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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">521</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/far-right-kris-kobach-aims-for-political-comeback-announces-run-for-ag-in-kansas/">https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/far-right-kris-kobach-aims-for-political-comeback-announces-run-for-ag-in-kansas/</a></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-says-he-didnt-approve-of-border-wall-project-but-these-key-players-bragged-of-his-approval"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-says-he-didnt-approve-of-border-wall-project-but-these-key-players-bragged-of-his-approval</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">fter Steve Bannon’s arrest on Thursday, Donald Trump&nbsp;</span><a title="" href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/8/20/1970900/-Trump-blames-showboaters-for-border-wall-fraud-and-other-indicators-he-s-in-deep-trouble" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">tried to put a Grand Canyon-sized gap</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;between himself and the “We Build The Wall” border scheme. Bannon, Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato, and Timothy Shea were indicted on counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The&nbsp;</span><a title="" href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1306611/download" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">federal indictment</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;says the crew pilfered “hundreds of thousands of dollars” and a Bannon-controlled nonprofit&nbsp;received more than $1 million in funds.</span></font><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The federal government is seeking to take possession of the fraudulently purchased items, like the flashy boat Kolfage purchased and used in recent “Trumptilla” boat parades. Incredibly enough, Bannon and&nbsp;Kolfage recorded a video promoting their scam fund and folks, you are not going to believe this—Bannon actually jokes they are filming in Saint-Tropez in southern France before adding:&nbsp;“We are on the million dollar yacht of Brian Kolfage. Brian Kolfage, he took all that money from Build The Wall.” Kolfage then lets out an awkward laugh. Watch them joke about the fraud below. You cannot make this up.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[twt mma] after you collect yourself, watch the&nbsp;video below this because it just keeps getting better. First up, let’s revisit Trump’s statement trying to put daylight between himself and the We Build The Wall project. He repeatedly says he “didn’t like it” and thought it was “showboating and maybe looking for funds.” In a stumbling response, he repeatedly said he never approved of the project and Bannon aside, that he&nbsp;didn’t know anyone involved. As you’ll see below, most of the folks involved in the project said otherwise.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Let’s listen to former Kansas Secretary of State&nbsp;Kris Kobach, who has been described as a&nbsp;<a title="" href="https://www.kansascity.com/entertainment/article165230507.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“racist traveling con man”</a>&nbsp;because of his history of helping cities enact racist laws and then billing them to represent them in court cases they inevitably lose.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[vid: t i feel bad about bannon charges]</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">kobach is legal counsel for We Build The Wall, because of course he is, and he recorded an “interview” with Jennifer Lawrence, who is also listed on the We Build The Wall website as the&nbsp;<a title="" href="https://webuildthewall.us/ourteam/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">communications director</a>&nbsp;for the organization. Listen to Kobach describe his conversation with Donald Trump and brag that Trump said: “I want the media to know this project has my blessing.”</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It should be noted that just before Bannon’s arrest on Thursday morning by<b>&nbsp;federal postal inspectors on a yacht off the coast of Connecticut</b>, federal investigators were also serving a warrant on Lawrence and another associate, Dustin Stockton. The pair told CNN that&nbsp;<a title="" href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/20/politics/we-build-the-wall-bannon-stockton-lawrence/index.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“heavily armed federal agents” served the warrant and confiscated their cell phones.&nbsp;</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">No doubt,&nbsp;Kobach must be sweating. Going after lower-level employees is a sure sign they’re angling for bigger fish. And while Kobach&nbsp;bragged about&nbsp;Trump’s full-throated approval, he wasn’t alone. Lexi Churchill of ProPublica&nbsp;</span><a title="" href="https://twitter.com/LChurchilll/status/1296603926326906880" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">found other examples claiming Trump’s full endorsement.</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Amanda Shea, wife of the recently indicted Timothy Shea,&nbsp;</span><a title="" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B1pbpAFl1_I/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">shared a photo of the crew with Donald Trump in August 2019</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, with a caption saying: “</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>A summer of winning came to a high note in the Hamptons.</b>&nbsp;I had the absolute pleasure and honor of spending time with President Trump who had a lot of questions about the wall We The People built through We Build The Wall. He was impressed, but more importantly, incredibly personable and easy to talk to. I forgot that I was speaking with one of the most powerful men in the world.”</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Shea also touted the meeting on Twitter.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Churchill also found an interview Kolfage did with The Gateway Pundit&nbsp;in which Kolfage bragged of Trump’s support, saying:&nbsp;<a title="" href="https://twitter.com/LChurchilll/status/1296603210916990976?s=20" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“President Trump loves what we are doing.”</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And wherever a right-wing grift exists, you know<b>&nbsp;Junior isn’t far behind. Of course he promoted the wall and congratulated Kolfage on “[t]his is private enterprise at its finest. Doing it better, faster, cheaper than anything else. What you guys are doing is amazing.”</b></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump’s Acting Homeland Security Director Chad Wolf, who a federal court ruled is illegally serving in the role, called the group’s work a&nbsp;<a title="" href="https://twitter.com/LChurchilll/status/1296603926326906880?s=20" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“game changer” and said he “welcomed” their efforts.</a></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">So&nbsp;it would seem this is another in a long list of lies from Donald Trump. He welcomed this group’s efforts right up until&nbsp;<a title="" href="https://www.propublica.org/article/he-built-a-privately-funded-border-wall-its-already-at-risk-of-falling-down-if-not-fixed" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">ProPublica reported on the shoddy construction</a>&nbsp;of the privately built wall, which was in danger of falling over. Nevertheless, the contractor,&nbsp;<b>Fisher Industries,</b>&nbsp;was awarded a massive&nbsp;<a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/he-built-a-privately-funded-border-wall-its-already-at-risk-of-falling-down-if-not-fixed" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">government contract to build Trump’s&nbsp;wall</a>&nbsp;and Trump reportedly&nbsp;<a title="" href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/5/24/1860140/-Trump-is-personally-and-repeatedly-intervening-to-get-border-wall-contract-awarded-to-crony" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“personally and repeatedly” intervened to make sure Fisher was awarded the project.</a></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/trumps-vote-suppression-team-doing-gops-dirty-work">https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/trumps-vote-suppression-team-doing-gops-dirty-work</a></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Anyone who favors expanding voting rights should be relieved by Wednesday’s&nbsp;<b><a href="https://electionlawblog.org/?p=96747" style="text-decoration-line: none;">demise</a>&nbsp;of President Trump’s so-called Election Integrity Commission.&nbsp;</b>But the panel’s right-wing agenda to rig the voting process to benefit the GOP will continue.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">There’s plenty to cheer about when white nationalists like Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the vice-chair, and voter suppressors like the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky were discredited by a panel run in a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/01/04/trumps-explanation-for-shutting-down-his-voter-fraud-commission-is-just-as-untrue-and-partisan/?utm_term=.03993d3eb436" style="text-decoration-line: none;">secretive, conspiratorial and clownish</a>&nbsp;manner. But these Republicans are not giving up on their plan to create new barriers to eligible voters.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“Amid many challenges for the institutions of American democracy, this was a rousing win,” said Michael Waldman, president of the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">&nbsp;Brennan Center for Justice</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. “No doubt, there is fallout to come… The commission has vanished, but its pernicious objectives persist.&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The White House has asked the Department of Homeland Security to take up the commission’s work—a dangerous and appalling idea.&nbsp;Earlier this morning, the president&nbsp;took to Twitter to renew calls for voting restrictions.”</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Indeed, Kobach signaled his next move to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/03/trump-disbands-voter-fraud-commission-322621" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Politico, which noted</a>, “The Kansas official said he expects officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and political appointees overseeing that agency to take over the commission’s work and begin efforts to match state voter rolls to federal databases of noncitizens. He insisted he was not disappointed with the president’s decision.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“It’s the right move,” Kobach said. “It’s a shifting in tactics from having the investigation be done by a federal commission to having it be done by a federal agency. The agency has a greater ability to move quickly to get the investigation done.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The GOP Strategy Unmasked</font></strong></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Kobach’s is referring to a strategy employed by the most fervent partisan Republicans to position red-run states to keep new registrants from voting and do mass purges of infrequent but otherwise legal voters from their rolls. In short, it draws on intentionally sloppy data-mining to creates thousands of false positives that are then used to stymie voters. That porous data has been used in recent cycles in Georgia to&nbsp;<a href="https://politics.myajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/new-georgia-project-releases-financial-records-renews-voter-push/BJoatzFC6XHZQ8GcACOsRN/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">delay approving</a>&nbsp;new registrations and to accelerate&nbsp;<a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-georgia-demands-explanation-improper-purge-notice-encourages-other-affected-voters-come" style="text-decoration-line: none;">mass purges</a>&nbsp;of voter rolls. But it's not just Georgia.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2014, Florida’s top election official&nbsp;</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">proposed using DHS’s problematic citizenship data to purge voter rolls. In response, county election supervisors&nbsp;</span><a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article2087729.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">rebelled and blocked it</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">—because they still felt the sting of the 2000 election, when Secretary of State Katherine Harris used sloppy data-mining (seeking former felons who could not vote under that state's laws) to purge tens of thousands of eligible voters before that year's presidential election.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">If Kobach has his way, the contours of that sordid history will repeat itself, including using a DHS&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2013/oct/30/league-women-voters-florida/league-women-voters-says-homeland-security-warned-/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">database that was never designed to be an authoritative list of every U.S. citizen</a>. But in the years since Harris’ Florida purge, the right-wing strategy has become clear.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Republicans like Kobach strategically target weak points in the voting process. They pinpoint areas in the process that are ambiguous, or where there’s no authoritative national data to counter their claims of purported illegal activity.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">For example, there is no federal agency that tracks so-called voter fraud, which these right-wingers define as someone impersonating someone else at the polls to vote more than once, and has become the go-to justificatiom for red-run states to erect new barriers to voting century.&nbsp;<b>Since there’s no single federal agency that tracks so-called voter fraud, it becomes a useful propaganda tool for Republicans because it's left to acacdemics and the media to debunk it, which these partisans routinely ignore.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The latest high-profile example of this narrative is Trump's thoroughly&nbsp;<a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/quotes-on-voter-fraud" style="text-decoration-line: none;">debunked</a>&nbsp;claim that millions of Democrats illegally voted more than once to deprive him of 2016’s popular vote majority.<b>&nbsp;But that lie, recited again by Trump’s press office when announcing the commission’s demise, resonates among supporters who want to believe all Democrats are crooks</b>&nbsp;despite&nbsp;<a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/voter-fraud" style="text-decoration-line: none;">vast documentation</a>&nbsp;by academics and the press that voter fraud barely exists. In the absence of an authoritative federal accounting, it becomes an easy pretext for red states to pass laws to, as they purport, police the process’ integrity. In reality, they thwart Democratic voters.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Not surprisingly, on Thursday, Kobach spewed that same line to—where else?—Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News. “They [Democrats] have absolutely no interest in stopping voter fraud,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/01/03/exclusive-kris-kobach-voter-fraud-commission-being-handed-off-to-dhs-will-no-longer-be-stonewalled-by-dems/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Kobach told Breitbart</a>. “It’s truly extraordinary that one party in our system has made clear that they don’t care… Some people on the Left were getting uncomfortable about how much we were finding out.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What's wrong with these figures? Beyond the fact that some of these numbers, like his Kansas statistics, have been&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/14/us/kris-kobach-voter-fraud.html?r-&_r=0" style="text-decoration-line: none;">debunked</a>, what’s missing is the context or the larger number, the denominator if you will: that is, how many people voted legally in all the years cited? In other words, how pervasive is this problem? What is its real magnitude in the real world of voting?Kobach, pretending to be authoritative, then cited&nbsp;<a href="https://thf-legal.s3.amazonaws.com/VoterFraudCases.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">figures</a>&nbsp;that also have been pedaled by the Heritage Foundation's von Spakovsky. “The voter fraud commission has&nbsp;revealed: 938&nbsp;convictions for voter fraud since the year 2000,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/01/03/exclusive-kris-kobach-voter-fraud-commission-being-handed-off-to-dhs-will-no-longer-be-stonewalled-by-dems/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">he said</a>. “Fewer than 1 in 100 cases ends in a conviction. In Kansas, alone, there are 127 known cases of non-citizen aliens registering to vote. In 21 states, there were 8,471 cases of double voting discovered.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The answer is it is a trifle. That's because that well over&nbsp;<a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/turnout.php" style="text-decoration-line: none;">half a billion people</a>&nbsp;have voted in federal elections alone since 2000, which means the 938 figure is close to a once-in-a-million occurrence.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">&nbsp;Nonetheless, the absence of an authoritative federal agency tracking this activity and issuing authoritative reports that are respected by legislatures and the courts, perpetuates Kobach’s propaganda. Its absence continues to serve as a red-state pretext to overly police voting—as seen in Trump’s Thursday tweets.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach Wants ICE to Vet New Voters?</font></strong></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">That fabricated backdrop for imposing new restrictions on voting takes us to what’s new and potentially insidious about Kobach’s latest gambit. He wants the Department of Homeland Security to take responsibility for preventing “non-citizen aliens” from voting. Just like voter fraud, there is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2013/oct/30/league-women-voters-florida/league-women-voters-says-homeland-security-warned-/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">no authoritative federal database</a>—even at DHS—listing every American citizen. Their database is designed to ensure welfare recipients are entitles to their benefits; but it is not a list of every U.S. citizen.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>That deficiency creates an opening which right-wingers like Kobach, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp and Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner have sought to exploit</b>—and have exploited—to game the process of voting to up the GOP’s chances of winning. Because DHS’s citizenship database is incomplete, it cannot confirm the citizenship of every new person registering to vote. That omission was exploited by Kemp to delay processing tens of thousands of new voter registrations in 2014. After that November, almost all of those registrations were approved; but not for the election those Georgians wanted to vote in.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">When Detzner tried to force Florida county election offices to use DHS’s citizenship data to purge voter rolls—initially claiming, like Kobach, that there were hundreds of thousands of illegally registered voters—local officials balked and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article2087729.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">forced him</a>&nbsp;to back down. Later, it was revealed that there were fewer than 100 questionable registrants among Florida's 10 million-plus registered voters.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why would Republicans focus on proof of citizenship in order to vote? Because, as the Brennan Center reported in 2006 and updated in&nbsp;<a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/evidence-impact-documentary-proof-citizenship-requirements" style="text-decoration-line: none;">a report</a>&nbsp;last summer, an estimated 7 percent of eligible voters don’t have such documentation, typically a birth certificate or passport. In other words, adding proof of citizenship to register will reduce participation in elections. (Think of it as a barrier at the starting line of the process, just as stricter state voter ID requirements is a barrier at the finish line.)</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“A&nbsp;<a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/download_file_39242.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">nationwide survey</a>&nbsp;by the Brennan Center in November 2006 found that 7 percent of the citizen voting age population, or 13 million people, did not possess documents that would prove their citizenship,” the Center’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/evidence-impact-documentary-proof-citizenship-requirements" style="text-decoration-line: none;">July 2017 report</a>said. “The rate is twice as high among citizens earning less than $25,000 per year. Women who changed their name upon getting married are especially likely to lack the relevant documents: A third of voting-age women don’t have proof of citizenship that reflects their current name.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In other words, making proof of citizenship a new requirement before getting a ballot will mostly hurt likely Democrats.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bad Data as a Partisan Tool</font></strong></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans also know that the use of incomplete citizenship data can be used to stymie voters on Election Day. That's because it is a tool to do pre-emptive voter roll purges, in which inactive voters, especially in blue epicenters, can be disproportionately purged or removed from voting in the next election without reregistering.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That’s not a paranoid scenario. The Supreme Court will later this month hear a case over that very issue from Ohio, where GOP Secretary of State Jon Husted took advantage of two contradictory sentences in the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to purge tens of thousands of mostly Democratic voters from his state’s three biggest cities.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-votingrights-ohio-insight/use-it-or-lose-it-occasional-ohio-voters-may-be-shut-out-in-november-idUSKCN0YO19D" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Reuters' reporters analyzed</a>&nbsp;the purge and found it was mostly aimed at Democrats. Here again, the GOP saw and seized on a legal ambiguity and used data to tilt the process.&nbsp;</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The reason Kobach and Trump’s commission was so bent on adding a new proof of citizenship standard is it benefits the GOP in many ways. First, as the Brennan Center noted, 7 percent of otherwise eligible voters don’t have the paper documentation.(Today people sign their name on registration forms as an oath under penalty of perjury; these Republicans say that's not good enough.) Beyond that, knowingly turning to sloppy data-mining to additionally delay new registrants further helps the GOP by thwarting grassroots registration drives. And using bad data to imprecisely target infrequent voters for selective purges also helps them.&nbsp;&nbsp;</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Voting Wars Continue</font></strong></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s a good thing that media scrutiny and public criticism of Trump’s election commission shut down that sham panel. But it was only one means to an end that is still in the GOP’s sights. Indeed, just this week it was revealed thst the Justice Department asked the U.S. Census to include&nbsp;<a href="https://www.alternet.org/immigration/trumps-doj-has-audacious-new-project-suppress-vote" style="text-decoration-line: none;">a question on citizenship</a>, citing a need to use that information to better enforce the Voting Rights Act.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach and his ilk will do anything to subvert the process of voting for Democrats and non-whites. They’ve burrowed into the nooks and crannies of the law and process to exploit ambiguities and contradictions. Just watch what they will try to do in the months ahead—not just with baseless voter fraud accusation, but with screening for citizenship. As they wrap themselves in the flag, look at their data-mining. They know it’s shoddy and going to yield huge numbers of false positives, and that’s just what they want.</font></p><div wibbitz="embed-main-player" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="bio-new body_news-politics" style="width: 630px; line-height: 22px; height: auto; border-top: 3px solid rgb(223, 223, 218); clear: both;"><div class="author-bio"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Steven Rosenfeld&nbsp;</font></p></div></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">kobach917</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right-wing media's new voter fraud "proof" is even more asinine than usual</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Research ››› September 8, 2017 3:34 PM EDT ››› ZACHARY PLEAT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Right-wing and fringe media outlets and figures, including Kris Kobach, vice chairman of the Trump administration’s election integrity commission, are citing a Washington Times article about several thousand New Hampshire voters using out-of-state driver’s licenses to register to vote to bolster conservative claims of fraud and say that Republicans may have actually won the state. But journalists and election experts shot down these claims of voter fraud and explained that New Hampshire’s voter ID law permits out-of-state driver’s licenses to be used as proof of identity when voting, an option that college students often exercise.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sarah Wasko / Media Matters</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conservative and fringe media figures: Out-of-state driver’s licenses used to vote in New Hampshire prove voter fraud against Republicans</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wash. Times used data of voters registering with out-of-state driver’s licenses in New Hampshire to promote conservative claims of voter fraud. A September 7 Washington Times article published information released by a New Hampshire Republican showing that “more than 6,500 people registered to vote in New Hampshire on Nov. 8 using out-of-state driver’s licenses” to bolster conservative claims of voter fraud. While admitting that these statistics “don’t prove those accusations,” the Times wrote that “they do corroborate them,” citing further data that more than 5,000 of those voters haven’t yet obtained a New Hampshire license or vehicle registration:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More than 6,500 people registered to vote in New Hampshire on Nov. 8 using out-of-state driver’s licenses, and since then the vast majority have neither obtained an in-state license nor registered a motor vehicle.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Conservatives say the state’s same-day registration is an invitation for fraud because of loose proof-of-residence rules.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Hampshire House Speaker Shawn Jasper, a Republican, issued the numbers Thursday based on inquiries he made to the Department of State, which oversees elections, and the Department of Safety.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since Election Day, Republicans have charged that a significant number of nonresident Democrats, principally from Massachusetts, flowed into New Hampshire to vote illegally, tilting a close race to their party.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Having worked before on a campaign in New Hampshire, I can tell you that this issue of busing voters into New Hampshire is widely known by anyone who’s worked in New Hampshire politics. It’s very real. It’s very serious. This morning, on this show, is not the venue for me to lay out all the evidence,” White House policy adviser Stephen Miller told ABC News in February.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though Mr. Jasper’s findings don’t prove those accusations, they do corroborate them.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[...]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Hampshire law gives drivers 60 days upon establishing residence to obtain a state license.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But more than 80 percent of voters who registered on Nov. 8 using out-of-state driver’s licenses, or 5,313 of them, neither had a state license nor registered a motor vehicle almost 10 months later. [The Washington Times, 9/7/17]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Breitbart.com’s Kris Kobach cited the data in the Wash. Times article as “proof” of “fraudulent votes” in New Hampshire and claimed Hillary Clinton and Sen. Maggie Hassan may have fraudulently won the state. Kris Kobach, Kansas’ secretary of state, vice chairman of President Donald Trump’s election integrity commission, and a paid Breitbart.com columnist, cited the Washington Times article as “proof” of voter fraud in New Hampshire in his September 7 column:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It has long been reported, anecdotally, that out-of-staters take advantage of New Hampshire’s same-day registration and head to the Granite State to cast fraudulent votes. Now there’s proof.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to statistics released by the Speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, on the date of the general election in November 2016, there were 6,540 same-day registrants who registered to vote in New Hampshire using an out-of-state driver’s license to prove their identity. In and of itself, that doesn’t prove that any fraud occurred – theoretically, each of those individuals could have been someone who recently moved to the State and had not yet had time to get a New Hampshire driver’s license. According to New Hampshire law, a new resident has 60 days to obtain a New Hampshire driver’s license.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So if those 6,540 voters were bona fide New Hampshire residents, they would get their driver’s license no later than January 7, 2017. However, the numbers tell a very different story. It turns out that, as of August 30, 2017 – nearly ten months after the election – only 1,014 of the 6,540 same-day registrants who registered with an out-of-state license had obtained a New Hampshire driver’s license. The other 5,526 individuals never obtained a New Hampshire driver’s license. And, of those 5,526, only 213 registered a vehicle in New Hampshire.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So 5,313 of those voters neither obtained a New Hampshire driver’s license nor registered a vehicle in New Hampshire. They have not followed the legal requirements for residents regarding driver’s licenses, and it appears that they are not actually residing in New Hampshire. It seems that they never were bona fide residents of the State.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">5,513 is a big number – more than enough to swing two very important elections. The closest major election was the contest between incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte and challenger Maggie Hassan (D). Hassan won the election by a razor-thin margin of 1,017 votes. Those 5,313 fraudulent votes were more than enough to swing the election. If 59.2 percent or more of them went for Hassan, then the election was stolen through voter fraud. That’s likely, since the surrounding states are Democrat strongholds.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s also possible that New Hampshire’s four electoral college votes were swung to Hillary Clinton through illegal voting by nonresidents. Clinton won New Hampshire by only 2,732 votes. If 74.8 percent of the 5,513 fraudulent votes were cast for Clinton, then the presidential election in New Hampshire was tipped as well. [Breitbart.com, 9/7/17]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FoxNews.com: “Out-of-staters may have won New Hampshire for Clinton.” A September 8 FoxNews.com article cited the Washington Times report, saying the data it included “could potentially call into question the validity of the New Hampshire results for Nov. 8, when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton outpolled Republican nominee Donald Trump by a mere 2,736 votes.” [FoxNews.com, 9/8/17]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gateway Pundit: “VOTE FRAUD: More Than 5,000 Out-of-State Hillary Voters May have Tipped New Hampshire Against Trump.” Right-wing fringe website Gateway Pundit cited the Washington Times story to scream “VOTE FRAUD” in the headline of a September 7 post, which claimed: “It is well known that people are bussed in to vote in New Hampshire. This is why the Democrats are fiercely working to stop any investigation into vote fraud and are working to prevent any type of voter I.D. laws. Strict laws would have tipped New Hampshire in Donald Trump’s favor.” [The Gateway Pundit, 9/7/17]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WND: “New Evidence Backs Trump Vote-Fraud Claim.” Conspiracy theory website WorldNetDaily cited the Washington Times story in a September 7 post to claim, “The discovery that more than 6,000 people used out-of-state driver’s licenses to vote in New Hampshire last November bolsters Donald Trump’s claim he lost the state because thousands of Massachusetts residents came in to vote.” [WorldNetDaily, 9/7/17]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Drudge Report: “PAPER: 5,000 out-of-state voters may have tipped NH…”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Follow</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DRUDGE REPORT @DRUDGE_REPORT</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">PAPER: 5,000 out-of-state voters may have tipped NH... http://bit.ly/2xeG05E&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2:15 PM - Sep 7, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Photo published for More than 5,000 out-of-state voters may have tipped New Hampshire agai</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More than 5,000 out-of-state voters may have tipped New Hampshire agai</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More than 6,500 people registered to vote in New Hampshire on Nov. 8 using out-of-state driver's licenses, and since then the vast majority have neither obtained an in-state license nor registered a m</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">washingtontimes.com</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;175 175 Replies &nbsp; 1,184 1,184 Retweets &nbsp; 1,297 1,297 likes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Infowars’ Jerome Corsi: “MORE EVIDENCE OF DEM VOTER FRAUD.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Follow</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jerome Corsi @jerome_corsi</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ALERT: 5,000 non-resident New Hampshire presidential voters from MA cost TRUMP NH http://go.shr.lc/2wbFlgD &nbsp;MORE EVIDENCE OF DEM VOTER FRAUD</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">3:45 PM - Sep 7, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Photo published for More than 5,000 out-of-state voters may have tipped New Hampshire agai</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More than 5,000 out-of-state voters may have tipped New Hampshire agai</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More than 6,500 people registered to vote in New Hampshire on Nov. 8 using out-of-state driver's licenses, and since then the vast majority have neither obtained an in-state license nor registered a m</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">washingtontimes.com</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;37 37 Replies &nbsp; 435 435 Retweets &nbsp; 433 433 likes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">National Review’s John Fund: “Thousands of suspect out-of-state votes could have swung New Hampshire to Hillary last year.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Follow</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">John Fund @johnfund</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thousands of suspect out-of-state votes could have swung New Hampshire to Hillary last year. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/7/voter-fraud-alert-over-5000-new-hampshire-presiden/ …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">11:38 AM - Sep 7, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Photo published for More than 5,000 out-of-state voters may have tipped New Hampshire agai</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More than 5,000 out-of-state voters may have tipped New Hampshire agai</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More than 6,500 people registered to vote in New Hampshire on Nov. 8 using out-of-state driver's licenses, and since then the vast majority have neither obtained an in-state license nor registered a m</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">washingtontimes.com</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;12 12 Replies &nbsp; 50 50 Retweets &nbsp; 49 49 likes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Anti-immigrant hate group leader and National Review’s Mark Krikorian: “NH Senate election appears to have been stolen by @SenatorHassan with fraudulent votes.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Follow</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mark Krikorian ? @MarkSKrikorian</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">NH Senate election appears to have been stolen by @SenatorHassan with fraudulent votes. http://bit.ly/2wLG6S0&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">9:24 PM - Sep 7, 2017</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Photo published for Kobach: It Appears Out-of-State Voters Changed Outcome of New Hampshire U.S. Senate Race</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach: It Appears Out-of-State Voters Changed Outcome of New Hampshire U.S. Senate Race</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's long been reported anecdotally that out-of-staters take advantage of New Hampshire's same-day registration to cast fraudulent votes. Now there’s proof.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">breitbart.com</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;5 5 Replies &nbsp; 40 40 Retweets &nbsp; 46 46 likes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Twitter Ads info and privacy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But that's not voter fraud. New Hampshire’s voter ID law permits out-of-state licenses for proof of identity, and many people never bother updating their licenses</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">New Hampshire voter ID law: “A driver’s license issued by any state or the federal government” will “satisfy the identification requirements” for voting. The website for New Hampshire’s secretary of state includes the text of the state’s voter ID law (accessible in PDF format), which clearly states that out-of-state driver’s licenses are acceptable forms of identification to prove a voter’s identity:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The following forms of identification bearing a photograph of the voter shall satisfy the identification requirements of paragraph I: &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">(1) A driver's license issued by any state or the federal government. [New Hampshire secretary of state website, accessed 9/8/17]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ACLU Voting Rights Project Director Dale Ho on Wash. Times article: “What a joke. Under NH law, someone who moves in from out of state (e.g. a college student) can vote w/ no duty to get a NH license.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">....</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/did-steve-bannon-and-breitbart-deploy-gop-vote-suppressor-kris-kobach-distract-new</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Why did Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the national voice of the Republican’s toxic effort to hijack elections by rigging the voting process, spread out a pathetic and immediately debunked big lie about thousands of illegal voters in New Hampshire last November—an allegation that was debunked last winter by none other than Donald Trump’s first campaign manager Corey Lewandoski?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach’s tirade was swiftly slapped down. The headline from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law’s blog delivered the gist: “Kobach Discovers College Students Live in College Towns.” The Washington Post’s David Weigel tweeted, “In one hour, I found four legit NH voters whom Kobach accused of being fraudulent.” Going deeper, Philip Bump, his Post colleague, said Kobach was unfit to co-chair Trump’s presidential commission on election integrity and every media outlet knows by now he is a serial liar on this topic.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“What I’m saying is that the arguments Kobach presents about fraud in New Hampshire—and I recognize the significance of what I’m about to write—should have been too far afield even for Breitbart,” wrote Bump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That’s the clue. Kobach’s screed was published on Breitbart News on September 7, the same day the New York Times put online its Friday above-the-fold front-page blockbuster, “To Sway Vote, Russia Used Army of Fake Americans: Flooding Twitter and Facebook, Imposters Helped Fuel Anger in Polarized U.S.” by Scott Shane.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Steve Bannon, President Trump’s former campaign CEO and ex-White House strategist, is back at the helm of Breitbart, where he pledged “anyone who stands in our way, we will go to war with.” It may be a coincidence that Kobach’s piece arrived on the same day as Shane’s expose. But it also may be Bannon’s propagandistic hand diverting press attention with Kobach's click-bait garbage from deepening disclosures on Russian meddling that helped Trump. &nbsp;&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Times report described “a cyberarmy of counterfeit Facebook and Twitter accounts, a legion of Russian-controlled impostors whose operations are still being unraveled” that was behind 2016’s barrage of anti-Hillary Clinton content posted last year. When Bannon became Trump’s campaign CEO, he didn’t just bring a savvy understanding of online media along with white nationalist values; he brought the cutting-edge online analytics developed by hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. His tools targeted voters in key states in similar ways to what the Times expose describes as Russian meddling.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bannon is possibly using a willing Kobach to deflect attention and change the topic in a media environment that’s always looking for easy controversies. Russian meddling, the hijacking of Facebook and Twitter accounts to create and enlarge hyper-partisan echo chambers, and similarities between how the Trump campaign and Russian agents operated, are complex stories to report, and as Shane notes, are “still being unraveled.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In contrast, having Kobach change the subject of illegal electioneering from Russian meddling to 5,000-plus people he falsely accuses of illegally voting in New Hampshire—blocking a Trump victory and election of another Republican senator—is not merely recycling voter fraud clichés that would appeal to Trump’s base and inflame moderates and the left. It’s a deft tactic in the pro-Trump propaganda war that Bannon promised. It has been working, as Kobach was quickly beaten up in the press by reporters on the election beat and by tweeting election experts (which Kobach predicted would happen in his piece).</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach may be all too willing to play the role of a martyr for the Republicans writ large or for a president who could always appoint him to a federal post if he loses an upcoming race for Kansas governor. He has a penchant for using sloppy analysis to jump to conclusions that anyone who is not a loyal Republican, such as the New Hampshire college students, must be an illegal voter.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/kris-kobachs-breathtakingly-dishonest-claim-about-voter-fraud-in-new-hampshire/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/activism/trump-has-whos-who-vote-suppressors-working-keep-gop-majority-2018</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/us/politics/trump-voter-fraud.html</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">President Trump on Thursday named Kris W. Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who has pressed for aggressive measures to crack down on undocumented immigrants, to a commission investigating vote fraud, following through on his unsubstantiated claim that millions of “illegals” voted for his Democratic rival and robbed him of victory in the national popular vote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Kobach, who has championed the strictest voter identification laws in the country, will be the vice chairman of the commission, which will be led by Vice President Mike Pence and is expected to include about a dozen others, including state officials from both political parties, said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the deputy White House press secretary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Trump signed an executive order on Thursday creating the commission, which Ms. Sanders said would have a broad mandate to review policies and practices that affect Americans’ confidence in the integrity of federal elections. Marc E. Lotter, Mr. Pence’s spokesman, said that voter suppression would be among the topics studied by the commission, which he said would take a wide-ranging look at problems at the state and national levels. But the order makes no mention of suppression or voting restrictions, specifying only “improper” or “fraudulent” registration and voting as issues to be explored.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats and civil rights groups condemned the panel as a taxpayer-funded witch hunt, and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a legal request to the White House for records showing “concrete evidence” of fraudulent voting that would warrant the creation of such a commission.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Continue reading the main story</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“President Trump is attempting to spread his own fake news about election integrity,” said Dale Ho, the director of the A.C.L.U.’s Voting Rights Project. “If the Trump administration really cares about election integrity, it will divulge its supposed evidence before embarking on this commission boondoggle.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The commission was created at a tumultuous time in the White House, after Mr. Trump’s abrupt&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">firing on Tuesday of James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director, who had been leading an investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. United States intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia worked to sway the election to Mr. Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ms. Sanders said the group would produce a report for Mr. Trump next year on “system vulnerabilities that lead to improper registrations and voting.” Its roots lie in Mr. Trump’s own long-festering grievances and his conviction that illegal voting — including ballots cast by people who were registered to vote in multiple states, were not citizens, or were impersonating people whose names had remained on voting rolls after they died — reduced his margin of victory.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is no evidence to support Mr. Trump’s claims, which have been discredited repeatedly by fact-checkers, that millions of people voted illegally in 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a candidate, Mr. Trump repeatedly raised doubts about the integrity of the American voting system. After winning the election, he told members of Congress privately that three million to five million undocumented immigrants had voted illegally for Hillary Clinton, costing him the popular vote. And he promised to begin a major investigation.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Voting officials in both parties and academics across the country have long rejected the notion that fraudulent voting is widespread, finding instead that it is a sporadic and uncommon occurrence that has had no discernible effect on election outcomes. Mr. Trump’s own lawyers concluded as much about the 2016 contest, asserting in legal filings that it was “not tainted” as they sought to block recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There are problems in the registration system that don’t translate into fraud, there are sporadic and very rare instances of fraud, and voter impersonation fraud is the rarest of all,” said Nathaniel Persily, a professor of political science at Stanford who served as the research director of the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration in 2012.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The notion that there is widespread voting by undocumented immigrants or other ineligible voters has been studied repeatedly and found to be false,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Kobach’s influential position on the panel intensified the controversy over its creation, particularly among immigration advocacy and civil rights groups, as well as Democrats who said they feared he would use the perch to try to prevent minority voters from casting ballots.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Selecting Kris Kobach as vice chair reveals exactly the kind of discriminatory witch hunt the American people can expect from this commission,” said Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California and the House minority leader. “The president’s ‘election integrity’ commission is clearly intended to accelerate the vile voter suppression efforts in states across the nation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Kobach was the driving force behind a Kansas law requiring new voters to produce a passport, a birth certificate or naturalization papers as proof of citizenship. He worked last year to disqualify the state and local votes of thousands of people who did not meet those criteria. He has advocated the proof-of-citizenship requirement at the federal level as well, alleging rampant voter fraud without producing proof of a widespread problem.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Mr. Kobach dismissed the criticism of him as a “silly reaction” and said he had no preconceived ideas of what the commission would find. He argued that there had been no previous national effort to gather “hard data,” rather than survey-based research, to quantify voting problems.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“If there’s no such thing as voter fraud, or voter fraud is insignificant, then the commission will be able to confirm that,” Mr. Kobach said in an interview. “What are they afraid of? Why do they not want to know these numbers?”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ms. Sanders said the commission would also include the Republicans Connie Lawson, the secretary of state of Indiana, and Kenneth Blackwell, who formerly held that post in Ohio, as well as two top Democratic election officials: William M. Gardner of New Hampshire and Matthew Dunlap of Maine. Christy McCormick, a Republican member of the nonpartisan U.S. Election Assistance Commission appointed by President Barack Obama, has also been selected to serve on the panel.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The president’s committed to the thorough review of registration and voting issues in federal elections, and that’s exactly what this commission is tasked with doing,” Ms. Sanders said. “The commission will review policies and practices that enhance or undermine the American people’s confidence in the integrity of federal elections and provide the president with a report that identifies system vulnerabilities that lead to improper registrations and voting.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Civil rights groups reacted with alarm to the creation of the task force, arguing that Mr. Trump’s own claims of illegal voting by immigrants suggested that his intent was to work to restrict the voting rights of minorities.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Sherrilyn Ifill, the president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, called the commission “a thinly veiled voter suppression task force,” adding that it was “designed to impugn the integrity of African-American and Latino participation in the political process.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democratic lawmakers said the commission was ill-conceived at best and a potential front for discriminatory policies at worst.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Instead of focusing on the myth of voter fraud, the president should be looking at ways to make it easier for eligible Americans to vote, given how difficult it is for some individuals to vote in this country,” said Senator Benjamin A. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said the president was “chasing a unicorn” with taxpayer money and “perpetuating the dangerous myth that widespread voter fraud exists.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2013/jun/17/kobach-says-he-considering-filing-charges-against-/</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">cf youtube</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">EKA — Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said today he is considering filing criminal charges against immigration reform advocates who protested on his home's porch over the weekend. Those who helped organize and participated in the protest said nothing improper happened.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Reports indicated that anywhere from 100 to 300 people participated in the protest at Kobach's home in western Wyandotte County on Saturday. Video of the event showed people standing on Kobach's porch and in the driveway chanting pro-immigration slogans and leaving pairs of shoes that they said represented the shoes of fathers who have been deported because of Kobach's anti-immigration policies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach, a Republican who has built a national profile pushing tough illegal immigration laws, called the protesters a mob and said they were trying to intimidate him.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach, his wife and their young daughters were not home at the time. "If my daughters had seen 200 people coming up the driveway, it would have been very scary for them," Kobach said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"We are looking into what charges will be filed," he said. "There are a variety of charges, a number of statutes that apply," he said, mentioning criminal threat, criminal terrorism, and littering.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He said neighbors called police, who arrived and were on the scene when the protesters dispersed.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Louis Goseland, of Sunflower Community Action, which organized the protest, said the Wichita-based group did nothing illegal. He said police who were there gave no warnings but just wanted to make sure no one was blocking the street.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Goseland said the protesters weren't trying to intimidate Kobach and no angry rhetoric was used. He said they were making a statement in opposition to his policies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In November, about 50 people rallied outside Kobach's secretary of state office in Topeka. Several tried to meet with Kobach, but Kobach's spokeswoman met them downstairs from his office and told them that Kobach wouldn't meet with them because his schedule was full and he didn't conduct immigration-related business in his state office. Kobach has often said he works on anti-illegal-immigration issues, often for other states, on his own time.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Goseland said Kobach lists his law office address as his home address, so the group decided to protest outside his home.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Kobach said that didn't give protesters the right to come onto his porch.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In an interview with Fox News today, Kobach said the incident should serve as a reminder of the need for Second Amendment gun rights. But Kobach told the Lawrence Journal-World he was not implying he would have used a gun against the protesters.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">see palast best democ</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Donald Trump’s campaign manager said Friday that a source of the Republican’s unfounded allegation that millions voted illegally in the 2016 presidential election is Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kellyanne Conway, the Trump-Pence campaign manager who has continued to help the president-elect during the transition, made the comment on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The president-elect has been talking to different people, including Kris Kobach of Kansas, about voting irregularities or the number of illegal votes that may have been cast,” Conway told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “And I believe that he bases his information on that.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There is no evidence that there were millions of illegal votes. Zero,” Stephanopoulos replied.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“There’s also no evidence that a recount is going to change the results in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania,” Conway said, referring to Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s recount efforts in those states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrat Hillary Clinton leads Trump by more than 2 million in the nationwide popular vote.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Trump won the presidency with more than 300 projected Electoral College votes. The Electoral College is the state-by-state tally used to determine who wins the presidency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump wrote in a tweet Sunday.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach, a vocal supporter of the president-elect, said Wednesday that he supports Trump’s claim, despite offering no evidence of mass voter fraud happening in the 2016 election.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I think the president-elect is absolutely correct when he says the number of illegal votes cast exceeds the popular-vote margin between him and Hillary Clinton at this point,” Kobach said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach then tried to back up his claim by citing a survey of the 2008 presidential election. The analysis he cited Wednesday has been widely criticized and debunked by both political scientists and the Harvard-run group that collected the data used in the analysis.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">rnla off bs:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...5/4/2016:Kobach gets another conviciton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Secretary of State Kris Kobach on Wednesday secured his fourth voter fraud conviction in a case against a Wichita man accused of double voting in Kansas and Colorado at least twice – and Kobach said he plans to file more cases soon. Wichita man pleads guilty in Kansas voter fraud case The Wichita Eagle, May 4, 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4/28/2016: Another double voter.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to a news release, Michael L. Hannum received the maximum fines for violation of Kansas voting laws. Hannum pleaded guilty on Thursday to one count of advance voting unlawful acts and two counts of voting without being qualified. He was fined a total of $5,500 for the misdemeanor violations. Kansas Man Convicted for Double Voting WIBW News Now, Apr 28, 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4/27/2016: School board election fraud.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Two people face voter fraud charges stemming from the Elizabeth school election last fall in which they allegedly filled out applications for absentee ballots for voters who did not exist or for people who were not eligible to vote, authorities said today. 2 charged with voter fraud in Elizabeth school board election Newark 35, Apr 27,2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4/22/2016: Another Vote Fraud Conviction in Kansas.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Randal Kilian, 62, pleaded guilty Thursday in Ellis County District Court to a misdemeanor for illegally voting in both Kansas and Colorado and agreed to pay a $2,500 fine, The Wichita Eagle reported. As part of the plea, two companion charges were dropped. Kobach wins 2nd conviction in double-voting prosecution Lawrence Journal-World, Apr 22,2016...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Secretary of State Kris Kobach on Wednesday secured his fourth voter fraud conviction in a case against a Wichita man accused of double voting in Kansas and Colorado at least twice – and Kobach said he plans to file more cases soon.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Stay tuned. We expect that we will be filing some additional cases in the very near future,” Kobach said in an interview after Ron Weems pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts in Sedgwick County District Court and agreed to pay $5,500 in fines.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weems, 77, is the latest Kansan to be convicted of election crimes since the Legislature granted Kobach’s office prosecutorial authority over such allegations last July.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weems was registered to vote in Wichita and Teller County, Colo., and did so in both states in the 2012 and 2014 general elections, leading to his criminal charges.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Cases of three other Kansans accused of double voting have reached similar conclusions – with misdemeanor convictions agreed to in plea deals and fines ranging from $500 to $5,500.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As of Wednesday, a fifth case, filed in Sherman County against Lincoln Wilson, was headed to trial, Kobach said. Charges against a sixth Kansan were dropped last month.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Double voting is likely to remain the … most frequent form of voter fraud that we prosecute going forward because it occurs with regularity and because it’s one of the kinds of fraud we can’t prevent with proof of citizenship and photo ID,” Kobach said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The fines are “exactly what I wanted to see in cases like this when I made the case before Kansas Legislature that this authority was needed,” he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“A $5,000 fine is very significant, and hopefully something no one would want to have to pay.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weems on Wednesday morning pleaded guilty to two counts of voting without being qualified and one count of knowingly marking or transmitting more than one advance ballot. In return, Kobach’s office dismissed the two most serious charges against him – both election perjury, which are felonies – involving accusations that he unlawfully signed a Kansas poll book affidavit in the November 2012 and 2014 general elections.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wichita attorney Jim McIntyre, after Weems’ plea hearing, called his client’s double voting “inadvertent.” He said Weems opted to end the case with a plea rather than continue with what might have been a lengthy prosecution, in part, because of his age.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weems won’t face jail time or probation, McIntyre said, but agreed to pay a total fine of $5,500 – $2,500 each for two of the counts and $500 for the third. And he can seek expungement of the convictions after three years, he said.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Weems’ voting registration address in Kansas and the mailing address on his Colorado registration match up to a small industrial building near the Intrust Bank Arena. He registered to vote in Sedgwick County in 1980 and in Colorado in 2003, records show.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His guilty plea came prior to his scheduled preliminary hearing in case.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach, in an e-mailed statement after Weems’ plea, said the voter fraud prosecutions “demonstrate our commitment to ensuring that Kansas has the most secure elections in the country.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The three other Kansans convicted under his prosecutorial authority are:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Steven K. Gaedtke, 60, who in December agreed to pay a $500 fine after pleading guilty to one misdemeanor count alleging he voted in both Johnson County and in Arkansas in 2010; charges against his wife, Betty, were dropped because the signature on her absentee ballot and her actual signature didn’t match.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Randall Kilian, 62, who last month agreed to pay a $2,500 fine after pleading guilty to one misdemeanor count alleging he voted in both Ellis County and in Colorado in 2012.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">? Michael L. Hannum, 64, who last week agreed to pay a total of $5,500 in fines after pleading guilty to three misdemeanor counts alleging he voted in both Johnson County and in Nebraska in 2012.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amy Renee Leiker: 316-268-6644, @amyreneeleiker</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article75545277.html#storylink=cpy</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rumor has it that even though he seemed to be reacting in response to questions from the press this week, Donald Trump has wanted to launch his “voter fraud” investigation ever since he realized he lost the popular vote by a huge margin — and people inside the administration were desperately trying to talk him out of it. I have no way of knowing whether this is true, but Trump has made it clear since the election that he believes there was massive fraud in November:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Follow</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Donald J. Trump ? @realDonaldTrump</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">12:30 PM - 27 Nov 2016</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp; 53,946 53,946 Retweets &nbsp; 163,627 163,627 likes</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For the record, there’s no evidence that systematic voter fraud exists. None. Nonetheless, Trump repeatedly made the claim the election was “rigged” during the campaign, eventually saying that he would accept the election results — if he won. He even lied about that. He won, but he still won’t accept the results.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's obvious that this obsession with voter fraud in the face of winning an election is another aspect of Trump’s bottomless narcissism. From what he said in his interview with David Muir on ABC, he believes that the problem only exists in places he didn’t win. He told Muir that every one of the alleged 2 million to 3 million illegal votes went to Hillary Clinton. But it’s important to recognize that Trump is felicitously playing into the hands of right-wing operatives who have been working to suppress the votes of Democratic constituencies for years. And they are very excited about this new “investigation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of Trump’s advisers on immigration, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, has reportedly been encouraging Trump to initiate this investigation. He told the Wichita Eagle on Wednesday:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I’ve advised [Trump] on the issue of voter fraud in multiple forms. I’m not the only one, but he’s been very interested in finding ways to reduce voter fraud.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I know that he is interested in investigating the issue on a national scale, but I also know that he would like to see the Justice Department launch specific investigations where there is real serious, specific evidence of voter fraud.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There seems to be a plan to focus this “voter fraud” investigation on the big liberal states and urban areas that do not vote for Republicans. Indeed, this is something the right wing has been trying to do for years and it was that effort that led to one of the greatest political scandals of the George W. Bush administration: the U.S. attorney scandal. You may recall that this was all about trying to force federal prosecutors to pursue phony voter fraud cases in Democratic states, often against Democratic officials. When these prosecutors refused, they were fired and replaced.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I’ve written about Kobach for Salon before, both when he was a somewhat obscure figure in the conservative movement and again when he ascended to the highest levels of national politics. He has two missions in life, and they’re tied together. The first is to suppress the votes of Democrats and the second is to curb immigration. The Republicans see both of these goals as essential to their ability to win in the future since their base of white conservative voters is shrinking. Trump’s motives are simpler, as are his supporters': They believe immigrants and American-born people of color are cheating at the ballot box in order to gain “goodies” from the federal government, at the expense of hardworking real Americans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Kobach is not the only person pushing these two interconnected issues. There is an entire political industry devoted to it, from sophisticated election attorney networks like the Republican National Lawyers Association to grassroots organizations like True the Vote. And there are certain “experts” who have been around for a long while, pushing the issue whenever the opportunity presents itself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of them is a man with the striking name of Hans von Spakovsky. Those who follow voting issues are very familiar with him from his time in the Bush administration’s Department of Justice voting section, where he worked to undermine the Voting Rights Act and played fast and loose with ethical rules, as amply documented in a piece by Dahlia Lithwick at Slate. Von Spakovsky was serving as a recess appointment to the Federal Election Commission at the time and up for consideration as a permanent member. The Democratic Senate refused to confirm him, and not just because of his ethical lapses. He is a zealous activist for vote suppression all over the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He, too, has an attitude that often reveals his underlying motivations. He recently spoke with Breitbart News:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Their attitude towards any voter fraud prosecutions has always been: if the defendants are black, well, you must be doing it for racist reasons,” he noted. “Remember, we saw that in the New Black Panther story out of Philly in 2008, when Eric Holder came in and immediately dismissed the voter intimidation case against them, despite the overwhelming evidence that the Black Panthers had been intimidating voters and poll watchers. It was dismissed by the Obama Justice Department because they didn’t believe that black defendants should be prosecuted. They don’t believe in the race-neutral enforcement of the voting and election law.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The New Black Panther case was another cynical attempt by the right wing to turn the tables on Democrats and the Obama administration to show that African-Americans are the real racists. It was absurd but made for good copy and continued to provide cover for conservatives who seemed to see vote fraud in every urban neighborhood where black or brown people lived.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This week von Spakovsky wrote an op-ed for Fox News with fellow voter-fraud obsessive John Fund of the National Review, lauding President Trump for his decision to investigate. They relitigated the tiresome New Black Panther story and accused the Obama-Holder Justice Department of encouraging nonexistent systematic voter fraud by refusing to force states to purge voters from the rolls, quoting the same Pew study that Donald Trump cites as his expert source on the subject. (The author of the study has repeatedly made it clear that he did not find evidence of voter fraud. They keep citing it anyway.) In particular, they &nbsp;cited California as being a hive of fraudulent voter activity that requires federal intervention.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s unknown at this point who will be heading Trump’s “investigation” or what form it’s likely to take. (It’s always possible that more rational White House aides can talk the president out of this foolhardy and wasteful boondoggle.) But Kobach is definitely advising him informally and you can be sure von Spakovsky stands ready to help in any way he can, along with dozens of others who have been working on this so-called issue for many years. Their calling is keeping people from voting, and Donald Trump has given these zealots a new lease on life.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heather Digby Parton</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/inside-trumps-bogus-investigation-voter-fraud-lies-gops-long-crusade-keep-people</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Rumor has it that even though he seemed to be reacting in response to questions from the press this week, Donald Trump has wanted to launch his “voter fraud” investigation ever since he realized he lost the popular vote by a huge margin — and people inside the administration were desperately trying to talk him out of it. I have no way of knowing whether this is true, but Trump has made it clear since the election that he believes there was massive fraud in November: >For the record, there’s no evidence that systematic voter fraud exists. None. Nonetheless, Trump repeatedly made the claim the election was “rigged” during the campaign, eventually saying that he would accept the election results — if he won. He even lied about that. He won, but he still won’t accept the results.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's obvious that this obsession with voter fraud in the face of winning an election is another aspect of Trump’s bottomless narcissism. From what he said in his interview with David Muir on ABC, he believes that the problem only exists in places he didn’t win. He told Muir that every one of the alleged 2 million to 3 million illegal votes went to Hillary Clinton. But it’s important to recognize that Trump is felicitously playing into the hands of right-wing operatives who have been working to suppress the votes of Democratic constituencies for years. And they are very excited about this new “investigation.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of Trump’s advisers on immigration, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, has reportedly been encouraging Trump to initiate this investigation. He told the Wichita Eagle on Wednesday:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I’ve advised [Trump] on the issue of voter fraud in multiple forms. I’m not the only one, but he’s been very interested in finding ways to reduce voter fraud.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I know that he is interested in investigating the issue on a national scale, but I also know that he would like to see the Justice Department launch specific investigations where there is real serious, specific evidence of voter fraud.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There seems to be a plan to focus this “voter fraud” investigation on the big liberal states and urban areas that do not vote for Republicans. Indeed, this is something the right wing has been trying to do for years and it was that effort that led to one of the greatest political scandals of the George W. Bush administration: the U.S. attorney scandal. You may recall that this was all about trying to force federal prosecutors to pursue phony voter fraud cases in Democratic states, often against Democratic officials. When these prosecutors refused, they were fired and replaced.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I’ve written about Kobach for Salon before, both when he was a somewhat obscure figure in the conservative movement and again when he ascended to the highest levels of national politics. He has two missions in life, and they’re tied together. The first is to suppress the votes of Democrats and the second is to curb immigration. The Republicans see both of these goals as essential to their ability to win in the future since their base of white conservative voters is shrinking. Trump’s motives are simpler, as are his supporters': They believe immigrants and American-born people of color are cheating at the ballot box in order to gain “goodies” from the federal government, at the expense of hardworking real Americans.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Kobach is not the only person pushing these two interconnected issues. There is an entire political industry devoted to it, from sophisticated election attorney networks like the Republican National Lawyers Association to grassroots organizations like True the Vote. And there are certain “experts” who have been around for a long while, pushing the issue whenever the opportunity presents itself.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One of them is a man with the striking name of Hans von Spakovsky. Those who follow voting issues are very familiar with him from his time in the Bush administration’s Department of Justice voting section, where he worked to undermine the Voting Rights Act and played fast and loose with ethical rules, as amply documented in a piece by Dahlia Lithwick at Slate. Von Spakovsky was serving as a recess appointment to the Federal Election Commission at the time and up for consideration as a permanent member. The Democratic Senate refused to confirm him, and not just because of his ethical lapses. He is a zealous activist for vote suppression all over the country.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He, too, has an attitude that often reveals his underlying motivations. He recently spoke with Breitbart News:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Their attitude towards any voter fraud prosecutions has always been: if the defendants are black, well, you must be doing it for racist reasons,” he noted. “Remember, we saw that in the New Black Panther story out of Philly in 2008, when Eric Holder came in and immediately dismissed the voter intimidation case against them, despite the overwhelming evidence that the Black Panthers had been intimidating voters and poll watchers. It was dismissed by the Obama Justice Department because they didn’t believe that black defendants should be prosecuted. They don’t believe in the race-neutral enforcement of the voting and election law.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The New Black Panther case was another cynical attempt by the right wing to turn the tables on Democrats and the Obama administration to show that African-Americans are the real racists. It was absurd but made for good copy and continued to provide cover for conservatives who seemed to see vote fraud in every urban neighborhood where black or brown people lived.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This week von Spakovsky wrote an op-ed for Fox News with fellow voter-fraud obsessive John Fund of the National Review, lauding President Trump for his decision to investigate. They relitigated the tiresome New Black Panther story and accused the Obama-Holder Justice Department of encouraging nonexistent systematic voter fraud by refusing to force states to purge voters from the rolls, quoting the same Pew study that Donald Trump cites as his expert source on the subject. (The author of the study has repeatedly made it clear that he did not find evidence of voter fraud. They keep citing it anyway.) In particular, they &nbsp;cited California as being a hive of fraudulent voter activity that requires federal intervention.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s unknown at this point who will be heading Trump’s “investigation” or what form it’s likely to take. (It’s always possible that more rational White House aides can talk the president out of this foolhardy and wasteful boondoggle.) But Kobach is definitely advising him informally and you can be sure von Spakovsky stands ready to help in any way he can, along with dozens of others who have been working on this so-called issue for many years. Their calling is keeping people from voting, and Donald Trump has given these zealots a new lease on life.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Heather Digby Parton</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/36760-focus-greg-palast-with-dennis-bernstein-trumps-gop-hitman-whos-stealing-your-vote</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Dennis Bernstein: Welcome back to our weekly Election Protection Bulletin with best-selling author Greg Palast. Let's start in Topeka, Kansas with its Secretary of State Kris Kobach. He's definitely going head to head with the ACLU there.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Greg Palast: Kris Kobach is spelled like Koch with a BA in the middle. He's the most influential Republican secretary of state in America - the Katherine Harris of 2016.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He's one of the very first governmental Republican supporters of Donald Trump. Anne Coulter has</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">said Trump should pick him as his running mate. This guy is an important cat.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What's he up to? He's “saving” America from an invasion of aliens - not from outer space, but from other nations, wading the Rio Grande to vote in American elections. He claims there is a mass incursion of illegal aliens coming to the US to vote for Hillary.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The federal government, despite a massive and costly hunt, has found almost no non-citizen has voted. (Florida’s campaign to stop alien voters netted a single conviction—an Austrian who registered Republican, while threatening the votes of 181,000.) Yet, Kobach’s envisioning the alien ships are there. To prevent this crime that doesn't happen, he's required anyone registering to vote in Kansas to prove their citizenship.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is not as easy as it sounds. A driver’s license doesn't count. A social security card doesn't count. Only naturalization papers, a passport, or an original birth certificate count. As a result, the state of Kansas has suspended the registration of 36,000 young people. [This doesn’t affect Kobach’s voters who have an average age of 115.]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is very effective at keeping out voters of color and young people. Not many poor Americans or people of color have passports. They have not just returned from their vacation in the Alps with their</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">passport in hand. Many people, including those who were born at home, cannot find their original birth certificate. This is crushing the voter rolls of the state of Kansas. Now it’s in Georgia as well.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DB: This has become a model for many states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GP: Kris Koback wrote SB 1070 for the state of Arizona, which was mostly thrown out by the courts as racist and unconstitutional. This guy is no foolish redneck bigot. He's a graduate of Harvard, Yale and Oxford.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A few years ago, Indiana was the first state to require a photo voter ID to vote. There was only that one state in 2006, and now 23 states require it. If Kobach gets away with requiring citizenship proof in Alabama, Kansas and Georgia, you can bet that coming soon will be North Carolina, Arizona, Florida and many others. They know what they are doing.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And dig this: It’s quite unusual that Kobach, as Secretary of State of Kansas, is still counsel, a lawyer, for a group IRLI, the Immigration Reform Law Institute, which is the legal arm of two allied groups called Numbers USA and FAIR. FAIR is the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has called a hate group. It was founded by John Tanton, who says</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the purpose of the group is to maintain a "European American majority."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach - while a lawyer for the hate group and Secretary of State of Kansas at the same time - has also been the lawyer for Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. (Arpaio was officially charged with racism by the US Justice Department.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Secretary of State of Kansas, Kobach is in charge of voting in Kansas— and the most influential Republican voting official in the US.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach has mounted a frontal assault on the federal voter protection, starting with the Motor Voter law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Under Bill Clinton, the US made a huge leap in the voter franchise - the biggest since the Voting Rights Act of 1965 - by enacting the Motor Voter Law. Now, when you get a driver's license, you fill out the attached form and you become a voter. Adding voter registration forms to the driver’s license</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">application has massively increased the reach of voter registration in America.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Republicans, especially Kobach, really hate it. They say the federal motor voter form does not require that you prove your citizenship. You need to be a citizen, sign a box saying you are a citizen and sign it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So Kobach said that if you register on the federal form, YOU CAN’T VOTE IN STATE ELECTIONS unless you register separately with your proof of citizenship.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The result: There are 36,000 young people in Kansas , especially young voters of color, whose state voting rights have been suspended. So Kansas literally has an official apartheid voting system.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DB: The ACLU filed a motion for summary judgment seeking to declare this as an illegal system based on dual registration. Where is this case going?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GP: There’s a terrible new twist.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach asked the federal government to make a special voter form for his state, and other white Republican-controlled states of Alabama and Georgia. The federal government and courts turned him down.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But then, one of his acolytes became the chief of the federal Elections Assistance Commission. Kobach’s man Brian Newby is now the Executive Director of the agency that’s supposed to protect our vote!</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Newby’s first act in office was to allow Kansas, Georgia and Alabama to have their own special voter</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">registration form—allowing those states to require proof of citizenship to vote. This may moot the ACLU's complaint because the federal form now includes this special extra hurdle for voters in those state to prove citizenship.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This is a devastatingly effective means to suppress the registration of new, young, minorities and low-income voters. So, the ACLU has sued the US agency as well. Weirdly (and thankfully), the US Justice Dept. is backing the ACLU against the federal government.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Then the League of Women Voters joined the ACLU to sue the federal agency. Kobach's response was to call the League of Women Voters the "Communist League of Women Voters." Reporters couldn't believe their ears, so he repeated, "The Communist League of Women Voters."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Is there really a danger non-citizens will flood the polling stations? The reason folks who are not citizens never vote is that the Motor Voter Form asks you to state if you’re a citizen — and makes it</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">perfectly clear that if you lie, you can go to prison for five years. People aren't going to risk going to prison for five years just to vote for school board, or even for president. There’s been no problem with this. Why would an alien without documents sign a form with their address? To make it easier for ICE to snap them up? It’s nuts. But Kobach won’t accept this. He demands a passport or original birth certificate or you don't get to register.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Consider the implications of this new voter form for November.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Georgia will be a swing state in 2016 and Alabama has a crucial Senate race this year. Blocking voters who can't easily prove they are citizens has killed registrations among young voters in these states.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Guess which way young people vote?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As an investigative reporter I follow the money. Who is behind this latest suppression tactic, the attack on voters as potential aliens?. Who is paying for Kobach?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A group called Numbers USA gave $100,000 to a little town called Farmers Branch, Texas. The town gave that $100,000 to Kobach to defend a racist law that was immediately thrown out by the courts. Numbers USA is funded by something called Donors’ Trust—which, in turn, is the funnel for the funds from the Charles and David Koch. So, where does Kris Kobach get his pin money? He gets it from the brothers Koch, through a chain of front organizations.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">DB: The Koch brothers say publicly they are stepping out of this election because they don't support Trump, so don't want any part of this. We assume they are not controlling the structure of the</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">election. But they are only talking about one candidate. Their hands are all over everything - who has the control, the power, and who has the right to vote in the future of this country, which is now a whiteminority.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">GP: Let's not fall for the jive. It's not whether they support Trump or not. The Koch brothers are putting $900 million - just short of a billion dollars - into this election. If it's not for the presidency, what is it for? It's very clear: If the Republicans lose just four senate seats - and they've got 24 seats up for grabs - the control of the Senate flips to the Democrats.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/right-wing/kris-kobach-architect-draconian-anti-immigrant-policies-joining-trumps-transition-team</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/architect-most-racist-law-modern-american-history-has-been-named-trumps-team</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">FAIR</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.splcenter.org/20161118/kris-kobach-lawyer-americas-nativist-movement</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no link</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">&nbsp;Kris Kobach has been a central figure in the nativist movement for more than a decade and is the architect of Arizona’s notorious “papers please” law as well as a series of other anti-immigrant statutes enacted by states and municipalities in the past decade.&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">He also has close ties to white nationalist leaders.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A Yale-trained lawyer, Kobach has served as counsel to the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) since 2004. IRLI is the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a group whose leaders have historical ties to white supremacists and eugenicists and who have made numerous racist statements.[1] He joined IRLI after a two-year stint as a White House fellow working in the U.S. Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft during the Bush administration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In consultation with former Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce in 2010, Kobach authored the infamous SB 1070 in Arizona, which the Supreme Court found largely unconstitutional in 2012. He was also instrumental in the passage of similar laws in other towns and states, including Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. The laws varied in scope but generally encouraged racial profiling of Latinos by local and state law enforcement and criminalized many aspects of undocumented immigrants’ lives. Most provisions of those laws have been overturned by federal courts or gutted by settlements in lawsuits filed by civil rights groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For nearly 15 years, Kobach has worked to enact a nativist agenda, often from within the government. As secretary of state in Kansas since 2010, he has continued to serve as legal counsel to IRLI. Here are highlights of his anti-immigrant activism:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a White House fellow working in the Justice Department beginning in 2001, Kobach shepherded a program requiring tens of thousands of Muslim and Middle Eastern visa holders to register with the government and be fingerprinted. The program, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) was operational until 2011, when it was shut down after drawing broad criticism for its racial profiling.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2002, Kobach wrote a memo for Ashcroft essentially outlining the policies that would become Arizona’s SB 1070. He argued that local and state police have the power to arrest undocumented immigrants for civil violations of immigration law.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Justice Department in 2002 reduced the number of Board of Immigration Appeals judges from 19 to 11, creating a backlog of cases that had disastrous consequences for immigrants. Kobach took credit.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach ran for Congress in Kansas in 2004, receiving $10,000 in campaign contributions from U.S. Immigration PAC, which was operated by FAIR founder John Tanton’s wife. Kobach had joined IRLI, &nbsp;FAIR’s legal arm, that year. Kobach lost the election in part because his opponent attacked him for his ties to FAIR, calling him a racist.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As senior counsel to the IRLI, Kobach sued the state of Kansas in 2004 over a law passed that year granting in-state tuition to high school graduates born to undocumented immigrant parents. The court rejected Kobach’s claims in 2006.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach co-wrote Arizona’s SB 1070 with former Arizona Senate leader Russell Pearce. The law passed in 2010 and, like bills in other places also drafted by Kobach, cost those states and cities millions in taxpayer funds and lost revenue. Arizona voters recalled Pearce, not only because of SB 1070’s failures but also for circulating racist emails among legislators.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach embraced birtherism in 2010 while campaigning for secretary of state in Kansas. Questions about President Obama’s birthplace are fair, he said at a rally, as long as Obama failed to release his “long-form” birth certificate.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2012, Kobach proposed banning “foreign law” as a policy position for the Republican National Convention, which adopted the language into its platform. As justification, Kobach claimed that “in cases involving either spousal abuse or assault or other crimes against persons, sometimes defenses are raised that are based in Shariah law."</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2014, Kobach spearheaded a program to purge voter rolls. The program, called Interstate Crosscheck, compiled a master list that included the names of one-seventh of all African-American voters in 27 states, whom officials alleged were under suspicion for voting twice in the same election, according to Al Jazeera America. Millions of the names were mismatched and the program ignored discrepancies.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach lobbied the Kansas Legislature in 2015 to give his office the power to prosecute voter fraud, making Kansas the only state in the U.S. to grant its secretary of state such powers. Kobach promised to stop “illegal” voters; after originally claiming he knew of 100 cases of double voting, he filed only six cases as of May 2016. Regardless, he told the Washington Post: “The reason we have to do this is a significant problem in Kansas and in the rest of the country of aliens getting on our voting rolls.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In October 2015, Kobach was a featured speaker at a “writers’ workshop” put on by The Social Contract Press, a racist publishing house that regularly publishes the writings of white nationalists. TSCP is a project of another foundation, U.S. Inc., created by FAIR’s Tanton.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2012, Kobach claimed he had not done any legal work for any organization that “expresses or supports racial discrimination.” However, FAIR has received $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund, an organization founded in 1937 by Nazi sympathizers. FAIR’s current president, Dan Stein, said in 1994 that immigration reform in the 1960s was “revengism” against whites and that its supporters wanted to “retaliate against Anglo-Saxon dominance.” He has claimed immigrants are “getting into competitive breeding.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[1] The SPLC has listed FAIR as a hate group since 2007. It was founded by Michigan ophthalmologist John Tanton, the founder and principal ideologue of the modern anti-immigrant movement in the United States. Tanton spent decades at the heart of the white nationalist movement and corresponded with former Klan lawyers, Holocaust deniers and leading white nationalist intellectuals. He also founded and operated The Social Contract Press, a racist publishing company. FAIR has accepted more than $1 million from the Pioneer Fund, a foundation devoted to proving a connection between race and intelligence. FAIR also has hired as key officials men who were active in white supremacist groups</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">http://www.mediamatters.org/shows-and-publications/fox-friends</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">11/16 partial grab; no link img:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Media Should Not Sanitize Trump Immigration Adviser Kris Kobach’s Extremism, Ties To White Supremacists</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kobach “Wrote The Book” On Muslim Registry And Was Behind Anti-Immigrant SB 1070</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Research ››› November 21, 2016 4:30 PM EST ››› DINA RADTK</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A reported architect behind President-elect Donald Trump’s extreme immigration proposals, radio host and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has received significant media attention following the announcement that he was joining Trump’s transition team. However, media outlets are failing to note his ties to hate groups and nativist organizations and his attacks on immigrants and LGBTQ people.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kris Kobach, Architect Of Draconian Anti-Immigrant Policies, Joining ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">www.rightwingwatch.org/.../kris-kobach-architect-of-draconian-anti-immigrant-polici...&nbsp;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">1 day ago - Kris Kobach, the secretary of state of Kansas and a leading architect of ... As the Wall Street Journal notes, Trump “has vowed to cancel ...</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Meet the anti-immigrant zealot who told Donald Trump how to pay for ...</font></div><div>
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