Republican's deceitful, manipulative, and thoroughly un-American attack on the voting process and its Gerrymandering efforts
Mar 15, 2018 22:08:20 #
The true Commies. 11 states have had their Republican districting plans quashed by Federal courts as discriminatory. They wanted to do away with fair elections by contrivance. Their voter-suppression efforts are no different, suffering defeat after defeat as discriminatory in federal courts. Kansas is central to understanding this Right Wing effort to end our Democratic process.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) is attempting to defend his proof-of-citizenship law in federal court, and it’s not going well. He and his legal team have repeatedly violated basic rules of evidence, causing the judge to raise her voice and reprimand them on multiple occasions. Now, in the past week, two of his prominent expert witnesses admitted there is no evidence to back up Kobach’s notorious claim that voter fraud swung the 2016 popular vote.
In November 2016, shortly after winning the electoral college but losing the popular vote, President Donald Trump claimed that three to five million fraudulent votes swung the election. Kobach quickly became his spokesperson, claiming repeatedly that academic studies backed up Trump’s claim.
"I think the president-elect is absolutely correct when he says the number of illegal votes cast exceeds the popular vote margin between him and Hillary Clinton at this point,” he told the Kansas City Star in November 2016.
In order to uphold his proof-of-citizenship law, Kobach has to convince the court that a substantial number of noncitizens are voting in, and potentially swinging, U.S. elections. To help make that claim, he called to testify as experts two allies whom he has relied on in the past to corroborate his claims about voter fraud. Hans von Spakovsky, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and former member of the Federal Election Commission, also sat on Kobach and Trump’s now-disbanded voter fraud commission. Jesse Richman, a professor of political science, has authored now-discredited reports about the scale of noncitizen voting in the United States and in Kansas in particular.
Richman, a political science professor at Old Dominion University, is one of Kobach’s star witnesses — and the foundation on which much of his case rests. Richman is famous for a 2014 paper in the journal Electoral Studies which claimed that between 38,000 and 2.8 million non-citizens voted in the 2008 general election.
But during a sworn deposition Richman sat for in the Kansas case, he repeatedly minimized the impact of noncitizen voting on elections. “The level of noncitizens participation is not high,” he said at one point.
Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) is attempting to defend his proof-of-citizenship law in federal court, and it’s not going well. He and his legal team have repeatedly violated basic rules of evidence, causing the judge to raise her voice and reprimand them on multiple occasions. Now, in the past week, two of his prominent expert witnesses admitted there is no evidence to back up Kobach’s notorious claim that voter fraud swung the 2016 popular vote.
In November 2016, shortly after winning the electoral college but losing the popular vote, President Donald Trump claimed that three to five million fraudulent votes swung the election. Kobach quickly became his spokesperson, claiming repeatedly that academic studies backed up Trump’s claim.
"I think the president-elect is absolutely correct when he says the number of illegal votes cast exceeds the popular vote margin between him and Hillary Clinton at this point,” he told the Kansas City Star in November 2016.
In order to uphold his proof-of-citizenship law, Kobach has to convince the court that a substantial number of noncitizens are voting in, and potentially swinging, U.S. elections. To help make that claim, he called to testify as experts two allies whom he has relied on in the past to corroborate his claims about voter fraud. Hans von Spakovsky, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and former member of the Federal Election Commission, also sat on Kobach and Trump’s now-disbanded voter fraud commission. Jesse Richman, a professor of political science, has authored now-discredited reports about the scale of noncitizen voting in the United States and in Kansas in particular.
Richman, a political science professor at Old Dominion University, is one of Kobach’s star witnesses — and the foundation on which much of his case rests. Richman is famous for a 2014 paper in the journal Electoral Studies which claimed that between 38,000 and 2.8 million non-citizens voted in the 2008 general election.
But during a sworn deposition Richman sat for in the Kansas case, he repeatedly minimized the impact of noncitizen voting on elections. “The level of noncitizens participation is not high,” he said at one point.
If you want to reply, then register here. Registration is free and your account is created instantly, so you can post right away.