130.11 - Outrage of the Week: Kansas moving toward two-tier voting rights

Outrage of the Week: Kansas moving toward two-tier voting rights

So having just looked at the financial side of the right wing's plan to turn the word "democracy" into a vapid slogan to be paraded out on special occasions to provide an opiate for the masses, let's check out some recent news on the voting side, on the efforts to make it ever harder for people to vote. This is the Outrage of the Week

The state of Kansas is planning on instituting a two-tier voter system, restricting what races you are allowed to vote in based on what kind of voter registration form you use.

The move is the brainchild of Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who wants to force people to provide proof of citizenship in order to register to vote. This, just to be clear, is to register; it's entirely separate from the demand to show photo ID at the polling place when you actually go to, as is increasingly true, try to vote.

The thing is, if you register to vote with a federal form rather than a state form, there is no requirement to prove citizenship. Instead, the person registering signs a statement swearing under penalty of perjury that they are a citizen.

That, of course, is not good enough for Kobach - who, by the way, was also a driving force behind Arizona's infamous SB 1070, the "your papers, please" ethnic-profiling law and ran for his present office on a pledge to stamp out “voter fraud” in Kansas before winning and then not being able to find any. In the present case, Kobach has sued the federal government to force it to include with the federal form the state's requirement to provide proof of citizenship in order to register.

Meanwhile, Kobach has sent a memo to all the state’s county election officials instructing them to keep track of which voters register with the federal form and which use the state form so that the former group can be limited to voting in federal-level elections and barred from voting in state or local races.

What's more, anyone who submits the state form without the demanded proof of citizenship will be barred from voting in any election until they do. As a result of this law, which went into effect on January 1, about 17,500 previously-registered voters are "in suspense"  - that is, have had their voting rights suspended.

Kobach calls that memo a contingency plan in case he loses in court. I call it a cynical, disgusting scheme because he knows he's going to lose, considering his "prove you're a citizen" law is under challenge and the Supreme Court has already struck down a similar law in Arizona. Kobach’s legal analysis of that decision is that it only applies to federal elections. Quoting him: “The federal government doesn’t have the authority to tell Kansas what to do in Kansas elections.”

Actually, unfortunately for him and happily for the right to vote, it does. The 14th and 15th Amendments provide more than enough legal backing to undo the legal sleight of hand Kobach is trying to pull off. So in the moderately long run, this particular scheme may well fail, although it's difficult to know how many people will have their right to vote stripped away or limited in the meantime.

But Kobach and the others of his ilk don't care about that. They shoot for the win, but for the moment at least they are happy even if all they succeed in doing is creating FUD - fear, uncertainty, and doubt - about their ability to cast a ballot in the minds of the people, the poor, the young, students, minorities, the people they want to keep from voting.

The battle for the right to vote goes on.

Oh, and as a footnote to this: State Rep. Jim Ward, who opposes the "prove it" law, says he once asked Kobach how voter registration workers should collect the documentation now needed to register under the new law. Kobach's answer: “Carry a copy machine with you.”

Which attitude pretty much tells you all you need to know about Kris Kobach's commitment to the right to vote.

Sources:
http://www.kansas.com/2013/10/04/3038825_kobach-laying-groundwork-for-two.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/09/the_rights_despicable_new_voter_suppression_scheme_two_classes_of_voters/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt