kcur | That trial wrapped up Monday. Kobach stands accused of violating federal law by refusing to register more than 30,000 legitimate voters who signed up to vote through driver's license offices.
"It's an election year, your honor, and there's no more time for games," ACLU lawyer Dale Ho told Robinson.
Kobach, who hopes to be Kansas' next governor, asked the
judge not to find him in contempt. The Republican candidate argued he
doesn't control the county officials who carry out logistics such as
sending postcards to voters to let them know where their polling
stations are.
"We ask them to do things. We plead with them to do things," he said. "If the counties did fail, it was their mistake."
That's
one of the things the ACLU said has been a problem: Not all the voters
protected by Robinson's 2016 preliminary injunction have been receiving
the postcards.
Robinson, at times sounding livid with the secretary, gave him a dressing-down.
"These
people are not second-class registered voters," she told him. "You
assured me that they had or they would get the postcards."
She
questioned why Kobach had had no problem getting Kansas' 105 counties to
require birth certificates and similar documents from voters in recent
years, yet denied he could make them mail postcards or comply with other
aspects of her orders.
Kobach is a key backer of President
Donald Trump's claim that Hillary Clinton won the 2016 popular vote
because of millions of illegal ballots. He led Trump's now defunct
election integrity commission.
He urged the Kansas legislature to adopt a law that required would-be
voters, starting in 2013, to show passports, military papers, birth
certificates, or other documents proving they are citizens. That
prompted a lawsuit by the League of Women Voters, saying it decimated
voter registration drives, and by Kansans who say they were blocked from
voting because they lacked such papers.
The ACLU is
representing them. It says Kobach can't enforce his law on voters who
register while getting or renewing their driver's licenses because they
are protected by the 1993 Motor Voter Act.
That law created the
streamlined process for registering to vote at driver's license
offices, where around 40 percent of Kansans put themselves on the voter
rolls.
