Kris Kobach used as an expert witness in a voting rights trial Friday a controversial scholar who wanted to block Democrats and mainstream Republicans from serving on a presidential commission. Hans von Spakovsky, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation who has written a book on voter fraud, testified in support of a Kansas law that requires voters to provide proof of citizenship. It was the fourth day of the federal trial in Kansas City, Kan. Von Spakovsky contended that other methods of identifying non-citizens on the voter rolls, such as comparing the voter rolls against the list of driver’s licenses for legal immigrants, are insufficient because they would not be able to identify illegal immigrants. He also said that the threat of prosecution for voter fraud does not do enough to deter non-citizen voting “because we basically have an honor system” in U.S. elections.
… Dale Ho, the lead attorney for the ACLU in the case, played an audio exchange between von Spakovsky and two reporters in which he denied being the sender of the email or having any concerns about the commission’s bipartisan nature.
… Ho asked him if his research for that book was peer-reviewed or whether he had ever written a peer-reviewed article on voter fraud.
“I’m not an academic, so I don’t use the peer review process,” von Spakovsky replied.
Full Article: Kobach turns to controversial scholar as trial witness | The Kansas City Star.