Below, Kris Kobach campaigned with the president at the Topeka [...]]]>
Below, Kris Kobach campaigned with the president at the Topeka rally to become governor of Kansas.
Kris Kobach is of course a long-time hero to the friends of law and borders. He was a major shaper of Arizona’s SB1070 law that sought to allow states to enforce immigration law if the federal government was unwilling to do so. See Time magazine’s 2012 interview, Q&A: Kris Kobach, the Legal Mind Behind Arizona’s Immigration Law.
Kobach, who is the current Kansas Secretary of State, spoke about his top issues at the rally — immigration enforcement and preventing voter fraud:
Spare audio:
]]>KRIS KOBACH: I want to give President Trump credit for something really important — it’s something he and I have worked together on; we’ve worked for on a number of things, but the most important is stopping illegal immigration. I’m so glad that America has a president who gets it and knows that illegal means illegal.
I want to tell you a quick short story about illegal immigration. I began working on this issue when I was an adviser to John Ashcroft at the time of 9/11. I was there during 9/11, and we all remember how the world changed, but let me tell you something that you may not know. All nineteen hijackers came into this country legally on temporary visas. Five of them became illegal mostly by overstaying their visas; four of those five were stopped by state and local law enforcement for speeding violations. They were illegally in the country at the time, but the cops didn’t know it and so they didn’t make an arrest even though they could have if they’d had that information at their fingertips. Now get this — three of those four illegal aliens that they could have arrested were pilots, so if they had made those arrests they could have stopped 9/11 from happening.
Those numbers have shaped my career: the gravity of that has never left me, and I will not and I know President Trump will not allow our immigration system to be used again as a weapon to harm the American people. Stopping illegal aliens is not just about jobs; it’s not just about crime; it’s about our nation’s security, and that comes first.
And illegal immigration’s at issue in this campaign for governor. Did you know that my opponent Laura Kelly voted to continue allowing sanctuary cities in Kansas? She did, she did. Look it up it’s in the roll call vote. When I’m governor, God willing, sanctuary cities will end in this state.
Laura Kelly also voted to allow illegal aliens to continue getting welfare benefits. So while we’re struggling to pay our electricity bill, to pay higher taxes, we’re meanwhile giving taxpayer dollars to illegal aliens. Is that fair? It’s time to stop illegal aliens from getting taxpayer dollars. It’s time to put Kansans first, not illegal aliens.
There’s another big issue, there’s another big issue that President Trump and I have both been concerned about — voter fraud. Because of the law that I drafted and the Kansas Legislature passed, Kansas now has the most secure election laws in America. Photo ID creates trust in our elections. If you need a photo ID to cash a check or to buy the kind of Sudafed that works, you probably ought to need one to go cast a vote in an election. And proof of citizenship too, proof of citizenship — every time an alien votes, every time an alien votes it cancels out the vote of a US citizen. You know the Democrats and their socialist friends claim they care about voter cancellation or voter suppression, but they don’t care about US citizens votes being cancelled out. It’s time for other states to require proof of citizenship too, just like Kansas.
The need for photo ID in elections is clearly a result of open borders. The Democrat complaint of racism is a political response.
It’s the same thing with air travel. Taking a plane used to be like riding the bus, only with seat assignments. Passengers weren’t frisked and x-rayed; they just got on the plane. Flying was often a pleasant experience, not a horrible ordeal as it often is today.
Immigration has welcomed millions who hate America and the current security state has arisen as a result.
]]>Texas’ voter ID law is “unexplainable on grounds other than race,” federal judge rules, CBS News, April 13, 2017
BEAUMONT, Texas — A federal judge has again struck down Texas’ voter ID law, ruling it is actually meant to keep minorities from voting, and the state is expected to appeal.
Eighty-six-year-old Floyd Carrier served his country in the Army, but in 2012, he wasn’t allowed to do his civic duty. He was denied the right to vote at the polling place near his Beaumont, Texas, home.
He says it felt like he wasn’t a citizen anymore. “I wasn’t a citizen no more, I wasn’t,” he said.
Carrier says he wasn’t allowed to vote because of a voter ID law passed in Texas in 2011 that required one of seven types of approved picture IDs to cast a ballot.
For more than 50 years, Carrier had used his Veterans Administration card that had no picture — but suddenly it wasn’t enough.
In 2012, federal judges ruled that the law violated the Voting Rights Act, but Republican lawmakers fought repeatedly in federal court to keep the law in place, saying it prevented in-person voter fraud.
But again this week, a federal judge ruled that the law was “unexplainable on grounds other than race.”
“This new strict requirement is based on an idea that there is voter fraud in Texas and we’ve debunked that many times over,” says Janai Nelson of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott responded on Twitter, writing “Yes, TX will appeal the erroneous VoterID ruling by a liberal Obama judge & we should win. Supreme Court has already approved VoterID.”
Yes TX will appeal the erroneous VoterID ruling by a liberal Obama judge & we should win. Supreme Court has already approved VoterID #tcot https://t.co/3okKiwDX4Y
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) April 12, 2017
Floyd Carrier now has a valid picture ID and hopes no one else is denied the right he fought to protect. “To me, you have your right to go vote,” Carrier says.
If this latest ruling stands, there are consequences. Texas’ elections could go back under federal oversight.
On Thursday, former Congressman and 2008 Presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo sounded off with a pretty good rant with his agreement that Democrat voter fraud is indeed widespread and common.
TOM TANCREDO: “In fact, talking about the possibility of widespread voter fraud — it is a distinct possibility. It happens everywhere. It happened in my own election, it’s happened in Colorado over and over again. We have counties here that turned in more votes, Democrat counties that turned in more votes than there were people living in those counties. It’s happened on numerous occasions. We’ve had illegal aliens voting, and when a Republican poll watcher tried to challenge that, they were thrown out of the of the voting office.
And that’s just here: its massive, it’s all over the country. Well you know, there’s very few prosecutions — well right, yeah, that’s true. It’s because they don’t prosecute. It’s like how many people in New York get a ticket for jaywalking? Well not many probably, but how many jaywalk? Thousands, right, it’s because nobody does prosecute that you’ve got massive voter fraud. The reason why they fight like crazy to stop the voter ID requirement of a driver’s license is because they want voter fraud. There is no other reason. You and I both know it’s BS to say, well those people — it’s racist and they’d be upset. Oh my god, they’d have to go to their safe place and their quiet place, and we’d have to get them counseling because they were asked for a voter ID. Hogwash.”
The present Secretary is no ordinary political suit; he is a one-man brain room [...]]]>
With the epic battle for the Senate taking up media space, one might have missed a less publicized victory for the position of Kansas Secretary of State even though liberals brandished their long knives against the incumbent Republican, Kris Kobach (pictured).
The present Secretary is no ordinary political suit; he is a one-man brain room for authoring immigration enforcement legislation and policy strategies like voter ID to combat voter fraud.
The successful pursuit of those two issues has earned Kobach uber-enmity from the far left, since lefties like open borders and frequent voting by ineligible persons. Liberals additionally claim that voter fraud is a non-existent problem (wrong) and therefore should not be prevented.
After being elected Kansas Secretary of State in 2010, he remarked in an anti-Democrat two-fer, “I am going to be using my spare time trying to stop illegal immigration instead of playing golf.”
Because of his concerns about the threat to national sovereignty, Kobach has been attacked by the left with their sharpest poison pens. The New Republic called him “America’s Worst Republican” in September, while the Daily Kos dubbed him merely the “worst secretary of state in the nation”. In 2011, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote, “When Mr. Kobach Comes to Town: Nativist Laws and the Communities They Damage”.
These people really hate law and borders!
Nevertheless, Kobach prevailed, with 59 percent of the vote versus his opponent’s 41.
]]>Kris Kobach fends off challenger Jean Schodorf to win secretary of state race, Wichita Eagle, November 5, 2014
Secretary of State Kris Kobach fended off a tough challenge from Wichita Democrat Jean Schodorf on Tuesday night in a race that served as a referendum on the state’s proof-of-citizenship voting requirement.
With most of the state’s precincts reporting, Kobach held a comfortable lead over Schodorf.
“We’re going to continue to have the toughest security laws in the country to make sure our elections are fair,” Kobach said in his victory speech at the Capitol Plaza Hotel in Topeka. “Because you know, at the end of the day if any of these races are close, you’re going to want to know, you’re going to want to have the confidence that every single vote was cast by a legitimate voter. And he we have the confidence in Kansas.”
Kobach, who was joined by his daughters, Lillian and Reagan, thanked his volunteers for donating their time and shoe leather to knock on doors in the tough campaign.
“It’s very satisfying,” Kobach said afterward. “My opponent had some pretty harsh words for me, and in a race like this, it’s emotionally taxing and tiring. And it’s good when you come out on top.”
Schodorf, who watched the results privately, had not shown up at the Democratic Party watch party at Loft 150 over the River City Brewing Co. in Old Town before supporters began trickling out at about 9:45 p.m. She expected a long night, said her political and field representative, Marcus Williamson.
“We still have a lot of precincts that haven’t been officially reported,” he said. “We’re going to be watching those throughout the night.”
Kobach carried Sedgwick County – Schodorf’s home county – with 54 percent of the vote, according to final unofficial results.
In the coming legislative session, Kobach plans to push for prosecutorial power for the secretary of state’s office to enable him to prosecute suspected cases of voter fraud.
A former state Republican chairman and a prominent attorney, he was criticized for requiring proof of citizenship in order to register to vote, a policy that had left more than 21,000 prospective voters in suspended status ahead of Election Day.
Kobach has vigorously defended the policy, arguing that every time a noncitizen votes, it robs citizens of their votes. He also says that those on the suspended list can be removed from it as long as they provide the necessary documents, such as a birth certificate or passport, to their county election office.
“There’s not a single of one of those people that can’t register to vote. The fallacy that the Democratic Party is putting out there is that there’s any barrier,” Kobach said last week.
Schodorf voted for the policy as a member of the Kansas Senate, where she served as a Republican before losing her state Senate primary in 2012, but has criticized Kobach’s implementation and promised to make reducing the number of voters on the suspension list her top priority if elected.
“I want to make it as easy as I can for citizens to vote,” Schodorf said at a forum for black and Latino voters in Wichita last month. “I have plans so that (Kansas) will be number one (in the country) for voter turnout.”
Kobach’s impartiality as the state’s chief election officer has sometimes been questioned. His political action committee, the Prairie Fire PAC, sent out mailers attacking moderate Republicans ahead of the primary, and his controversial decision to keep Democrat Chad Taylor on the ballot for U.S. Senate despite his submission of a withdrawal letter was seen by some observers as an attempt to help U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, who is in a tight race against independent Greg Orman.
Kobach says his PAC spends money in support of candidates who support secure elections and has continued to defend his handling of the Taylor matter even after the Kansas Supreme Court ordered that his name be removed in a ruling that chastised Kobach for overstepping his bounds as secretary of state.
Russell Fox, a political scientist at Friends University, called Kobach a political lightning rod “for people to say, ‘Yeah, it’s this particular kind of conservatism, it’s this particular type of extremism, it’s this particular type of uncompromising purity that is ruining the party.’ ”
However, Kobach has led Schodorf in most polls – albeit by a narrow margin – and Fox expected him to keep his position even if Gov. Sam Brownback and Roberts lose their races. He said that many Republican voters who go for Orman or Democrat Paul Davis in the governor’s race will continue to check Republican boxes further down on the ticket.
“If there’s anyone in this state who should have this biggest target on his back and should be able to be beaten by his own party’s abandonment, you’d think it would be Kobach, and yet it’s not,” said Chapman Rackaway, a professor of political science at Fort Hays State University.
“Now some of that may simply be that the profiles of the other races, the high attention that’s been paid to the governor’s and Senate races, has pushed the secretary of state down in people’s minds,” Rackaway said.
Now Paul says preventing election fraud by insisting on voter identification is a bad idea. It seems [...]]]>
Now Paul says preventing election fraud by insisting on voter identification is a bad idea. It seems he met with some black pastors who convinced him that the requirement is offensive to them.
Are the pastors suggesting that black citizens are too lame to acquire the same sort of identification that is ubiquitous in American life today??
The nation has changed, as the diversity cheerleaders like to remind us. As a result of immigration plus technology, America is no longer the free and easy place it once was. One example is the need for government identification to do anything.
Meanwhile, in the nation as a whole, a voter ID requirement remains enormously popular, as shown by numerous polls. If there is a major issue with more widespread approval, I can’t think of it. Senator Paul is an idiot to blow off such a highly favored topic. He certainly gives libertarians a well-deserved bad name for their open-borders craziness.
● A July 2013 McClatchy poll found 83 percent of persons surveyed thought voter ID was a good thing, including 65 percent of self-identified “very liberal” respondents.
● A 2012 Rasmussen poll determined that 71 percent of voters believe voter ID should be required at elections.
● A 2012 Fox News poll ascertained that 70 percent of those queried thought voter ID laws are necessary.
● A March 2014 Rasmussen poll found that 78 percent of likely voters believe that proof of citizenship should be required in order to register to voter.
As usual, the New York Times likes to promote Democrat-lite Republican pols like Paul, giving this story a front-page spot on Saturday.
]]>Paul Diverges From His Party Over Voter ID, New York Times, MAY 9, 2014
MEMPHIS — Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky broke Friday with fellow Republicans who have pushed for stricter voting laws as a way to crack down on fraud at the polls, saying that the focus on such measures alienates and insults African-Americans and hurts the party.
“Everybody’s gone completely crazy on this voter ID thing,” Mr. Paul said in an interview. “I think it’s wrong for Republicans to go too crazy on this issue because it’s offending people.”
Mr. Paul becomes the most prominent member of his party — and among the very few — to distance himself from the voting restrictions and the campaign for their passage in states under Republican control, including North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin, that can determine presidential elections. Civil rights groups call the laws a transparent effort to depress black turnout.
Speaking here in a mostly black and Democratic city with its own painful history of racism, Mr. Paul said that much of the debate over voting rights had been swept up in the tempest of racial politics.
The senator has had his own struggles with civil rights issues, hedging at times on his support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And, notably, he did not on Friday denounce voter ID laws as bad policy or take back previous statements in which he had said it was not unreasonable for voters to be required to show identification at the polls. He says these laws should be left to the states. (Kentucky does not have a restrictive voter identification statute.)
Instead, in his comments, he suggested that Republicans had been somewhat tone deaf on the issue. In the last three years, the voting rights fight has extended to more than 30 states and taken on a more partisan tone. The measures that have passed or are under consideration vary. Some require that voters come to the polls with a birth certificate, passport or other proof of citizenship. Others would cut back on early voting.
The movement gained momentum last year after the Supreme Court struck down a central provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that had required mostly Southern states to get Justice Department approval before changing its voting laws. States moved quickly, and since the decision last June, about a dozen have passed laws creating stricter regulations for voting.
Few issues ignite such passion among the base of both parties. Democrats argue that the laws are intended to keep poor voters away from the polls because they often have difficulty obtaining identification. Republicans contend cheating is rife in today’s elections.
Mr. Paul was in Memphis for the Republican National Committee’s spring meeting, but beforehand, he sat down to discuss his views on voting rights, public education and antipoverty policies with a group of black pastors.
Afterward, in a news conference, Mr. Paul admitted he still had a lot of work to do. Sometimes, he said, his audiences tell him: “I like what you’re saying. I’m still not voting for you.” [. . .]
Earlier this week, the Rasmussen pollsters found that 73 percent of voters said requiring photo ID in elections is not discriminatory.
Interestingly, a look at the poll’s wording and breakdown [...]]]>
Earlier this week, the Rasmussen pollsters found that 73 percent of voters said requiring photo ID in elections is not discriminatory.
Interestingly, a look at the poll’s wording and breakdown of results shows strong opinion among Tea Party members. While 70 percent of registered voters overall thought that photo IDs are needed in elections to prevent fraud, 91 percent of Tea Party voters believed that idea.
]]>Fox News Poll: Most think voter ID laws are necessary, Fox News, April 18, 2012
Most Americans think voter identification laws are needed to stop voter fraud, according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday.
Overall, 70 percent of Americans say voter ID laws are needed to stop illegal voting. That’s far more than the 26 percent who see the laws as a hindrance to legal voting.
An overwhelming 87-percent majority of Republicans say voter ID laws are necessary to ensure only eligible voters participate in elections. Some 74 percent of independents and 52 percent of Democrats agree.
Click here to see the full results of the poll.
Democrats (44 percent) are four times as likely as Republicans (10 percent) to consider these laws an unnecessary deterrent to law-abiding citizens casting their ballot.
The poll was conducted in connection with a new documentary to air on Fox News Channel this weekend. Hosted by Eric Shawn, it’s called “Fox News Reporting: Stealing Your Vote.”
In their increasingly heated battle, many supporters and opponents of voter ID laws are accusing the other of acting in bad faith.
The poll finds 34 percent of voters believe supporters of voter ID laws are trying to “steal” elections by keeping eligible voters away from the polls. Yet more people — 50 percent — think opponents of the laws are acting in bad faith by trying to increase participation from ineligible voters. Some 17 percent think both supporters and opponents of voter ID laws are playing dirty.
The federal “Help America Vote Act” says all states must require identification from first-time voters who registered by mail and did not provide verification of their identification with their mail-in voter registration. Thirty-two states have passed voter identification laws that are broader than the federal mandates. Of these, nine states have passed the strictest legislation, which includes a requirement for voters to show a photo ID in order to vote.
A federal judge on Tuesday upheld the Arizona voter identification law that requires state voters to provide documents proving their identity before voting.
Earlier Fox polls found large majorities — 80 percent or more — favor requiring people to show a government-issued form of photo identification to prove U.S. citizenship before being allowed to vote.
The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 910 randomly-chosen registered voters nationwide and is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from April 9 to April 11. For the total sample, it has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
The trend has been for more states to enact photo ID [...]]]>
To the outside eye, the Obama administration does not seem adequately concerned about the potential for voter fraud in today’s elections, where some states do not require photo identification to cast a ballot, an activity which is at the heart of our representative government.
The trend has been for more states to enact photo ID laws for voting, but the current administration is more than unfriendly to voter ID. Last December, Attorney General Eric Holder called for more aggressive federal review of states’ voter identification laws. The AG has claimed that voter identification discriminates against minorities, but he is out of step with mainstream American opinion to believe so.
Interestingly, a similar poll last December showed that 69 percent of likely voters agreed that identification requirements don’t discriminate, so the administration is apparently losing the argument with the American people.
]]>73% Think Photo ID Requirement Before Voting Does Not Discriminate, Rasmussen Reports, April 16, 2012
Despite his insistence that voter fraud is not a serious problem, Attorney General Eric Holder was embarrassed last week when a video surfaced of someone illegally obtaining a ballot to vote under Holder’s name in his home precinct in Washington, D.C. Most voters consider voter fraud a problem in America today and continue to overwhelmingly support laws requiring people to show photo identification before being allowed to vote.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 64% of Likely U.S. Voters rate voter fraud at least a somewhat serious problem in the United States today, and just 24% disagree. This includes 35% who consider it a Very Serious problem and seven percent (7%) who view it as Not At All Serious. Twelve percent (12%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on April 12-13, 2012 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.