Voter Suppression Goes National
There has been a lot of attention to the recent request from Trump's new chair of his laughably titled "Election Integrity Commission," Kris Kobach, for every bit of information the States have on every registered voter in the country, but no one seems to be stating out in the open what is going on here.
Kobach, the Secretary of State of Kansas, has earned a reputation as the most vicious vote suppressor in the country. Here is his latest plan to accomplish this. As Kansas Secretary of State, he formed an alliance with 17 other Republican run States to share voter data. Then, he used all the records from those States to compile a list of every single name that appeared on the list more than once. Then, a little filtering to select for names that were more likely to belong to Black or Latino voters, and he was off to the races, declaring that every one of these duplicate names must represent a single person registering in multiple States. That person was then flagged as suspicious and required to cast a provisional ballot, or often not allowed to vote at all. Of course, this resulted in tens or hundreds of thousands of false positives, which was obviously the whole purpose of this scheme.
Now, Trump has given Kobach a chance to take his scheme nationwide, so that every person who has a black or brown sounding name that is likely to be relatively common, like, say, Gene Washington, or Juan Gonzales, is at risk of having his or her right to vote taken away.
And all of this, in the name of election integrity, an act of cynicism startling even for Republicans.
Kobach, the Secretary of State of Kansas, has earned a reputation as the most vicious vote suppressor in the country. Here is his latest plan to accomplish this. As Kansas Secretary of State, he formed an alliance with 17 other Republican run States to share voter data. Then, he used all the records from those States to compile a list of every single name that appeared on the list more than once. Then, a little filtering to select for names that were more likely to belong to Black or Latino voters, and he was off to the races, declaring that every one of these duplicate names must represent a single person registering in multiple States. That person was then flagged as suspicious and required to cast a provisional ballot, or often not allowed to vote at all. Of course, this resulted in tens or hundreds of thousands of false positives, which was obviously the whole purpose of this scheme.
Now, Trump has given Kobach a chance to take his scheme nationwide, so that every person who has a black or brown sounding name that is likely to be relatively common, like, say, Gene Washington, or Juan Gonzales, is at risk of having his or her right to vote taken away.
And all of this, in the name of election integrity, an act of cynicism startling even for Republicans.
Comments
They can't win playing fair - they lie cheat and steal and if that don't work they'll fucking kill you.
No doubt it was my letter (ha!) that swung it and West Virginia has gone on record saying Nope, not gonna do it...Montani semper liberi, however the state is still chuck full of Ding Dongs.