Anti-Illegals Activist To Target Voter Fraud

Outside of Kansas, Kris Kobach  is best known as an expert on immigration issues. He's the author of Arizona's anti-illegal-immigration law, a longtime counsel to the Immigration Law Reform Institute and a hero within the border-security movement.

Inside Kansas, he wears another hat entirely. He's the newly elected secretary of state, having ousted Democratic incumbent Chris Biggs by a margin of 59 percent to 37 percent.

Why would someone who's devoted his career to fighting illegal immigration want to become chief vote-counter for the state of Kansas? Suffice it to say that Mr. Kobach devoted his campaign to one issue, and that issue was voter fraud - and it too has an immigration angle.

The specter of illegal immigrants casting votes in U.S. elections has long frustrated Republicans, and Mr. Kobach is now poised to do something about it. Even before he's sworn in, he's already hard at work drafting voter-fraud legislation that he says will be most the comprehensive in the nation.

"This will be head and shoulders above anything any state has ever done to secure the voting process," he said. "My hope is to create a model with regard to stopping voter fraud that can be used in other states, like we did in Arizona" with immigration.

His election comes at a professional cost. He likely will lose his tenured seat at the University of Missouri at Kansas City law school in order to take the secretary of state's job, given that "a leave of absence usually doesn't last four years," he said.

Even so, Mr. Kobach, 44, said it wouldn't have been enough to draft the Kansas voter-fraud bill as an outside consultant, as was the case when he wrote Senate Bill 1070, the Arizona immigration bill.

"For election laws in Kansas and most states, if the secretary isn't pushing for major reform to happen, then it isn't going to happen. It takes more than a few legislators," Mr. Kobach said. "You really have to have a secretary of state pushing for it, especially with legislation this groundbreaking."

Kansas lawmakers attempted to enact a voter-fraud bill in 2008, but it was vetoed by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat. In November, however, Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican, was elected governor on a platform that included combating voter fraud.                       

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