Attention, Kansas voters: Be sure to never lose your ID during election season. Secretary of State Kris Kobach's big dream of requiring Kansas voters to show photo identification at the polls, and first-time registrants to prove citizenship, is sprinting toward reality.
The Associated Press reports that the Kansas House Elections Committee is poised for a vote on the measure by the end of next week. And the chairman, Olathe Republican Scott Schwab, says it has enough backers to earn the committee's endorsement. See, Kobach isn't demanding ID and proof of citizenship just from brown people ... at the polls, anyway. Hanging around outside the Home Depot is another matter.
The proposed law would make government-issued photo ID mandatory for
voters statewide and require everybody trying to register to vote in
the Sunflower State to flash citizenship documentation, such as a
passport or birth certificate. The latter requirement could be
especially burdensome, as the Wichita Eagle points out, for women who change their names
after getting married. They would need multiple citizenship documents.
In his delusional attack on voter fraud, the Eagle reports
that Kobach testified before the committee and cited voter ID laws in
Georgia and Arizona as examples of how they can be effectively
implemented. But Topeka Democrat Ann Mah was there to point out that the
Arizona law was struck down in court, and the Georgia law, which hasn't yet been
used, required federal approval. But, then again, Kobach has
never been worried by courts striking down laws.
It's probably a waste of digital ink to repeat this statistic, but what
the hell, Plog loves banging its head against the wall in an attempt to
disseminate facts. According to statistics from the Kansas Secretary of
State's Office, as of June 2009, there had been one
prosecuted case of voter fraud in the previous five years. Also
that year, there were two
cases of illegal immigrants voting. But it's clear by now that
nothing (not even "discovering" dead people voting, only to find them
alive and well) will convince Kobach that he's charging at windmills,
not at a voter-fraud epidemic.
Comments (0)