TOPEKA, Kan. - On April 18th Governor Sam Brownback signed the SAFE Act, (Secure and Fair Elections Act) into law. Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who won an election last fall by creating the illusion of massive electoral irregularities, hailed the new law and said the changes will discourage fraud.
Since it will come as news to most Kansans that we had a voter fraud problem in our state, the story of this bill bears retelling.
Kris Kobach has made a living in recent years crusading against illegal immigration. He has authored parts of Arizona Law 1070 and numerous local ordinances targeting undocumented immigrants. Arizona and municipalities across the country have been forced to spend hundreds of thousands of tax dollars in legal fees defending these laws in court.
And to date none of them have withstood judicial scrutiny.
But demagoguery against undocumented immigrants gets political traction these days. The Arizona law was so successful grabbing publicity for Kobach that he decided to base his campaign for Kansas Secretary of State, the state's top election official, on the slogan, "fight voter fraud."
Never mind the minor detail that there have been only a few dozen complaints of alleged voter fraud in all of Kansas in recent decades. And most of the handful of convictions involved individuals voting in multiple states.
Kobach's experience with elections is dubious. Not only did he have no experience with running them prior to his current job, at no time before, during or after the election has he consulted with the leadership of the Kansas County Clerks and Election Officials Association. Kobach's pursuit of voter fraud would have been enough to make Don Quixote blush as he crusaded against windmills.
In endorsing Kobach's opponent in the November 2010 election the Wichita Eagle was harshly critical of Kobach, and concluded that he "wants to use the Secretary of State's office to legitimize (and surely subsidize) his fear-mongering about voter fraud, birth citizenship and other hot-button issues of little relevance to Kansas."
Once in office Kobach needed some sort of bill to pay lip service to his phantom crusade, and quickly made the Eagle's warning prophetic. He unveiled legislation to combat the supposed problems with voter fraud, and the legislature spent valuable time debating them and holding hearings.
Kobach also, while ignoring the state association whose members administer our elections, frequently touted the support of the chief election officers in Kansas' four largest counties - Johnson, Wyandotte, Shawnee and Sedgwick. He conveniently neglected to mention that state law singles out these four counties and requires that the chief election official in each be appointed by the Secretary of State.
Apparently none of these four individuals wanted to risk their jobs by pointing out the real fraud in our midst.
So starting next year voters will have to show a photo ID at the polls and in 2013 newly registering voters will have to prove their citizenship. The Kansas Senate greatly watered down Kobach's original bill. Among items deleted was a provision giving the secretary of state the power to prosecute election fraud. Someone apparently noticed that Kansas already has an attorney general for that purpose.
Meanwhile our legislature has some serious problems demanding its attention, including budget proposals that would cost thousands of school teachers and personnel their jobs, eliminate Kansas early Head Start, visit drastic cuts on our judicial and mental health systems, etc., etc.
With our voter fraud problem "solved" Kobach is now offering his expertise on the subject to other states. And this week the Legislature will reconvene and can get back to work addressing our real challenges.
Alan- You make a great point. Kris Kobach has made a career of going after minorities. After his election, a friend of mine commented on Facebook that she was glad she got married because she no longer had a Hispanic name. Unfortunately, I don't think it mattered what Kobach said during the campaign. People seemed to be voting Republican or Democrat based on other issues. All the statewide races seemed to have roughly the same numbers. Kobach took voter fraud as an issue because it played into the fear that "foreigners" are taking jobs away from "Americans." The xenophobic trend in this country is growing, whether it be against Hispanics or Muslims. Great post.
Ok, maybe they dont try and vote but I see alot of illegals around here and they do take jobs from Americans. You can complain about Kobach all you want but illegal immigrants are a very important issue around here and democrats better darn well have a good response to it.
Undocumented workers pay millions of dollars in taxes, including Social Security and Medicare taxes, but never collect on them. They spend money in the communuties where they live, thus adding to the local economy. In fact, one of our local news station ran an analysis of the economy of Dodge City, which would collapse without its immigrant population, undocumented or otherwise, buying cars, houses, furniture, groceries, clothes, well, you get the idea.
Brad, if you want to address the illegal resident problems, you need to start with those who hire them. They enjoy the profit on the cheap labor and we pay all those expenses you lay on the illegal welfare benefits.