Tag Archives: Kris Kobach

Getting served with seven different lawsuits is probably a bad way to start any job. But that’s exactly what the members of President Trump’s Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity faced Wednesday, when the commission met in person for the first time. The latest of these lawsuits comes from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, alleging among other things that with Trump’s creation of the commission by executive order in May, he “appointed a commission stacked with biased members to undertake an investigation into unfounded allegations of voter fraud.” The lawsuit also states that “the work of the Commission as described by its co-chairs are grounded on the false premise that Black and Latino voters are more likely to perpetrate voter fraud.” The LDF lawsuit finds in the new commission a veritable rogues gallery of voter suppression. The first defendant named is Trump himself, who has touted controversial—and false—claims of millions of fraudulent votes in the 2016 election. But much of the plaintiffs’ ire is directed towards vice chair Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State and the de facto leader of the commission. In his position in Kansas, Kobach has launched a one-of-a-kind effort to track down illegal noncitizen voters, an aggressive campaign that has challenged hundreds of votes and brought to court dozens of campaigns but has only secured one such conviction so far.

National: Trump’s voter commission now facing at least 7 federal suits | The Washington Post

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging that President Donald Trump’s voting commission “was formed with the intent to discriminate against voters of color in violation of the Constitution.” “Statements by President Trump, his spokespersons and surrogates … as well as the work of the Commission as described by its co-chairs, are grounded on the false premise that Black and Latino voters are more likely to perpetrate voter fraud,” the suit alleges. As evidence, the suit points to Trump’s repeated unsubstantiated claims that millions of illegal immigrants voted in the 2016 election. Those claims were subsequently repeated by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, now the chair and vice-chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, which Trump set up to investigate his unfounded claims.

Editorials: The Voter Purges Are Coming | Vanita Gupta/The New York Times

The Trump administration’s election-integrity commission will have its first meeting on Wednesday to map out how the president will strip the right to vote from millions of Americans. It hasn’t gotten off to the strongest start: Its astonishing request last month that each state hand over voters’ personal data was met with bipartisan condemnation. Yet it is joined in its efforts to disenfranchise citizens by the immensely more powerful Justice Department. Lost amid the uproar over the commission’s request was a letter sent at the same time by the Justice Department’s civil rights division. It forced 44 states to provide extensive information on how they keep their voter rolls up-to-date. It cited the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, known as the Motor-Voter law, which mandates that states help voters register through motor vehicle departments. The letter doesn’t ask whether states are complying with the parts of the law that expand opportunities to register. Instead it focuses on the sections related to maintaining the lists. That’s a prelude to voter purging.

National: This anti-voter-fraud program gets it wrong over 99 percent of the time. The GOP wants to take it nationwide. | The Washington Post

At the inaugural meeting of President Trump’s election integrity commission on Wednesday, commission Vice-Chairman Kris Kobach of Kansas praised a data collection program run by his state as a model for a national effort to root out voter fraud. States participating in the program, known as the Interstate Crosscheck System, send their voter registration files to Kansas. Kansas election authorities compare these files to those from other states. Each participating state receives back a list of their voter registrations that match the first name, last name and date of birth of a voter in another state. States may act upon the findings as they wish, although Crosscheck provides some guidelines for purging voter registrations from the rolls. In theory, the program is supposed to detect possible cases of people voting in multiple locations. But academics and states that use the program have found that its results are overrun with false positives, creating a high risk of disenfranchising legal voters. A statistical analysis of the program published earlier this year by researchers at Stanford, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and Microsoft, for instance, found that Crosscheck “would eliminate about 200 registrations used to cast legitimate votes for every one registration used to cast a double vote.” Kobach’s championing of Crosscheck is one reason many voting rights advocates are concerned that President Trump’s voter fraud commission may be a vehicle for recommending mass voter purges.

Editorials: Kobach’s Looking-Glass Commission | Eliza Newlin Carney/The American Prospect

There was a surreal quality to the presidential “election integrity” commission’s first meeting on Wednesday, which was streamed live from a government building next to the White House, but was not open to the public. President Trump strode in to declare that “this is not a Democrat or Republican issue” and hail the “bipartisan” nature of a commission that’s headed by two Republicans and dominated by GOP members. He pledged a “very transparent process” that “will be open for everybody to see,” on a commission that’s already been sued for violating the disclosure and open meeting requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. The commission’s official chairman, Vice President Mike Pence, quoted Ronald Reagan calling the right to vote “the crown jewel of American liberties,” then yielded the floor to commissioners who laid out an agenda focused on chasing down and prosecuting supposed voter fraud—a problem that repeated studies have found is virtually nonexistent.

Editorials: Trump-Kobach election commission designed to intimidate | Chris Carson/The Kansas City Star

On Wednesday, the task force known as the Election Integrity Commission met for the first time. Despite their claims of having no preconceived agenda, we know their end goals are clear: to perpetuate unsubstantiated myths of widespread voter fraud and to lay groundwork to suppress voting rights. Unfortunately, they might already be succeeding. Since commission…

Editorials: The first public meeting of Trump’s voter fraud panel was a parade of lies | Mark Joseph Stern/Slate

On Wednesday, Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission held its first public meeting, allowing each participant to voice his or her utterly unjustified belief that fraudulent voting is a rampant problem in the United States. (The commission has already held a private meeting that may have violated federal law.) During his remarks, Kris Kobach—Kansas’ Republican secretary of state and vice chairman of the commission—asserted that more than 18,000 noncitizens may have registered to vote in Kansas. He also alleged that the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, which compares states’ voter rolls, has uncovered “literally millions of people” who are registered in at least two states. Both of these claims are completely false. Let’s start with the Kansas lie. When running for secretary of state in 2010, Kobach repeatedly insisted that voter fraud in the state, particularly noncitizen voting, was “pervasive” and “massive.” Then–Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh—a Republican who served in that position for 16 years—responded that “the voter fraud Kris Kobach speaks of does not exist.” Researchers found that, over the previous decade, the government had uncovered just seven instances of unlawful voting in Kansas, none of which involved noncitizens. Yet Kobach persisted, as this crude nativism was central to his campaign. A week before the election, he said he’d found a smoking gun: A deceased man named Alfred K. Brewer, Kobach claimed, had likely cast a vote in the August primary. Reporters found Brewer in his yard, alive. “I don’t think this is heaven, not when I’m raking leaves,” he explained. Kobach had confused Brewer with his father, who was deceased, and who had not cast a vote since he’d shuffled off this mortal coil.

National: Kris Kobach: ‘We may never know’ who won 2016 popular vote | USA Today

On the day of the first meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, its vice chairman suggested Wednesday “we may never know” if Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 election. During an interview with MSNBC, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was asked if he believed that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. Kobach’s reply: “You know, we may never know the answer to that question.” Later in the interview, he repeated himself and emphasized that the commission would not be able to tell which way an ineligible vote was cast. “It’s impossible to know exactly, if you take out all the ineligible votes, what the final tally would be in that election,” he said. “You could obviously, based on the data, you could make some very educated guesses.” When asked if the votes that won Trump the election are also in doubt, Kobach replied, “Absolutely.”

National: Trump’s election integrity panel won’t probe Russian infiltration of state election systems | Portland Press Herald

President Trump’s controversial Election Integrity Commission won’t be probing Russian infiltration of state election systems after all. At the commission’s inaugural meeting Wednesday in Washington – which the president briefly attended to push his evidence-free theory that the 2016 election was tainted widespread voter fraud – Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap raised the subject, but agreed with his colleagues to instead rely on any information a Senate probe into Russian interference in the election might provide. “The Senate Intelligence Committee will keep us apprised on what they find and we can work it into our report,” Dunlap told the Press Herald shortly after the meeting concluded. “We don’t have to do our separate investigations. I don’t think we are equipped to do that.” The substantive part of the meeting focused on what actions the commission should take now that most states have rejected its request for voter registration information, with commissioners brainstorming on what data the federal government already had in its possession and how it might be used to explore voter fraud concerns.

National: Trump stokes voter fraud fears as commission convenes | Politico

President Donald Trump put the power of the presidency behind one of his favorite theories on Wednesday, convening a panel to investigate voter fraud even though experts have largely dismissed his evidence-free claim that “millions” of illegal votes last year cost him the popular vote. Vice President Mike Pence, who leads the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity created by executive order in May, said at the group’s first meeting that its findings were not predetermined. But Trump himself has repeatedly declared, without evidence, that mass voter fraud took place during the 2016 election. And by Wednesday afternoon, the fraud theories became even more muddled when Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, Trump’s hand-picked vice chair of the commission, indicated he had no way of knowing who actually won the 2016 election.

National: Shrugging off controversy, Trump’s voter-fraud panel seeks more personal data | The Boston Globe

Shrugging off complaints about whether it is even necessary, President Trump’s commission on voter fraud doubled down when it met for the first time on Wednesday and asked its staff to look into assembling vast new caches of information on individuals. The commission indicated it wants to collect information already held by the federal government and tasked the staff with getting the Department of Homeland Security to turn over data on people applying for citizenship, since they must check off a box indicating whether they have registered to vote. The panel also discussed seeking information on people who have attempted to get out of jury duty by claiming to be noncitizens. The reason: Jury lists come from voter rolls, so noncitizens shouldn’t be on the list to begin with. Most experts say voter fraud is extremely rare in the United States, and the commission has already come under heavy criticism for trying to scoop up personal data on voters in every state.

National: Despite criticism, 30 states intend to give voter information to Trump fraud commission | The Sacramento Bee

Despite criticism from most states about the Trump administration’s request for voters’ personal information, half have said they will deliver some or all of that data to the White House election commission. And that number could grow, President Donald Trump said on Wednesday, with more than 30 states turning over some information, including names, addresses and birth dates, to the group being run by Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. “If any state does not want to share this information, one has to wonder what they’re worried about,” Trump said, questioning the motives of states that have not complied with requests for information. “ What are they worried about? There’s something. There always is.” Trump created the elections commission after claiming — without evidence — that millions of people had voted illegally and deprived him of a popular-vote victory. He has argued specifically that fraud denied him a win in three states: California, New Hampshire and Virginia. Independent groups and election officials said there was no evidence of either charge, but Kobach said Wednesday that the public would never know the true results of the election.

National: Activists urge voters to stay registered after fraud commission’s data request | Politico

Liberal activists are urging people to stay registered to vote after President Donald Trump’s new election integrity commission’s request for voter data spooked some Americans and caused them to cancel their registrations. Colorado got a burst of publicity after more than 3,700 residents canceled voter registrations, according to media reports. And while that’s a tiny percentage of total voters in the state, activists said it’s the wrong response to the federal government’s request for state voter information. “We don’t want people to be afraid of registering — not to do so is to play into the hands of the voter suppressors,” said Nathan Woodliff-Stanley, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Colorado. “To the thousands of people who have deregistered: go reregister and bring two others.”

National: What could Trump’s fraud commission do with voter data? | PBS NewsHour

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity met for the first time Wednesday, as President Donald Trump again pushed his unfounded claim that widespread voter fraud took place in the 2016 election. The voter fraud commission’s first formal meeting came three weeks after Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach — one of the panel’s vice chairmen, along with Vice President Mike Pence — penned a letter to all 50 states requesting that they turn over key voter information. So far, at least 24 states have said they’ll comply with the request, though there is no evidence of Mr. Trump’s claims that “millions” of people voted illegally last year and cost him the popular vote. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have refused to comply with the request, which sparked a flurry of lawsuits from groups like the American Civil Liberties Union. At the meeting Wednesday, Trump suggested that the states that haven’t complied have something to hide. “What are they worried about? There’s something. There always is,” Trump said. As more states and advocacy groups wade into the debate, here is a closer look at the commission, how voter records are collected and stored across the country, and how the White House could potentially use the data to its advantage.

Editorials: The New Assault on Voting Rights | Zachary Roth/New Republic

For a while there, it appeared that the GOP’s long-running assault on voting rights was finally losing steam. In recent years, federal courts have struck down or significantly weakened several of the country’s worst voting restrictions. At the same time, many states—including red ones—have debated or passed bills to expand access to registration and polling places. But that was before Donald Trump was elected. As president, Trump has refused to let go of his unhinged claim that “millions” of people voted illegally last November—and has used his unsubstantiated accusation of voter fraud to lay the groundwork at the federal level for a new round of voting restrictions. Republican legislators from New Hampshire to Texas are also moving swiftly to enact a wave of new laws that would make it harder to cast a ballot. Since January, according to a recent report by the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 99 bills to restrict voting rights have been introduced in 31 states. “It looked like we had turned a corner in terms of slowing down new restrictions on voting,” says Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s voting rights project. “It turns out the pace has accelerated.”

Editorials: Trump’s voter-fraud commission itself is a fraud | The Washington Post

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, set to hold its inaugural meeting Wednesday, is already better known as the voter fraud commission, owing not only to its explicit mission but also to the fact that so many of its members, including its chairman, Vice President Pence, and vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, are on record as subscribing to or defending President Trump’s unfounded view that millions of fraudulent votes were cast in last fall’s elections. In fact, the real fraud is the commission itself. Mr. Kobach, a Republican running for governor of Kansas, professes indignation and phony puzzlement over the jaundiced eye that Democrats, voting rights experts and some Republicans have aimed at the panel. Yet how could it be otherwise, given that Mr. Kobach himself has for years made a political cottage industry of his (repeatedly debunked) claims of fraud in Kansas and national elections? If ever a federal commission embarked on a “study” with a predetermined outcome, this is it.

National: Trump Election Commission, Already Under Fire, Holds First Meeting | The New York Times

Since 2000, no fewer than three blue-ribbon commissions have been convened after contentious elections to examine what went wrong during the vote and how future elections might be improved. The one that assembles on Wednesday, in a rococo 19th-century office building just steps from the White House, bears no resemblance to any of them. For one thing, the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, headed by Vice President Mike Pence, begins public life saddled with at least seven lawsuits challenging its conduct, its transparency and even its reason for being. Two more complaints have been filed with federal agencies against two of the commission’s 12 members. For another, a broad range of experts and ordinary citizens already has written off its legitimacy. They charge that it is less an inquiry into voting fraud and faith in honest elections — its stated purposes — than an effort to bolster President Trump’s baseless claim that illegally cast ballots robbed him of a popular vote victory in November. And they say such an inflated conclusion could give Republicans in Congress ammunition to enact federal legislation curbing the ability of minorities, the poor and other Democratic-leaning groups to register and cast ballots.

National: Judge denies injunction against Trump fraud panel | Politico

A federal judge has turned down an effort to force President Donald Trump’s controversial voter fraud commission to open its first official meeting to in-person, public attendance and to force disclosure of more records about the group’s work. U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said there wasn’t enough indication that the panel planned to defy a federal sunshine law, particularly after the commission published thousands of pages of information online and announced plans to make more data public in a timely fashion. Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling said there was no sign that the commission’s procedures were impeding public debate about its actions, particularly a hotly-debated request that states turn over public voter registration data for study by the panel.

National: Trump’s voter commission hasn’t even met — and it’s already off to a rough start | The Washington Post

A commission set to convene Wednesday to advise President Trump on “election integrity” includes the publisher of “Alien Invasion II,” a report on undocumented immigrants who mysteriously showed up on the voter rolls in Virginia. Another member is known for scanning obituaries in his West Virginia county to make sure dead people are promptly deleted from voter lists. Another championed some of the strictest voter identification laws in the country during her days in the Indiana legislature. And yet another warned nearly a decade ago of the “possibility for voter fraud on a scale never seen before in this country.” During his tenure as Ohio secretary of state, the Social Security numbers of 1.2 million state voters were accidentally posted on the agency’s website.

National: Trump Election Commission: A White House Team Will Handle Voter Data | BuzzFeed

Since President Trump’s Election Integrity Commission was last in court, the commission has announced plans to dramatically alter how it plans to collect state voter information in an attempt to avoid a potential legal ruling that could require it to conduct a privacy assessment before collecting the data. The plan, more or less, is to have a few people on the White House staff conduct all of the work of the commission in order to help maintain a legal argument that the “sole function” of the commission is to advise the president. The commission is chaired by Vice President Mike Pence. On Monday, Charles Christopher Herndon, the director of White House Information Technology, laid out how limited that would be in a declaration submitted in the case brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “The Executive Committee for Information Technology will have no role in this data collection process. The U.S. Digital Service (which is within the Office of Management and Budget) will also have no role, nor will any federal agency,” Herndon wrote. “The only people who will assist are a limited number of my technical staff from the White House Office of Administration.”

Idaho: Secretary of State won’t comply with Trump voter panel request | Idaho Statesman