Another crooked Trump initiative dies a twitching death. Good riddance.
referral to DHS may not mean twitching death.
Looks to be twitching to me.
the White House said in a statement. “Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action.”
Yeah I saw that. I think this issue is still pretty much dead, other than bluster and face-saving.
Sounds like they gave Kobach a ton of rope and he just managed to hang himself.
BREAKING: Incompetent governor governs incompetently
To credit Pyperkub, it does appear that Kobach is going to try to continue his nonsense in the DHS. The problem with that is that it isn’t explicitly in the DHS mandate, so it would at least require another Executive Order. That, and DHS has different data collection regulations that would also require Congressional notification, and likely another executive action.
And all of that is likely to get hung with lawsuits and restraining orders.
It seems weird that the Republicans would give up so easily on this, since they have to know that without gerrymandering and voter suppression, they’re gonna have a hard time winning anything.
And of course the little issue of DHS being largely staffed by career security folks who are unlikely to be partisan enough to put up with Kobach’s shit. The Deep State strikes again!
They are also going to have a hard time using voter suppression to win anything. It has always been more of a theoretical threat than a practical one.
I think it’s pretty clear that Republicans expect to lose power, so the goal now is to grab as much loot as they can on the way out.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/transcripts/ccrdraft060401.htm
The disenfranchisement of Florida’s voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of African Americans. Statewide, based upon county-level statistical estimates, African American voters were nearly ten times more likely than white voters to have their ballots rejected in Florida. On a statewide basis, while African Americans comprised about 11% of all voters in Florida in the November 2000 presidential election, African Americans cast about 54% of the ballots that were rejected in the election.
But yeah, there’s no way that could ever work.
I mean, there is no question that voter suppression is racist, and fundamentally wrong. That doesn’t mean that it’s effective.
Voter ID laws are not the only form of voter suppression.
Yeah, it’s starting to appear very much as if Kobach’s determination to take this to the DHS is really just a blustering fig-leaf. Multiple quotes out of the White House yesterday indicated that this commission originally was a Bannon idea, so that puts it on the outs right there. That, and the fact that Kobach apparently annoys even the Trump-iest of Trumpers has made this thing seem like they may just be biding time until they can send Kob back to Kansas to run his gubernatorial campaign.
Does it matter? Sessions’s agenda is the same.
Yeah it matters. Sessions has so many knives in his back right now that I’m not sure he’s going to be Attorney General next month.
But as for Kobach, it sounds like his nonsense is over. His commission apparently found one documented issue of voter fraud–a Trump supporter with ranches in both Kansas and Colorado voted in both states accidentally.
White House says it will destroy any remaining data gathered by Kobach’s Voter Nonsense Commission.
As for those “preliminary findings” which were to be forwarded to DHS, they now say there were no preliminary findings (big shock) and nothing is being sent to DHS.
Goodnight Kris Kobach. You hitched your wagon to Bannon, and that train has left the station.
Everything about the voting commission is just dirty. It really is. We should be encouraging people to vote, but I guess the wealthy elite worry that populism will work towards redistributing wealth.