Kobach gets assist on voter registration

After years of trying, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach just got the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to do what he wants. All it took was an edict from the EAC’s new executive director, Brian Newby – who just happens to be the former Kobach-backed elections commissioner of Johnson County.

Kobach had been fighting with the EAC in and out of court over whether Kansans who use the federal voter registration form, which only asks applicants to swear they are U.S. citizens, should be compelled to prove U.S. citizenship, as state law has required since 2013 of those using the state form. He believed he could consider federally registered voters to be partially registered, and throw out their votes for local and state elections.

Just last month a Shawnee County District Court judge found the right to vote in Kansas is not tied to the form of registration, and that Kobach has no such authority to “encumber the voting process” with such a bifurcated system of registration and vote counting.

But in letters sent Jan. 29 – without public notice or his commissioners’ review – Newby notified Kansas, Alabama and Georgia that would-be voters who used the federal registration form in those states would have to provide citizenship documentation.

That’s the decision Kobach had sought from the EAC since a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling (which he lost) that said “a state may request that the EAC alter the federal form to include information the state deems necessary to determine eligibility.”

Newby was hired as the EAC’s executive director in November, after 11 years as Johnson County election commissioner. Kobach, who picks the election commissioners in the state’s four most populous counties (including Sedgwick County), had reappointed Newby in 2014, calling him “extraordinary” and “a source of innovation and improvement in Kansas elections for the past decade.”

According to Associated Press, Newby said his Jan. 29 letters were sent in response to a Nov. 17 letter from Kobach’s office.

In a statement last week, EAC vice chairman Thomas Hicks said Newby acted “unilaterally” with “a decision that contradicts policy and precedent previously established by this commission.” Hicks called for the letters to be withdrawn.

This maneuver to “add conflicting language to the federal voter registration form,” as Hicks put it, certainly scores one for Kobach. And it at least would treat all Kansas voters and their votes equally.

But the jaw-dropping reversal by the EAC demands scrutiny, including by the commissioners and the public.

This story was originally published February 8, 2016 at 6:08 PM with the headline "Kobach gets assist on voter registration."