Eight Kansas citizens testified in a hearing Wednesday against the Secretary of State’s plan to purge more than 30,000 people from the state’s voter rolls. But one person was notably missing — Secretary of State Kris Kobach.
Kobach sent members of his state to the hearing to represent him and his plan to enact an arbitrary 90-day time limit on voter registration forms that are incomplete because the voter has not yet provided proof of citizenship. The hearing is a required step to get public comment, but Kobach can enact the rule change despite the opposition.
At the hearing, representatives from the League of Women Voters, NAACP, and the American Civil Liberties Union all spoke in opposition to Kobach’s proposal. They cited the disproportionate negative impact the change would have on minority voters.
“I think that the people who would not be able to vote because of this are largely an unrepresented group who in most cases are believed to vote Democratically,” Sonja Willms, leader of the Topeka chapter of the National Organization for Women, said during the hearing, according to the AP.
Micah Kubic, executive director of the ACLU of Kansas, told ThinkProgress that Kobach’s proposal could have an even greater effect than was previously reported.
“On top of the 35,000 who will be kicked off the list right now, what we hear is that there are between 1,000 and 2,000 people who are added to the list every single month,” he said. “The whole thing is really about avoiding embarrassment for Secretary Kobach because the list has grown so large and grows larger and larger.”
Instead of enacting an arbitrary time limit, Kobach should address the list of incomplete applications in a way that would help people vote, Kubic said.
“Rather find a place to constructively address how we can reduce the size of the list by making it easier for people to vote, his solution is let’s just shrink the list by kicking people off of it,” he said.
Kobach claims the rule change is intended to save election officials time and money and cut down on reminders they send voters to submit their citizenship documents. He told the Kansas City Star his proposal is in no way a “purge” of voters because the applicants aren’t officially on the voter rolls yet.
“All of our counties are tightening budgets and trying to not raise taxes,” he said. “In retrospect, it probably would have made sense to include [a deadline provision] in the beginning.”
But voting advocates and others see it differently. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton weighed in recently, tweeting: “Purging 34,000+ voters from Kansas elections is no administrative rule — it’s a targeted attack on voting rights.”
Kobach fired back on his Facebook page, saying “Hillary is getting her pantsuit in a twist over nothing.”
As Kobach prepares to change Kansas’ voter registration rules, a lawsuit is pending in which two voters allege a different Kansas registration rule is unlawful. The voters, led by the ACLU, seek to invalidate the law restricting those who register using a federal form from voting in state and local elections. Last week, a judge allowed that lawsuit to move forward and earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court denied his attempt to make Kansas voters show proof of citizenship to register using the federal form.