Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is fighting to keep and spread to other states the law he championed requiring people who are registering to vote to show documentary proof of U.S. citizenship. He claims this is necessary to prevent non-citizens from committing voter fraud. Yet between 2003 and the beginning of 2013, there were 30 proven instances of non-citizens registering to vote in Kansas—and only three instances when a non-citizen actually voted.
Compared with those three, some 37,000 people have had their voter registration forms held in a suspension file because they had not returned to show the required proof of citizenship necessary to complete the forms.
John Whitesides reports:
"It's created a system that is needlessly complex and very discouraging, particularly for young people," said Steve Lopes, head of the Johnson County Voting Coalition, which helps register voters. "Now people just say, 'Forget it, I'm not going to vote'."
Of the 16,775 people on a late-April suspense list obtained by Reuters, more than half were ages 17 through 21, and more than 60 percent were age 25 or under. [...]
About 41 percent were unaffiliated, more than the approximately 30 percent of registered Kansas voters who are unaffiliated. About 35 percent of those on the list were Democrats, compared to 24 percent of registered voters. Twenty-three percent were Republicans, compared to 45 percent of registered voters, according to a Reuters analysis of the data.
Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson ruled that Kansas cannot require people to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote at DMVs. That amounts to about 18,372 of the 37,000.
The ruling applies only to DMVs because the citizenship requirement clashes with the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, widely known as the “motor voter” law because it requires DMVs nationwide to give people a chance to register to vote when they apply for a driver’s license or appear in person to renew one. A key factor in Robinson’s ruling is that the law mandates “only the minimum amount of information” should be required to determine a person’s voter eligibility for federal elections.
Robinson issued a second ruling last Wednesday ordering Kobach to get a move on. Kobach had asked for a delay in carrying out the judge’s order on the grounds it would cause voter confusion and lead to “irreparable harm.” Though showing her impatience, Robinson ruled that she would extend the original two-week waiting period to carry out her original order another two weeks, until June 8.