A prominent voter fraud alarmist who had prepared a report defending Kansas’ proof-of-citizenship law admitted in testimony Friday that he did not investigate the circumstances surrounding the registrations of a handful of non-citizens that were central to his allegations. The witness, Hans von Spakovsky, relied on a spreadsheet provided to him by the state. The spreadsheet showed that in Kansas’ second most populous county, there were only 38 alleged cases of non-citizens registering or attempting to register to vote in the last two decades. That spreadsheet, which also showed that only five of those non-citizens cast votes, had already come under extreme scrutiny earlier in the trial. “I did not personally examine each registration form,” von Spakovsky said, under cross-examination from Dale Ho, the ACLU’s lead attorney in the case.
The ACLU’s expert witness, Lorraine Minnite, had done so. And much of her testimony was spent picking apart the spreadsheet for mischaracterizing what appeared to be administrative error or confusion by the non-citizen, when one looked at their registration form. (One of the alleged non-citizens, for instance, did not check the box confirming they were a citizen).
Kansas’ cross-examination of Minnite focused on her definition of voter fraud, and on how courts had previously treated her testimony. That latter line of questioning was abandoned, however, when Kansas attorney Garrett Roe had trouble staying within trial rules.
Full Article: Claims Of Leading Voter Fraud Alarmist Picked Apart In Kansas Trial – Talking Points Memo.