While Donald Trump talks about rigging the elections, Kris Kobach, (R-KS) has done everything possible to try and ensure Republican victories as Secretary of State, including efforts to disenfranchise voters or scare them away.
Kris Kobach’s latest play to change federal election support however, may have just blown up in his face. When Brian Newby assumed his role as Executive Director of the US Election Assistance Commission, thanks to Republican support, Kobach thought he had the ally he had always wanted.
The Associated Press points out Newby’s role may end up being a scandal he cannot get away from fast enough.
cjonline.com/…
WICHITA — When Brian Newby took the helm of a federal election agency, he left behind an unfolding scandal in Kansas where he was having an affair with a woman he promoted in his previous job and used her to skirt oversight of their lavish expenses, prompting a local prosecutor to investigate, according to emails obtained by The Associated Press.
The blockbuster revelation by the Associated Press points to an election officer who had his own plans for those around him.
The emails — coupled with hundreds more obtained from the Kansas secretary of state’s office through a separate open records request — portray a rogue election official who berated employees and deliberately bypassed supervision. They also document a toxic workplace created by his affair with then Assistant Election Commissioner Jessica White, an apparent violation of county policy on intimate relationships with subordinates.
In a June 2015 exchange from his work email to her personal address, the then-married Newby told White: “You, my little lover, are so wonderful.” In graphic language, Newby also describes a sex act he wishes he was doing with her, “scheming and dreaming with you into the night.”
Brian Newby had his star rise as a Kobach appointee to Johnson County Election offices, and in his new role in the federal election office had sought to make voting difficult for millions of Americans.
www.msnbc.com/…
On Friday, Brian Newby, the new executive director of the Election Assistance Commission (EAC), wrote in letters to Kansas, Georgia and Alabama officials that the agency had changed the state-specific instructions given to voters in those states to accompany the federal voter registration form that the EAC administers. The new instructions say that would-be voters must present proof of citizenship when they register.
Kansas’ Republican Secretary of State, Kris Kobach — an ally of Newby, a former Kansas county election administrator — has for years been pressing the EAC to green-light that change. In 2011, Kobach, a former GOP operative and zealous backer of strict voting and immigration laws, helped pass a state law that required proof of citizenship from those registering to vote. But the EAC had twice rejected Kobach’s request to change the instructions given to Kansas voters on the federal form, saying the change would violate federal voting law, which aims to make registration as easy as possible. In late 2014, a federal court likewise ruled against Kobach.
As fast as Newby’s star seems to have risen, it is currently crashing back to earth. The sex scandals, as well as changes within the practice of elections, make up a bombshell piece of reporting by the associated press.
At the state level, this again points out a problem of a Secretary of State who has been allowed to run roughshod over the legislature and governor. At the national level, though, this is direct contradiction of any claims by Donald Trump, and others, that the election system is being used against Republicans.
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