On paper, Kris Kobach is the kind of guy you’d like to marry your daughter. An Eagle Scout who graduated summa cum laude and first in his department at Harvard, went on to get M.A. and Ph.D. in Politics from Oxford and a law degree from Yale, Kobuch also did missionary work in Uganda, clerked for a federal judge, and obtained a White House Fellowship to work for the Attorney General of the United States.
On the other hand, the Minority Leader of the Kansas Senate Anthony Hensley once stated that Kobach is “the most racist politician in America today,” and with plenty of justification. Kobuch is the brains behind both Arizona SB 1070 and Alabama HB56, the two most notorious anti-immigrant bills to be produced in this country in recent decades. He’s the country’s most famous proponent of bogus voter fraud theories and has boasted of successful efforts to suppress the minority vote both during his time as chairman of the Kansas Republican Party and as Kansas’s Secretary of State.
He’s also a classic John Bircher-style nutcase who has referred to both the American Civil Liberties Union and the League of Women Voters as “communists.”
Donald Trump seriously considered Kobach to serve as his Attorney General and also as his Secretary of Homeland Security:
It was later reported that Kobach was being considered for Secretary of Homeland Security, and was photographed carrying a document entitled “Department of Homeland Security, Kobach Strategic Plan for First 365 Days” into a meeting with Trump. This plan reportedly included a register of Muslims as part of a suite of proposals, which also included the “extreme vetting” of immigrants.
So, that’s all a prelude to discussing this:
President Trump plans to name Kris W. Kobach, the Kansas secretary of state who has pressed for aggressive measures to crack down on undocumented immigrants, to a long-promised commission to investigate voting fraud in the United States, a White House official said on Thursday.
The commission is the official follow-through on Mr. Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that several million “illegals” voted for his Democratic rival and robbed him of a victory in the national popular vote.
Mr. Kobach, who has championed the strictest voter identification laws in the country, will be the vice chairman of the commission, which is to be led by Vice President Mike Pence and is expected to include about a dozen others, including state officials from both political parties, the official said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an announcement expected later on Thursday.
Officials said Mr. Trump would sign an executive order on Thursday creating the commission, which they said would have a broad mandate to review policies and practices that affect Americans’ confidence in the integrity of federal elections. Improper or fraudulent registrations, voting fraud and voter suppression are among the issues the commission will study, they said.
As a former county coordinator for ACORN/Project Vote efforts to boost minority participation in our elections, you can imagine how I feel about Kris Kobach who clearly thinks I should have been prosecuted for my efforts. I’m offended by the very existence of the commission which is an affront to the most minimal grasp of reality, so naming Kobach as the co-chair is little more than confirmation that the whole effort is a fraud on the American public.
No one in American life has less credibility with the left on voting issues than Kobach. And it certainly doesn’t help that he’s not only seen as a racist but as perhaps the most effective racist in the country. Trump doesn’t care about that at all and perhaps even enjoys sending the message that he doesn’t care.
So, here’s what we’ll get:
One adviser said the group would spend about a year drafting a report that would take a comprehensive look at election issues that have preoccupied state officials for many years.
They’ll spend a year looking for ways to justify efforts to curtail minority voting, and they’ll do it based on the delusions and lies of the president:
Civil rights groups also reacted with alarm to the impending creation of the task force, arguing that Mr. Trump’s own comments about illegal voting by immigrants suggested that his intent was to work to restrict the voting rights of minorities.
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.”
…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 the 2016 contest.
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 that between three million and five million undocumented immigrants voted illegally for Hillary Clinton, costing him the popular vote.
I don’t worry when some racist at the end of the bar starts spouting off with his conspiracy theories. I worry when the president is a racist and he appoints very effective racists to important positions so that they can do racist things. That’s what has happened here.
