by Celia Llopis-Jepsen, Kansas News Service
How far must people go to prove they’re really Americans when they register to vote?
Does simply swearing to the fact — at risk of perjury, prison, fines or deportation — protect democracy from non-Americans subverting an election?
Or are cheaters common enough that only documents — say a birth certificate or a passport — go far enough to protect the integrity of the ballot box?
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and, a 2011 law he lobbied lawmakers for, demand the documentation.
Critics — including the League of Women Voters and a handful of Kansans who’ve been denied voter registration at driver’s license offices — contend the rules steal their right to vote.
They point to the federal 1993 National Voter Registration Act, or Motor Voter Act. It lets voters swear that they’re citizens. Liars risk perjury.
Now in federal court, Kobach faces off against lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union to test whether voter fraud is common enough to warrant the strict registration rules in Kansas, or whether doing so squelches the votes of tens of thousands to protect against extraordinarily rare cases of foreigners casting ballots.
Go to http://kcur.org/post/trial-tests-kansas-voter-registration-rules-and-kobachs-fraud-claims for a story that explains what’s at stake in the trial (hint: Democrats gain when registration rules are loose, Republicans get an advantage when they’re tight).
Below is a summary of what’s been happening in the courtroom (and if you want to follow on Twitter, @Celia_LJ is filing moment-by-moment):
On Tuesday, March 6
The Kansas side
In his opening arguments, Kobach said that Kansas had been letting non-citizens onto the voting rolls before it tightened registration requirements.
“All you had to do was check a box,” he said. “That was it.”
Kobach said Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike voted in 2011 to fix that.
He dismissed claims that voter fraud is rare. Rather, Kobach said it’s hard to uncover cases because no comprehensive list exists that Kansas can check to see who is, and who isn’t, a citizen.
“We can only see a tiny percentage” of fraud, he said. “We know that it is in the thousands, and we believe the best estimate is that it is over 18,000 (non-citizens) currently on the Kansas voter rolls.”
The secretary of state said Kansas is bending over backward to make voter registration convenient for legitimate voters. It accepts proof of citizenship over fax, text message, mail, in person or through email.
The plaintiffs
The ACLU called Kansas’ demands for copies of birth certificates or other documents out of proportion to reality.
“Enforcing this law is like taking a bazooka to a fly,” attorney Dale Ho said, “and the collateral damage in this case has been thousands of Kansas voters.”
Enforcing this law is like taking a bazooka to a fly.
Kansas’ requirements are the strictest law in the country, the ACLU said, because Arizona, the only other state with an active law similar to the one in Kansas, lets people register with their driver’s licenses.
The ACLU said Kobach has only presented evidence of fewer than three non-citizens registering to vote in Kansas per year since 2016. It also said there’s evidence that happens through administrative errors, such as DMV employees mistakenly offering registration to unqualified people.
Lawyering
Kobach and an attorney from his office, Sue Becker, got off to a rocky start when they were blocked from showing to the court — and asking witnesses questions about — multiple documents that Kobach’s team hadn’t formally introduced as evidence.
“Evidence 101 — not going to do it,” Judge Julie Robinson said. “We’re going to follow the rules of evidence.”
Among these would-be submissions were new statistics on Kansas voter registration applications that Kobach emailed to the ACLU lawyers at 10:45 p.m. Monday night.
Kobach’s side repeatedly stumbled on other rules, too, leading the judge to cut off some of their lines of questioning to the witnesses.
In one instance, the judge shut down queries in which the secretary of state suggested a camera crew might be following around a Kansan who says he was blocked from voting in 2014. That, Kobach said, could reflect motivation to exaggerate.
In another instance, Becker appeared not to understand the rules for referencing depositions in court. She stood and took directions from the judge.
This will be updated throughout the trial.
Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service, a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio covering health, education and politics. You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ. Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished at no cost with proper attribution and a link back to the original post.
See more at http://kcur.org/post/daily-developments-kansas-motor-voter-v-kobach-trial.
