, Kris Kobach is the Kansas Secretary of State, currently running for governor, and was at one time vice-chairman of Trump's voter fraud commission.

On Monday:

Kansas cannot require people to prove their U.S. citizenship before they can vote, a federal judge says, ruling that the state's election law is unconstitutional. The judge sharply criticized Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has based much of his political career on worries about voter fraud.

Chief District Judge Julie A. Robinson sanctioned Kobach — who led President Trump's voter fraud commission — by ordering him to take a legal class on the rules of evidence or procedure. Kobach represented his office and was the lead attorney in the case.
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Linky.

Today:

Kansas officials are continuing to enforce a proof of citizenship law that a federal judge recently deemed unconstitutional.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reported Wednesday that staff for Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has directed county clerks to continue requiring voters to present documentary proof of citizenship.

One county clerk said she was instructed to continue enforcing the policy "as we have been."

Danedri Herbert, a spokeswoman for Kobach, told the news outlet that state officials still need time to fully understand the court’s ruling on the law. She argued that the judge did not provide a clear timeline for when Kobach had to instruct county clerks to implement the policy.

“I think ‘immediately’ is kind of open to interpretation,” she told the Capital-Journal.
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Linky.
 
If they can figure out a way to do it without denying the rights of the majority of people in the state, have at it. As it stands, this is just a glaring example of the right's desire to punish as many brown people as possible for the imagined sins of the few.
 
Kansas officials are continuing to enforce a proof of citizenship law that a federal judge recently deemed unconstitutional.
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Ah republicans... the party of law and order. Well, some laws anyways.
 
Segnosaur said:
Ah republicans... the party of law and order. Well, some laws anyways.
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Exactly law and order the courts shouldn't have any say on things like that. The only amendment the court should ever concern itself with protecting is the second.
 
Enforce the law and press charges on Kobach for comtempt. How about those laws and orders?
 
theprestige said:
What's the point of qualifying voting rights, if you can't actually check a voter's qualifications?
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If that were the case, they wouldn't be worried about voter fraud. They'd be far more concerned about clerical issues.

In the court it was revealed that they had 67 cases of "voter fraud" identified in 19 years. Most were clerical errors, such as people getting automatically registered to vote when they got their driver's license, although they shouldn't have been. There were even cases where the person told the clerk not to register them to vote, and they had it done, anyway. You know, clerical errors.

Meanwhile, it was also shown in court that there are more than 100 people on the voting registers who have birthdates listed before 1900. Oh, those just haven't been removed, right? But there are like 400 people who's listed birthdates are AFTER the date they registered. Now THAT'S some serious voter fraud! Registering to vote before you are even born!

Kobach argued that the small number of fraud cases were just the tip of the iceberg, and couldn't support it. The defense argued that it is nothing but random clerical error, and that the cost of voter suppression is not warranted. Who has the case here? It wasn't even close.

And, as punishment, the judge ordered Kobach to undergo 6 hours of education on the rules of evidence. He was the lead attorney for the state, and the judge's response is to order remediation because he doesn't know what he's doing.

The entire case is a joke, put up by clowns. And it got treated that way.
 
NoahFence said:
If they can figure out a way to do it without denying the rights of the majority of people in the state, have at it. As it stands, this is just a glaring example of the right's desire to punish as many brown people as possible for the imagined sins of the few.
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No, "punishment" is just the fig leaf - the goal is same as always, to oppress nonwhite people in order to enrich particular white people.

ANd the ones who aren't enriched? Well, they get the salve of being "better" than the darkies somehow. God's blessing, their DNA, their skull shapes, whatever. Lot of white folks in the 50s-70s preferred to stay sweaty and ignorant, than to share pools or schools with black people.
 
theprestige said:
If you don't know that they're citizens, you can't say that their rights are being denied.
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OK. I'll say this slowly.


These policies punish the vast majority of legitimate voters because of the minority of people who may vote illegally.

The ACTUAL ( not stated ) reasons of these policies are to prevent brown and black people from voting.

There simply doesn't exist a way to get it through the thick skulls of people like Kobach that we know what he's doing.
 
NoahFence said:
The ACTUAL ( not stated ) reasons of these policies are to prevent brown and black people from voting..
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And the reason we know that is because the STATED reasons of these policies don't hold up. Kobach had the opportunity in court to provide a justification for why it had to be done. What he did claim didn't hold up. So if not that reason, what reason could it be?
 
If people who can't prove they are citizens can't vote it isn't a problem. Of course, those people affected will have a lot of other problems they have to deal with from not having I.D., but they aren't our problems.
 
theprestige said:
How do you know they're legitimate?
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Damned if I know.

See, the thing is, every American citizen is legitimate, save the few cases where they're in jail or whatever. (is that still the case?)

Anyway, you assume they're legitimate. You search for and punish those that aren't. You figure out how to search for and punish those that aren't without removing the rights of those who are.
 
BrooklynBaby said:
If people who can't prove they are citizens can't vote it isn't a problem. Of course, those people affected will have a lot of other problems they have to deal with from not having I.D., but they aren't our problems.
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Many people don't have the required ID for legitimate reasons. Not everyone has a drivers license (if you don't have a car, its an added expense you may not need). If you don't travel internationally you probably don't have a passport. People born in the U.S. won't have naturalization papers. And while you would expect most people to have birth certificates, sometimes people end up homeless, or they may be students who leave their birth certificate at home while attending school.

Requirements that people prove their citizenship affect the poor (since they are less likely to have the required ID) more than they affect the wealthy (who are more likely to have a driver's license/passport).
 
BrooklynBaby said:
If people who can't prove they are citizens can't vote it isn't a problem. Of course, those people affected will have a lot of other problems they have to deal with from not having I.D., but they aren't our problems.
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IMO, it's up to the gov't to prove I am not eligible to vote rather than my job to prove that I am.
 
Segnosaur said:
Many people don't have the required ID for legitimate reasons. Not everyone has a drivers license (if you don't have a car, its an added expense you may not need). If you don't travel internationally you probably don't have a passport. People born in the U.S. won't have naturalization papers. And while you would expect most people to have birth certificates, sometimes people end up homeless, or they may be students who leave their birth certificate at home while attending school.

Requirements that people prove their citizenship affect the poor (since they are less likely to have the required ID) more than they affect the wealthy (who are more likely to have a driver's license/passport).
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This is a theory (which usually includes the elderly), but as far as I know there are no facts to support it. The theory presumes that poor people are stupid, which simply is not true. I actually know a lot of poor people, and they all have ID because it is pretty much impossible to function in this society without it. The idea that people spend their whole lives without ID because they have never had enough money to get a copy of their birth certificate is just silly and based on nothing.
 
BrooklynBaby said:
This is a theory (which usually includes the elderly), but as far as I know there are no facts to support it. The theory presumes that poor people are stupid, which simply is not true. I actually know a lot of poor people, and they all have ID because it is pretty much impossible to function in this society without it. The idea that people spend their whole lives without ID because they have never had enough money to get a copy of their birth certificate is just silly and based on nothing.
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It probably is rare. Maybe very rare. Maybe one in 100,000 people. Maybe one in a million. I don't know.

And yet, I'm willing to bet there are at least ten times more people without ID in Kansas in any given year than there are fraudulent votes.
 
BrooklynBaby said:
This is a theory (which usually includes the elderly), but as far as I know there are no facts to support it. The theory presumes that poor people are stupid, which simply is not true.
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It assumes no such thing.

BrooklynBaby said:
I actually know a lot of poor people, and they all have ID because it is pretty much impossible to function in this society without it. The idea that people spend their whole lives without ID because they have never had enough money to get a copy of their birth certificate is just silly and based on nothing.
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Short sighted conclusion based on your personal anecdotes.

For the record, a lot of elderly poor have no birth certificates, they were born at home. And there is a larger proportion of blacks in that group.

The Atlantic: How Voter ID Laws Are Being Used to Disenfranchise Minorities and the Poor

In addition, in case you haven't heard, not everyone drives so everyone doesn't have a driver's license. A lot of the voter ID laws required only a driver's license or an official ID from the DMV was acceptable. They they closed all but a few DMV offices making it very difficult for people with no transportation and/or no time off work to get to those offices.
Texas has no driver's license offices in almost a third of the state's counties. Meanwhile, close to 15 percent of Hispanic Texans living in counties without driver's license offices don't have ID. A little less than a quarter of driver's license offices have extended hours, which would make it tough for many working voters to find a place and time to acquire the IDs. Despite this, the Texas legislature struck an amendment that would have reimbursed low-income voters for travel expenses when going to apply for a voter ID, and killed another that would have required offices to remain open until 7:00 p.m. or later on just one weekday, and four or more hours at least two weekends.
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As for no documentation, here are some facts:
The Republican lawmakers who are leading the fight for the restrictive legislation say they are doing so in the name of stopping election fraud -- and, really, who's in favor of election fraud? But the larger purpose and effect of the laws is to disenfranchise Hispanic voters, other minorities, and the poor -- most of whom, let's also be clear, vote for Democrats....

Federal lawyers wrote:

[W]e conclude that the total number of registered voters who lack a driver's license or personal identification card issued by DPS could range from 603,892 to 795,955. The disparity between the percentages of Hispanics and non-Hispanics who lack these forms of identification ranges from 46.5 to 120.0 percent. That is, according to the state's own data, a Hispanic registered voter is at least 46.5 percent, and potentially 120.0 percent, more likely than a non-Hispanic registered voter to lack this identification. Even using the data most favorable to the state, Hispanics disproportionately lack either a driver's license or a personal identification card issued by DPS, and that disparity is statistically significant.
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There's a reason for this judicial ruling: Newsweek: Voter ID laws are discriminatory efforts to disenfranchise ...
Two federal rulings issued this week strike at the core of states' voter identification laws, judging at least two states' efforts to allegedly combat voter fraud were thinly veiled attempts to disenfranchise the poor and minorities.
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How many voters were disenfranchised by Texas’ ID law?
Around 600,000 registered Texas voters don’t have one of the limited forms of ID that the law allows, according to evidence presented in the legal challenge to the law, which was brought by civil rights groups and the Justice Department. The state did almost nothing to challenge that assessment. That means there’s no doubt whatsoever that the law disenfranchised legitimate voters.
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BrooklynBaby said:
Requirements that people prove their citizenship affect the poor (since they are less likely to have the required ID) more than they affect the wealthy (who are more likely to have a driver's license/passport).
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This is a theory (which usually includes the elderly), but as far as I know there are no facts to support it. The theory presumes that poor people are stupid, which simply is not true.
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Glad to see you agree that poor people aren't stupid. Because THAT'S NOT WHAT I CLAIMED TO BEGIN WITH.

I said that poor people often don't have
1) the resources (if you're working a minimum wage job you may not have the $100 to spend on a passport, or the money to spend on a driver's license)
or
2) the NEED for such ID (if you don't have a car, why spend the money to get a driver's license? If you don't travel internationally why spend the money to get a passport?)

If you're wealthy, you'll probably have one or both of those IDs because you need it for your regular activities.

Not once in there did I mention a lack of intelligence as a reason they don't have ID.

I actually know a lot of poor people, and they all have ID because it is pretty much impossible to function in this society without it.
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The fact that you know people who have ID to function does not mean that all such people are in the same situation.
The idea that people spend their whole lives without ID because they have never had enough money to get a copy of their birth certificate is just silly and based on nothing.
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As others have pointed out, some people were born at home so they may not have a birth certificate. Others may have lost it for various reasons outside of their control (house fire, theft, etc.) And if its lost, replacing it may be an added expense that you will find hard to justify if you are on a tight budget.
 
Dr. Keith said:
Indeed, that number was in the back of my head.

Any hard numbers on citizens in Kansas without proof of citizenship?
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This is what Kobach was able to prove:

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a longtime proponent of voter suppression efforts, argued before state lawmakers that his office needed special power to prosecute voter fraud, because he knew of 100 such cases in his state. After being granted these powers, he has brought six such cases, of which only four have been successful. The secretary has also testified about his review of 84 million votes cast in 22 states, which yielded 14 instances of fraud referred for prosecution, which amounts to a 0.00000017 percent fraud rate.
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This is some exceptionally transparent BS designed to disenfranchise voters.
 
BrooklynBaby said:
If people who can't prove they are citizens can't vote it isn't a problem. Of course, those people affected will have a lot of other problems they have to deal with from not having I.D., but they aren't our problems.
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How about a good old poll tax!
 
uke2se said:
Enforce the law and press charges on Kobach for comtempt. How about those laws and orders?
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Kobach's got nothing to lose. He's got the street cred (well, country club cred) with Donnie Johnny and if he gets charged with contempt, DJT will just pull another pardon out of his derriere. Like Don Corleone, Don Don takes care of his own.
 
NoahFence said:
OK. I'll say this slowly.


These policies punish the vast majority of legitimate voters because of the minority of people who may vote illegally.

The ACTUAL ( not stated ) reasons of these policies are to prevent brown and black people from voting.

There simply doesn't exist a way to get it through the thick skulls of people like Kobach that we know what he's doing.
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He doesn't care that we know what he's doing. he doesn't care about justice or following the court ruling. All he cares about is pleasing his voter base, who approve of his actions, and thereby getting elected governor, which, sadly, he probably will achieve.
 
shemp said:
He doesn't care that we know what he's doing. he doesn't care about justice or following the court ruling. All he cares about is pleasing his voter base, who approve of his actions, and thereby getting elected governor, which, sadly, he probably will achieve.
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Not following a federal judge's order is what got Arpaio convicted.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
It's more than 10 times that and I did post hard numbers. See post # 20 above.
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I didn't seen a number for Pensylvania. But let's use the Texas numbers of people without handy proof of citizenship. Has anybody dug into that, and seen how many ARE citizens? And how many are exactly the illegals the laws were meant to affect?
 
slyjoe said:
I might consider an intelligence test. It would cut down on the number of Fox viewers voting.
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Disenfranchising Democrats: bad.
Disenfranchising Republicans: good.

Extra irony: in actual practice, an intelligence test would disproportionately impact poor minority voters.
 
Conservatives are trying to legislate the case in here even though Kobach, with all of his resources, was unable to prove the case. This is just another example that they see the world as they think it should work instead of how the world actually is.
 
Ziggurat said:
Disenfranchising Democrats: bad.
Disenfranchising Republicans: good.

Extra irony: in actual practice, an intelligence test would disproportionately impact poor minority voters.
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Once slyjoe proposes a bill, we'll cross that line.
 
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