Koch Bros. Old School Voter Control Schemes

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.