Kris Kobach: The Voting Fraud Myth Becomes a Mission
Your weekly excerpt from one of my books. This week: "The Hidden History of the War on Voting"
Kris Kobach: The Voting Fraud Myth Becomes a Mission
Kris Kobach’s national debut was as a speaker on the first day of the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City. I attended that convention and broadcast my show from there, sitting next to Sean Hannity, interviewing and meeting many of the GOP luminaries. And most of what they wanted to talk about was the same as Kobach’s speech: the danger of Mexicans sneaking into the United States and voting (along with robbing, raping, and drug running).
Ironically, they didn’t seem so concerned with Mexicans taking American jobs. When I repeatedly brought up with Republicans how Ronald Reagan had pretty much stopped prosecuting employers after his 1986 amnesty for five million “illegals,” and how entire industries that used to have an all-American labor force and were heavily unionized, like construction and meat packing, were now mostly just employing people who were in the country illegally, they’d just shrug their shoulders. One said, “Well, it did help break the unions” or words to that effect.
Kobach, though, was soon to turn his warnings about brown-skinned people from south of the border into a lucrative legal and consulting business, helping cities and townships draft anti-illegal-immigrant laws. In most cases, the laws were quickly overturned in the courts, and the cities ended up with huge legal bills, both for Kobach’s services and for defending themselves after they promulgated his laws.
ProPublica did an investigation into it all, published in 2018 with the title “Kris Kobach’s Lucrative Trail of Courtroom Defeats.” It reads, in part,
The towns—some with budgets in the single-digit-millions—ran up hefty legal costs after hiring him to defend similar ordinances [to one he helped pass in Missouri].
Farmers Branch, Texas, wound up owing $7 million in legal bills. Hazleton, Penn., took on debt to pay $1.4 million and eventually had to file for a state bailout. In Fremont, Neb., the city raised property taxes to pay for Kobach’s services. None of the towns are currently enforcing the laws he helped craft.124
University of Missouri law professor Larry Dessem told ProPublica that Kobach reminded him of the character Harold Hill in The Music Man. “Got a problem here in River City,” he said, “and we can solve it if you buy the band instruments from me. He is selling something that goes well beyond legal services.”125
Kobach has turned stopping Mexicans from voting (a non- existent problem in the United States) into a mini-industry, at times arguing that there were more than 18,000 “illegals” registered to vote and/or voting in Kansas (when he became secretary of state, he was unable to find even one of them), and at other times echoing Donald Trump’s assertion that the number nationwide was about the same as the margin of Trump’s popular-vote loss to Clinton—in the neighborhood of three million.
In fact, more people are struck by lightning in any given month than try to vote without being a citizen in any given year; numbers nationwide from credible sources place it between a few dozen and perhaps a hundred nationwide in any given national election. A study published in the journal Election Studies in 2014 suggests that the number may have been far fewer than even 100 people—nationwide—and almost all voted in error or by mistake, or didn’t understand voting law.126
And double voting is just as rare.
There is no credible evidence of the “busloads” of Hispanic or black people going from polling place to polling place to repeatedly vote, cited by Donald Trump, by former Maine governor Paul LePage, and repeatedly on Fox News and other sources, even existing anywhere in the United States at any time in our lifetimes.
When the ACLU took Kobach to court for trying to enforce a punishing strict-photo-ID law in Kansas that he’d helped get passed, the judge essentially ridiculed his claims of noncitizen voters after Kobach’s best witnesses (including Hans von Spakovsky of the Heritage Foundation) not only were unable to document their own claims but repeatedly had their previous claims called out accurately as lies. Kobach lost the case.
But Kobach still pushes for large voter purges.
Im always amazed at your history lessons. I am 75 and you remind me of my civics teacher in high school in California. My parents immigrated from Canada when I was 8. My father was from Russian immigrants to Canada when the Bolshevik Revolution broke out always calling themselves “white” Russians. We later learned they were from Kyiv and my grandmother was Jewish and they left with her sister, husband and cousins, though my grandfather was Russian Orthodox but not one to be strongly religious. My mother was a war bride from London along with her sister - both the first in generations to leave England. My parents were to become citizens before I was 16 so I’d be included and they took classes at night (taught by my history teacher) but due to the cost and needing a lawyer to help, they never did. It was required we took Civics and passed in order to graduate - which unfortunately is no longer required. This was the first semester of my senior year in 1966. I was one of the few who got an A+. I was stunned to learn that everything I was taught was so unknown by many adults. This teacher taught us not to listen to news on T.V., but to read certain newspapers or it may have been a magazine which he gave subscriptions to those who excelled. He demanded critical thinking - read, process, and explain. He didn’t own a T.V. saying it was gibberish entertainment to numb the mind and pushed reading. He rode a bike to and from work for health and stated that gasoline engines along with industrialization was ruining our air - we already had brown smog that was clear to see at higher levels. My first Earth day was in 1970 in Los Angeles. This man greatly affected my life but it took time to realize that. Why don’t we have Civics requirements and teachers like that I always think. I worked hard to pay for my daughters to go to private school as California’s education system had eroded - in the area where we could afford to buy a home and start our family 10 years later. It also was the only place to find before and after school day care. I was able to get an absentee ballot as a working mother and sat with my daughters explaining the system, how it worked and going through the process. I laughed when I read that California amendments went from a booklet to a book. I left California in 1995. Why isn’t Civics required any longer in all schools? I’ve retired in what’s become a trifecta red state that once received accolades for having the best education system and highest educated students in the U.S., but have watched it erode with private vouchers given to those in wealthy areas with private schools and now elementary schools are closing due to lack of funding. It follows the Republican motto to keep them uneducated while the wealthy rise-and take over. I plan on buying your book if I still have funds after they attack Medicare and Social Security.
More proof that Republicans rely heavily on voter fear and loathing to get and stay in office. Like most fears promoted by politicians, they are baseless and often hateful, racist, and sexist - not unlike many party members apparently.