When Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach lobbied for prosecutorial power in voter fraud cases before the state legislature, he promised 100 immediate cases for prosecution (then 200). Yet nine and a half months into the power grab, he still has only presented 6 cases.
With last week's dismissal of charges against Olathe resident Betty Gaedtke, he now stands at one successful prosecution, one utterly embarrassing blunder, and four pending cases.
Where's the hundreds of cases of promised voter fraud?
“Six prosecutions in nine months is actually moving at a pretty good pace, and more will be coming in the months ahead,” he told The Kansas City Star.
So what does this mean? Will he manage to get to 25 cases before his term ends in 2018?
Or perhaps the legislature and voters will finally get fed up with this entire fiasco, and end the witch hunt in an already economically taxed state.
This is a continued reaffirmation of what has been found in every single state that has gone on massive witch hunts to find bogey-man voter fraud -- it just doesn't happen often enough to waste millions of dollars of taxpayer money.
Florida and Ohio (along with several smaller states) have struck-out hunting for voter fraud; Kansas seems to be next.
The problem always revolves around the difference between voter registration fraud and actual voter fraud, with the political parties largely at fault in creating the entire mess.
Voter registration fraud is rampant. In many counties you can find 'Chuck Norris,' 'Bart Simpson,' or 'Mickey Mouse' on the voting rolls, created by commissioned canvassers, working for parties, trying to pad their daily pay by adding a few extra names. This is the best case scenario -- when the names are so unrealistic they can be quickly found.
The worst case comes from when canvassers visit local cemeteries to get their names, adding dead people back onto the voting rolls.
Think this isn't the case?
In 2012, the Republican Party paid a canvassing firm $3 million to get-out-the-vote in hotly contested Florida counties. Later they had to embarrassingly cut ties when it was discovered that this canvassing firm was registering dead people to the voting rolls.
Democrats are no different, and face similar embarrassments on a routine basis.
But even though they know that voter registration fraud is a huge problem in states like South Carolina, where accusations of hundreds of dead people voting loomed after the 2010 election, investigations turn up nothing. Not one case of an actual dead person voting was found after a complete audit of the records (although 106 cases were caused by obvious clerical errors of poll workers).
Rampant voter registration fraud does not automatically equate to voter fraud at the ballot box.
We always need to remain vigilant of the integrity of the voting system, from voter registration fraud to intentional manipulation of voting machines. But at some point, we're going to have to accept a basic truth...
Voter fraud claims are almost always a whole lot of smoke without a real fire.
Photo Source: AP