President Trump signed an executive order late last week, according to an Associated Press dispatch, “to look at the public’s confidence in the integrity of the voting system.”
After the November election, with Hillary Clinton winning the popular vote, Trump claimed millions voted illegally.
Kris Kobach, Kansas secretary of state, will co-chair with Vice President Mike Pence, a panel to examine allegations of improper voting and fraudulent voter registration.
A report is expected to be handed to Trump in 2018.
For much of his career as secretary of state, Kobach has searched for illegal voters in Kansas. In all that time he has come up with a couple of cases in his self-righteous campaign that has done more to depress voting than enable it. Among his approaches has been to require those who register to vote to show proof they are U.S. citizens. The outcome has been to reduce registration numbers, somewhat along racial lines.
That hasn’t deterred Kobach, who thinks aliens living in the U.S. — and Kansas — though not citizens are desperately trying to find ways to vote, even though that would expose their illegal status and lead to their deportation. Voting illegally, as it should be, is a crime. We wonder why someone would risk being hauled into court by voting illegally — gross ignorance would seem the only reason.
Meanwhile, Kobach should spend more time in Topeka tending to the duties his office entails, rather than pandering to other states’ immigration laws and kissing up to Trump in hopes of becoming the Eliot Ness of illegal voting.
In Allen County, throughout Kansas and we are sure elsewhere in the nation we have competent local officials eager to ensure that when someone registers to vote they are within bounds of the law.
Sherrie Riebel, Allen County’s clerk and election official, spends goodness knows how many hours preparing for each election. She, and her peers, approach each election knowing one vote can make a difference. They want to be certain there are no mistakes, on their part or at the behest of someone who wants to game the system.
TRUMP won the presidency by way of the Electoral College and with that he should have been satisfied. But his ego won’t rest until he can find a way to justify his ridiculous claim that millions voted illegally, and that he should have won the popular vote.
Among the facts, his handlers were bright enough to ignore Democratic strongholds, such as California, and concentrate on winning electoral votes.
Mistakes associated with the Trump-Clinton election didn’t have to do with the way the election came off mechanically at the polls, but with missteps such as Clinton’s misguided comment belittling Trump supporters and, we may find some day, when Trump runs out of investigators to fire, what role Putin and his gang had in using social media and cyber tricks to Trump’s advantage.
We have always thought election outcomes were a true reading of what voters wanted, but in this case the disparity with the popular vote told a different story. Even so, the election is history and we must accept what occurred and live with what is to come in the weeks, months and years ahead.
— Bob Johnson
