After SCOTUS defeat, Kansas should forget Kobach’s voter-fraud crusade — for good

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear Kris Kobach’s proof-of-citizenship voter registration law, can we please put this embarrassing episode of Kansas legislation behind us?

Or does Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt have more nonsense waiting in queue?

Schmidt is 0-for-2 in ridiculous legal maneuvers this month, after the high court also declined to hear a lawsuit seeking to overturn election results in four battleground states.

The attorney general shouldn’t have signed Kansas’ name to the bogus, baseless Texas lawsuit, and he shouldn’t have asked the Supreme Court to rule on Kobach’s racist bit of voter suppression, which repeatedly was struck down by lower courts.

Last Friday’s rejection prompted the state’s top prosecutor to declare it time to “put this election behind us.”

Let’s hope he and GOP lawmakers admit that it’s long past time to abandon their hostile and repeated attacks on people’s right to vote.

Kobach’s law, which required prospective voters to provide a birth certificate, passport or other documents proving their citizenship before they could register, caused more than 30,000 Kansas voters to go into a suspended registration status before the law was struck down in 2018.

And not just struck down. If you recall, a federal judge also ordered then-Secretary of State Kobach to take a remedial law school class after he embarrassed himself during proceedings and was found in contempt.

This is the leader Schmidt wanted to emulate. This is the law he wanted to revive. This is the battle he wanted to fight.

Thankfully, wisely, the Supreme Court isn’t hearing it.

By denying the state’s petition, the court upheld rulings by the U.S. Court for the District of Kansas and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that found Kansas’ proof of citizenship law to be unconstitutional.

That should be the end of the line for Kobach, who tried and failed to become governor in 2018, and then tried and failed to win a U.S. Senate seat this year.

Let’s hope it also ends the chorus of false claims that elections in Kansas and elsewhere were somehow rigged or riddled with fraud.

They weren’t. They aren’t. And the faster Schmidt and other Kobach toadies can abandon these bogus crusades, the faster we can move on to more pressing and important issues.

For starters, Schmidt and Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwabb might consider making it easier, not harder, for voters to cast ballots, particularly during a pandemic.

Can Monday’s Supreme Court rejection be the last we hear of Kobach and his ill-advised voter fraud measures? Can we clap our hands together, brush off the muddy remnants of the past seven years and finally put his embarrassing legacy in our rear-view mirror?

Let’s hope so.