Proof of Citizenship for Voter Registration Found Unlawful

[Gothmog]

I had a great deal of fun following this lawsuit during the trial. See https://upload.democraticunderground.com/100210350534 and https://upload.democraticunderground.com/10142087389 and https://upload.democraticunderground.com/100210756328 this trial was a great soap opera. The 10th Court of Appeals just affirmed the trial court https://politicalwire.com/2020/04/29/proof-of-citizenship-for-voter-registration-unlawful/

“A federal appeals court panel ruled Wednesday that a Kansas law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote is unconstitutional, upholding a judge’s injunction that had banned its use,” the New York Times reports.

“The law was championed by former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who led President Trump’s now-defunct voter fraud commission and was a leading source for Trump’s unsubstantiated claim that millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally may have voted in the 2016 election.”

Rick Hasen: “Make no mistake–this is a huge victory… This is a huge win for voters, and it clears away a law that disenfranchised thousands but prevented no appreciable amount of voter fraud.”

The icing on the cake is this tweet by Kobach

Link to tweet

[leftieNanner]

1. Great News!

So let's be sure to get Kobach to win the primary in Kansas for the Senate so he can LOSE AGAIN!!!

[Gothmog]

4. I would love to see Kobach win that primary

[diva77]

2. K&R!!!

[grumpyduck]

3. Okay, please help me out here.

I honestly don't understand. You have to be a US citizen to vote. Why is proof such an issue?

[femmedem]

6. It's expensive for someone to have to, for example, get a copy of their birth certificate

or a passport. And it takes time. It's a barrier for people who lost important documents in moves, in fires or natural disasters, because they are homeless, or because of theft or an abuser taking them.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

7. some references ...

See the first link in Gothmog's OP to get some background.

Original case summary: http://ksd.uscourts.gov/index.php/specialcase/steven-wayne-fish-et-al-v-kris-kobach-kansas-secretary-of-state-civil-action-no-16-2105-jar-jpo/

That references "the Elections Clause and the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the United States Constitution" and 42 U.S. Code Section 1983.

Article IV, Section 2
The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.

A person charged in any state with treason, felony, or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime.

14th Amendment
Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

42 U.S. Code Section 1983
42 U.S. Code § 1983. Civil action for deprivation of rights

Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.

Kobach claimed there was massive voter fraud by immigrants registering and voting, yet could only find 18 instances in 20 years, with only 5 having cast votes. On the other hand, around 35,000 legal citizens had been blocked from voting by his law.

[grumpyduck]

8. Wow, Hermit, thanks so much for taking the time to explain it.

That helps a lot.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

9. Welcome. Gothmog has kept us all up-to-date on Klown Kris Kobach's antics!

[Gothmog]

10. On the federal form for voter registration you certify that you are a citizen

In most states that is sufficient. Kobach wanted you to bring a birth certificate to prove you are a citizen to register. This requirement adversely affects low income voters who are US citizens. Many voters do not have a birth certificate and it is expensive and time consuming to get one.

This issue was litigated in this ace and in the Texas voter id case. There is great evidence that shows that this requirement only depresses the vote and that there is no voter fraud of the type that would be prevented by this measure. The court looked at this issue and determined that this issue discriminated against low income voters

[Gothmog]

11. From Prof. Hasen's election law blog

This is a great summary of the opinion https://electionlawblog.org/?p=111061

In a major ruling, a 10th Circuit panel (consisting of 2 judges, as a third judge on the panel had passed away), a Tenth Circuit panel has held that a Kansas anti-voting law championed by former Secretary of State Kris Kobach violated both the Constitution’s equal protection clause and was preempted by the federal motor-voter law. The law at issue required those who wished to register to vote in Kansas to provide documentary proof of citizenship—such as a birth certificate or naturalization certificate—in order to register to vote. Until the ACLU secured a preliminary injunction against this law, about 30,000 people had their voter registrations suspended and were not allowed to vote in Kansas elections.

I wrote about the trial in this case (then called Fish v. Kobach and now Fish v. Schwab on appeal) in my book, Election Meltdown. I called the case the most important voting trial of the 21st century so far because it was the chance for those like Kobach who claim that voter fraud is a major problem in the United States to prove that in a court of law under the rules of evidence. As I detail in the book, Kobach’s proof was woefully inadequate and his expert witnesses embarassingly bad. Kobach was later sanctioned for how he ran the trial and for misleading the ACLU about the contents of a document he had given to President Trump.

Kobach had claimed that the amount of noncitizen voting was the tip of the iceberg, but the trial court, after an extensive trial where Kobach was given every chance to prove his case, as no more than “an icicle, largely created by confusion and administrative error.”

Today’s 10th circuit opinion agreed that preventing voter fraud is a compelling interest, but that Kansas could not prove its law was necessary to prevent such fraud:

To start, the district court found essentially no evidence that the integrity of Kansas’s electoral process had been threatened, that the registration of ineligible voters had caused voter rolls to be inaccurate, or that voter fraud had occurred. In particular, it found that, “at most, 67 noncitizens registered or attempted to register in Kansas over the last 19 years.” Aplt.’s App., Vol. 47, at 11519. Of these, “[a]t most, 39 noncitizens have found their way onto the Kansas voter rolls in the last 19 years.” Id. at 11520. The Secretary does not argue that these factual findings are clearly erroneous. Thus we are left with this incredibly slight evidence that Kansas’s interest in counting only the votes of eligible voters is under threat. Indeed, even as to those 39 noncitizens who appear on the Kansas voter rolls, the district court effectively found that “administrative anomalies” could account for the presence of many—or perhaps even most—of them there.Id.

Supporting this determination is the fact that Kansas’s voter-registration database included 100 individuals with purported birth dates in the 19th century and 400 individuals with purported birth dates after their date of voter registration. And so it is quite likely that much of this evidence of noncitizen registration is explained by administrative error.

The Secretary also presented the district court with out-of-state evidence about election fraud and noncitizen registration. But the district court concluded that, “looking beyond Kansas, [the Secretary’s] evidence of noncitizen registration at trial was weak.” Id. at 11519. It explained at length why it excluded large portions of the Secretary’s expert testimony and found much of the remaining testimony unpersuasive. Id. (explaining that one of the Secretary’s experts was “credibly dismantled” by the architect of the survey upon which the expert had relied and that the court “d[id] not fully credit” a second expert’s testimony “given its inclusion of misleading and false assertions”). We have no doubt that inaccurate voter registrations exist in our country, see, e.g., Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Inst., — U.S. —-, 138 S. Ct. 1833, 1838 (2018) (“It has been estimated that 24 million voter registrations in the United States—about one in eight—are either invalid or significantly inaccurate.”), but the Secretary fails to connect this generalized information to the DPOC requirement at issue here or to argue that the district court clearly erred in finding that “the trial evidence did not demonstrate the largescale problem urged by [the Secretary].” Aplt.’s App., Vol. 47, at 11520. In light of the significant burden on the right to vote, we thus do not rely on the Secretary’s out-of-state evidence of voter-fraud and nonvoter registration.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

13. Thanks!

[LakeArenal]

5. I don't have a clue what he means....

“The 10th Circuit decision striking down Kansas's proof-of-citizenship law is the essence of judicial activism, setting aside the plain meaning of the law and replacing it with a subjective, policy-based balancing test.”

I’m thinking the average trumper thinks,
“That’s some judgin’!”

[Cha]

12. KR!