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You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Happy News: Trump’s Voter Suppression Czar Loses Another One

Happy News: Trump’s Voter Suppression Czar Loses Another One

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Per the hometown Topeka Capital-Journal:

U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson on Wednesday ruled Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was in contempt of court for failing to comply with her orders in a lawsuit over the state’s voter registration law.

Robinson ordered Kobach to pay for attorney fees for litigating the contempt motion, with additional remedies to be determined later.

American Civil Liberties Union attorneys complained Kobach routinely defied a temporary injunction issued by Robinson in 2016 to block enforcement of the state’s proof of citizenship law.

Kobach’s office refused to update language on its website suggesting that new voter applicants may not be able to vote after November 2016 elections. Kobach also failed to follow through on a promise to Robinson that counties would send postcards notifying voters they could participate in elections, even if they failed to show a birth certificate or other documents when they registered.

“The judge found that Kris Kobach disobeyed the court’s orders by failing to provide registered voters with consistent information, that he willfully failed to ensure that county elections officials were properly trained, and that he has a ‘history of noncompliance and disrespect for the court’s decisions,’ ” said ACLU attorney Dale Ho. “Secretary Kobach likes to talk about the rule of law. Talk is cheap, and his actions speak louder than his words.”

Kobach for years has championed the need for strict voter registration laws as a way of keeping noncitizens from voting. At a trial last month, he struggled to provide evidence to support claims of widespread voter fraud.

Kobach’s chief legal counsel, Sue Becker, continued to argue in the weeks leading up to the trial that it wasn’t necessary to send postcards. It wasn’t until the contempt hearing that Kobach “changed course,” Robinson wrote, and “claimed he had personally directed his staff to ensure that postcards be sent.”…

She also said Kobach was disingenuous in arguing her orders were ambiguous. Kobach admitted during the contempt hearing that he understood individuals covered by the preliminary injunction should be treated no differently than other registered voters.

She pointed to an ACLU witness who testified that when he called the Sedgwick County elections office, he was told it wasn’t clear whether he was registered.

Kobach’s “confusing notices, and his patent failure to fully inform and monitor compliance with the preliminary injunction order, caused confusion and misinformation,” Robinson said.

A day after the contempt hearing, Kobach said it was clear his office had bent over backward to comply with the judge’s orders. As a candidate for the GOP nomination for governor, Kobach rallies supporters by telling them he likes makes the ACLU unhappy.

“As soon as the ACLU sues, I know we have made the right decision,” Kobach said during a debate last week…

Preliminary twitter reports seem to indicate that “the office” — in other words, Kansas taxpayers — will be on the hook for whatever Kobach ends up paying in fines. Perhaps this may change a few Kansas voters’ minds about the ‘massive threat’ of (nonexistent) ‘voter fraud’?

 
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57Comments

  2. 2.

    Bobby Thomson

    Perhaps this may change a few Kansas voters’ minds about the ‘massive threat’ of (nonexistent) ‘voter fraud’?

    You crack me up. The people who put him in office are dipshits. If Sam Fucking Brownback wasn’t enough to change minds, they can’t be changed.

  6. 6.

    Mary G

    They re-elected Brownback after he trashed the state, but maybe the blue wave will be big enough to keep Kobach out of the governor’s chair. These modern Republicans are quite open about ignoring the rule of law these days, aren’t they?

  9. 9.

    Millard Filmore

    “As soon as the ACLU sues, I know we have made the right decision,” Kobach said during a debate last week…

    In other words, “There is no need for the ACLU because you serfs have no rights.”

  11. 11.

    WereBear

    @Mary G: Yes, considering they loudly claim to be the Law and Order party. Now I realize I wasn’t hearing the dog whistle in that: for others, not for THEM.

  12. 12.

    Mike in NC

    Didn’t both “The Wall” and “Muslim Ban” originate with this stooge. He sold them to Trump to get the rubes yelling.

  13. 13.

    TenguPhule

    Who wants to place a bet that the judge is going to have to call in federal enforcement of the citation once Kobach and his office refuse to pay?

  15. 15.

    TenguPhule

    @Mary G:

    These modern Republicans are quite open about ignoring the rule of law these days, aren’t they?

    To be fair, they keep getting away with most of it without painful personal consequences.

  17. 17.

    satby

    @Villago Delenda Est: @efgoldman: Agree! If he personally isn’t paying the fines and isn’t thrown in jail, he won’t give a shit about the ruling. Like every conservative everywhere, it only penetrates the granite skull when it jeopardizes his wallet or carcass.

  20. 20.

    JMG

    Federal judges, all judges, can get quite pissed off. And they can throw you in the hoosegow just like that.

  21. 21.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Mike in NC: Yes. He worked for Romney too. He was behind the “self-deportation” idea. He was also behind Arizona’s papers please law.
    T is not an aberration but a logical conclusion of the R policies of hate.

  22. 22.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    “As soon as the ACLU sues, I know we have made the right decision,” Kobach said during a debate last week…

    Kobach is a swaggering, overbearing, tin-plated dictator with delusions of godhood.

    He deserves much worse than mere fines.

  23. 23.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Millard Filmore:
    Exactly. Kobach is a fascist. The entire fucking point of these Voter ID laws is dictatorship in the guise of democracy. It can happen here. It can happen anywhere.

  25. 25.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @WereBear:
    ‘Law and Order’ has always been a dog whistle for Republicans. It means ‘brown people are criminals, and the police need to hurt them harder to keep them in line.’ Obviously that doesn’t apply to themselves.

  26. 26.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Quinerly:
    McConnell is another plutocratic fascist who needs to croak. I’m glad he’s already decrepit and old. Now it’s only a matter of time.

  27. 27.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mary G:

    Don’t know whether that was her idea or Avenatti’s, but it is some first-class grade-A trolling for sure. And, of course, a nice piece of change to a worthy cause. But mostly, just fine trolling. LOL.

  28. 28.

    Mandalay

    Nobody could have predicted Facebook flouting the law.…

    Facebook is moving to exempt 1.5 billion users in Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America from its terms of service as dictated under a new European Union regulation, according to a Reuters report.

    The move comes weeks before the E.U.’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is set to take effect. The rule addresses the protection of personal data shared outside the E.U.

    By exempting so many of its members from the new regulation, Facebook would limit its liability under the new rule, which allows for fines of up to 4 percent of a company’s global annual revenue for violations.

    For Facebook, that could mean billions of dollars in potential fines, according to Reuters…

    Facebook is subject to the regulations, because it keeps its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. A number of large tech companies have established subsidiaries in Ireland because of its low corporate tax rate.

    I’m reluctantly coming to the conclusion that VDE has actually been right all along. Kill them. All of them.

  30. 30.

    Jager

    Kobach’s appeal is to morons like my RWNJ brother in law in Arizona, he’s the guy who was surprised his Mexican-American painting contractor had a cell phone and a web page. Why the hell my lovely, sweet sister married him is the question that will never be answered.

  31. 31.

    Millard Filmore

    @WereBear:

    It’s the illusion of ethics.

    After decades of uncontrollable hatred of the ACLU, because they get crooks off through a technicality, they want the Trump organized crime cartel to get off through a technicality.

  33. 33.

    Ruckus

    @Millard Filmore:
    Not even a technicality, they want him to get off because he’s their asshole. They don’t care that he’s breaking the law, he’s a racist and he should get off because of that.

  34. 34.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Ruckus:
    That’s the most shocking thing I’ve come to find out over the last few years; they don’t believe in a civic nationalism that this country was founded on (or at least was intended by the founding fathers, cowardly as they were when confronting slavery). They’re all for the idea that a state is based on ethnicity. It’s scary how many people I thought were my fellow Americans that believe that.

  35. 35.

    Zinsky

    @? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?: I just read an analysis by a Wisconsin public research group that concluded the voter ID law passed by another asshole governor, Scott Walker, likely tipped Wisconsin’s electoral votes to Trump. It wasn’t Hillary’s failure to show up in person, which is the lameass mainstream media meme.

  36. 36.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Zinsky: Wisonsin’s Republican attorney general stated that out loud in front of an audience at the beginning of the week.

  37. 37.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ? ?

    @Zinsky:
    It was always a lame excuse. Feingold, a Sanders endorsed candidate, lost that state. It’s never talked about by the media but voter suppression is a huge part of Trump’s victory, along with the racism, misogyny, and the Russian interference.

  39. 39.

    Amir Khalid

    @Adam L Silverman:
    The state AG admitting that an election law effectively skewed voter turnout in his party’s favour sounds like something the ACLU could take to the courts to get that law overturned.

  40. 40.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Zinsky: @Adam L Silverman: I’ve been saying it since the fucking election. The decrease in votes in Milwaukee County wasn’t due to people being meh about Hilz; the black voters there know their shit. And even the whitest precincts are majority D.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Amir Khalid: If I’m recalling correctly the law is already being challenged and is somewhere between the Federal district and appellate court levels. But @Omnes Omnibus: would likely know better as he’s both a lawyer and a Wisconsonite.

  44. 44.

    SFAW

    @Zinsky:

    Ari Berman (I think it was) did some great work (BEFORE the 2016 election) on the myriad voter suppression techniques and tactics used in Wisconsin. But, amazing though it may be, few if any in the MSM seemed to notice. I wonder why that was.

  48. 48.

    Bill Arnold

    @Mandalay:

    VDE has actually been right all along. Kill them. All of them.

    The GDPR could easily kill or badly wound Facebook., and some other tech companies with similar business models. I’ve read the GDPR; IMO the only way to win (as an American company) is not to play – the language (Eurocrat-ees?) is carefully crafted to provide anti-American regulators with powerful maneuvering room.
    Crocodile tears; we would lose a powerful budget propaganda platform.

  49. 49.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I wish you great enjoyment of your goat-blowing hobby. I don’t judge.

    Since when have YOU become a Republican? I mean, with the projection and all.

    By the way — and I know you’ve been on the edge of your seat — the Mets won tonight.

  50. 50.

    danielx

    Couldn’t get on hotel wireless network last night or today and it felt like a psychic amputation. Finally get back online this evening and find out Kris Kobach got his ass handed to him by the judge.

    Some things are worth waiting for.

  52. 52.

    J R in WV

    Evidently some contagious virus is affecting Republican Kansans, look at this:

    This @KansasCityStar Pulitzer finalist on govt secrecy was overshadowed, understandably, but it’s exceptional & worth reading. Among jaw-dropping gets: In Kansas, child-welfare officials shred meeting notes on child deaths to foil media inquiries

    Can you imagine that? They shred meeting notes on child deaths to fuck with media FOIA requests, because every Republican knows that fucking with a newspaper is more important than how many children were tortured to death by their republican father and mother since the last meeting.

    No one in the Kansas Republican Party thinks saving children is more important than screwing around with a reporter. The First Amendment isn’t ever good advice to these monsters — it’s a piece of paper to wipe their ass on, that is the kind of “Americans” these Kansas Republicans are.

    No wonder these monsters suspect others of running child prostitution rings, it’s what they fantasize about late at night, instead of how helping kids can be done better like real humans wonder about. Villago is right – to the last creepy monster, wipe them out politically, financially, personally. Living under a bridge eating trash from dumpsters is too good for them, they need to do it missing a leg from the infection that killed their morality.

  53. 53.

    Gretchen

    Kobach has announced that if elected he would reinstate Brownback’s disastrous tax regime that even the Republican legislature realized was a disaster and reversed it. It should work according to trickle-down theory, so we have to just keep trying it until it works.
    Problem is, idiot businessman Greg Orman is determined to run a third party vanity candidacy because both sides are equally wrong and he can bring people together and rainbows and unicorns (and that’s about exactly how specific his platform is.). His people tell me to stop being so negative and BELIEVE when I say so. He’s going to drain away enough moderates that Kobach could win and fuck our state for another 4 years.

  54. 54.

    Gretchen

    And for everyone who says Kansas deserves what it gets remember how good Republicans are at projection. Whatever they’re accusing others of is what they’re doing themselves. Kobach has been pounding the voter fraud drum for years. Consider if Republicans themselves are the fraudsters. We have the voting machines with no paper trail. The Brownback election was predicted to be much closer, as was the Senate race. No explanation for how the polls were so far off. And there’’s a Wichita State statistician who has been suing to see tapes of Wichita machines that do have tapes because she sees statistical anomalies. So far she has been blocked. Nothing to see here no reason why the polls are off and why Brownback got reelected even though everybody hates him. Nothing to see here.

  55. 55.

    Procopius

    As long as it’s his government office that pays the penalties, Kobach has no incentive to change his ways. I really, really wish there was some way to nail him with criminal charges over his claims that he has evidence. Apparently, as Obama said of the Bankers, “A lot of what [he] did wasn’t illegal.” I wonder if there’s any way the judge could force the penalties from this contempt conviction apply to him personally and not allow the state to compensate him. I suppose not, but maybe we can get more judgements against him.

  56. 56.

    Procopius

    @SiubhanDuinne: It’s especially fine trolling because I’m pretty sure she ain’t rich. Oh, sure, she’s comfortable, and probably has enough to take care of retirement as long as she isn’t too extravagant, and she does seem to be a smart person, but I’m sure giving up $130,000 is not painless. Of course, I’m so old I remember when one million dollars was real money.

  57. 57.

    Stan

    Kobach is a swaggering, overbearing, tin-plated dictator with delusions of godhood.

    So tribbles tremble and hiss when they see him?

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