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Unsealed Documents Show That Kris Kobach Is Dead Set on Suppressing the Right to Vote
The unsealed materials confirm what many have suspected: Kobach has a ready-made plan to gut core voting rights protections enshrined in federal law. And he has been covertly lobbying Trump’s team and other officials from day one to sell them the falsehood that noncitizens are swinging elections.
As the de facto head of President Trump’s election commission, Kobach has positioned himself to lead an all-out assault on the right to vote.
Here are three big plays from Kobach’s voter suppression playbook.
Play 1: Disenfranchise new voters with severe registration restrictions
Before Kris Kobach took office as secretary of state, Kansans could register to vote the same way that people do in virtually every other state in the country: by submitting a sworn oath of citizenship under penalty of perjury. In 2013, Kobach implemented a law he had pushed through the Kansas Legislature two years earlier, requiring people to track down a citizenship document — such as a passport or birth certificate — or be barred from the ballot box. The new system proved disastrous for ordinary voters.
Large numbers of citizens — disproportionately minorities — don’t have a passport or birth certificate on hand and don’t have the money to obtain replacement documents. By December 2015, more than 35,000 Kansans had been disenfranchised — approximately 14 percent of all registration applications since the requirement went into effect. The National Voter Registration Act — popularly known as the Motor-Voter law — prohibits unduly harsh registration rules and requires that states make voter registration easy and straightforward.
As the de facto head of President Trump’s election commission, Kobach has positioned himself to lead an all-out assault on the right to vote.
Here are three big plays from Kobach’s voter suppression playbook.
Play 1: Disenfranchise new voters with severe registration restrictions
Before Kris Kobach took office as secretary of state, Kansans could register to vote the same way that people do in virtually every other state in the country: by submitting a sworn oath of citizenship under penalty of perjury. In 2013, Kobach implemented a law he had pushed through the Kansas Legislature two years earlier, requiring people to track down a citizenship document — such as a passport or birth certificate — or be barred from the ballot box. The new system proved disastrous for ordinary voters.
Large numbers of citizens — disproportionately minorities — don’t have a passport or birth certificate on hand and don’t have the money to obtain replacement documents. By December 2015, more than 35,000 Kansans had been disenfranchised — approximately 14 percent of all registration applications since the requirement went into effect. The National Voter Registration Act — popularly known as the Motor-Voter law — prohibits unduly harsh registration rules and requires that states make voter registration easy and straightforward.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/voting-rights/fighting-voter-suppression/unsealed-documents-show-kris-kobach-dead-set
27 replies
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You make him sound like a total monster!
I mean who needs the Taliban and ISIS when we have the GOP, the Heritage Foundation, and the NRA? 
We've always known how racist, sexist, homophobic, and misogynistic the GOP has been. But with Trump and the alt right, the real hate mongers are coming out of their shell. And the whole world now knows how dangerous they really are. We live in dark times right now.
that we are paying their salaries and the cost of that damned agency to usurp our Constitution and what millions have worked so hard to build for many decades.
And to top it off, as a defense, we have to privately fund groups such as ALCU and SPLC to counter these bastards.
