Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach delivered his report to the house committee on elections today regarding Cross Check and the potential move to make local elections partisan, and faced a few questions he may have hoped to avoid. Kobach tried to explain the benefits of Crosscheck to the elected officials, responding to Representative Brett Parker (D-Overland Park), “Well, since you care about elections..” an interesting aside considering the committee, focused exclusively on elections, should be something representatives cared about. And, through questions by both Democratic and Republican members, Kobach found out they cared a great deal — just not always for the kind of program he was offering.
Kobach contended that through Crosscheck and other outside validation methods, he had discovered at least 127 individuals who had illegally registered to vote. When pressed on how many had been prosecuted by Representative Alcala (D-Topeka), Kobach responded “2”. Kobach, however, followed up that the problem was simply “the tip of the iceberg” with as many as 18,000+ individuals illegally registered and voting in Kansas. Republicans and Democratic members seemed unsure of how the 18k number was reached when Kobach made a fairly stunning revelation- “We may never find the 18,000 illegal voters...” and suddenly, Kobach’s quest to purge the voter list of suspected bad guys became a witch hunt with no real conclusion.
“How many of the 127 people actually voted,” questioned Representative Parker — a key to evaluating whether or not a crime was committed. “Certainly less than half”, the response Kobach gave, led Representative Parker to make the next leap: “So, with less than 60 voting, in 105 counties, you’re talking about influencing 1 vote for every two counties.”
For Kobach, though, it isn’t the 127 he has currently identified, it is the potential of more, a great deal of other voters who are cheating the system in an effort to bring it down. The need for tight controls is such that errors may occur, but that’s OK. Brian Caskey, a member of Kobach’s office, pointed this out in testimony before the group, when asked about the differences between ERIC — another voter protection program, Caskey acknowledged that Crosscheck can result in false positives, and that because ERIC uses multiple points to verify before it turns over data, has a cost that CrossCheck does not have.
But what rate of false positives exist in comparison to the alarming rate, as Representative Parker pointed out, of 1 potential voter at the top end in every 2 counties in the state? Is the false positive greater or smaller than the rate of totally unverified bad voters?
With that, Representative Vic Miller (D-Topeka) began to think about the statistics being discussed and pivoted to the question that shut down the room: “Secretary of State Kobach, per our records, it appears so far all of the voters prosecuted have been Republicans. Isn’t that an anomaly? Is it odd that 100% of the voter fraud in this state is by Republican voters?” Kobach, answering that he hadn’t checked voter registration in his cases, said he preferred not to speculate. “Maybe,” contended Rep. Miller, “Republicans are genetically predisposed to voter fraud?” the shot, a jab at racist commentary in a town hall by Representative Alford (R-Ulysses) was quickly followed with, “that’s how ridiculous it sounds,”.
Kobach’s initial call to turn local municipality races partisan faced equal responses. Conservative Republican Kristey Williams (R-Augusta) asked, “how does this make sense,”.
That largely covers the day — where a Secretary of State proposes numerous programs that largely make “no sense,” and Kobach’s failure to articulate a firm reason why we should believe the future would lead to different results.