WakeForestRanger
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The documents have been heavily redacted, but one of the bullet points in Kobach’s presentation to Trump was a suggestion to draft an amendment to the National Voter Registration Act to “promote proof-of-citizenship requirements.”
Kobach contends that the proof-of-citizenship policy prevents non-citizens from voting, but critics say it actually ends up disenfranchising rightful voters as well.
The judge also unsealed a draft amendment that Kobach had circulated within his office that would have added a line to the federal voter law that said states could request any information from voters they deem necessary.
Dale Ho, the director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said the documents undercut Kobach’s claims that the presidential voting commission does not have predetermined policy goals.
After Kobach was ordered to produce his papers for review, the magistrate fined him for making “patently misleading representations to the court about the documents.” When Kobach appealed that decision, the presiding judge agreed that Kobach should be sanctioned because of a “pattern” of misrepresentation “that callhis credibility into question.”
Kobach’s lobbying to gut the NVRA was always meant to occur behind closed doors. So he has been struggling for months to keep these documents out of public view, while secretly asking his ally, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), to introduce his proposed NVRA amendment to Congress in the future.
Kobach said that shutting down the commission was just a “change in tactics,” which is a clever way to cover up the embarrassing fact that the commission faced too much legal and political trouble to get anything done.
But there is some truth to what he said. No matter how many times the court shuts them down or how many Americans speak out to defend their rights, Republican politicians who stand to gain from suppressing voters won’t back down. They’ll only change their tactics.
The bill, SB 363, would force polls in the majority African American city of Atlanta to close an hour earlier — 7 p.m. instead of 8 p.m. — and would eliminate early voting on the Sunday before Election Day. That Sunday is often a high-turnout day for African American voters because of Souls to the Polls events that encourage people to cast ballots early after attending church.
The proposal passed the state House Governmental Affairs Committee Wednesday with the majority Republicans voting in favor and all five Democrats, who have said the legislation is designed to suppress voter turnout, in opposition.
Here's one of the gems from the day:
Federal Chief District Judge Julie Robinson, a George W. Bush appointee, accused Kobach of engaging in “gamesmanship” and skirting her orders.
In the nearly two years since Robinson ordered him to register those voters, she said, he has forced her and the American Civil Liberties Union to monitor his actions down to the tiniest details in an effort to get him to comply.
“I've had to police this over and over and over again,” she said.