The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Mendacity
By Mark Joseph Stern at Slate
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/07/the_first_public_meeting_of_trump_s_voter_fraud_panel_was_a_parade_of_lies.html
"SNIP............
On Wednesday, Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission held its first public meeting, allowing each participant to voice his or her utterly unjustified belief that fraudulent voting is a rampant problem in the United States. (The commission has already held a private meeting that may have violated federal law.) During his remarks, Kris Kobach—Kansas’ Republican secretary of state and vice chairman of the commission—asserted that more than 18,000 noncitizens may have registered to vote in Kansas. He also alleged that the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, which compares states’ voter rolls, has uncovered “literally millions of people” who are registered in at least two states. Both of these claims are completely false.
Let’s start with the Kansas lie. When running for secretary of state in 2010, Kobach repeatedly insisted that voter fraud in the state, particularly noncitizen voting, was “pervasive” and “massive.” Then–Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh—a Republican who served in that position for 16 years—responded that “the voter fraud Kris Kobach speaks of does not exist.” Researchers found that, over the previous decade, the government had uncovered just seven instances of unlawful voting in Kansas, none of which involved noncitizens. Yet Kobach persisted, as this crude nativism was central to his campaign. A week before the election, he said he’d found a smoking gun: A deceased man named Alfred K. Brewer, Kobach claimed, had likely cast a vote in the August primary.
Reporters found Brewer in his yard, alive. “I don’t think this is heaven, not when I’m raking leaves,” he explained. Kobach had confused Brewer with his father, who was deceased, and who had not cast a vote since he’d shuffled off this mortal coil.
These embarrassments did not thwart Kobach. Once in office, he continued to contend that noncitizens were casting ballots in droves, although he could not produce evidence of this ostensibly widespread problem. (Kobach has successfully prosecuted exactly one noncitizen voter.) He promoted, then implemented, a stringent law requiring proof of citizenship (like a birth certificate) for all new voter registrants. As of Dec. 11, 2015, about 35,314 Kansans had their voting rights suspended for failing to submit proof of citizenship; 12,227 of these voters were purged from rolls altogether. Voters between the ages of 18 and 29 were three times more likely to lack proof of citizenship than other voters.
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