To the editor:

I greatly appreciated your editorial about Secretary of State-elect Kris Kobach’s plan to impose a photo ID requirement on voting. Your suggestion that he make a real study of the “voter fraud” problem before radically changing our political process is eminently sensible. If he really thought there were a real voter fraud problem, he would want to have the evidence such a study could show.

However, I’m afraid a real study of the “problem” is the last thing he wants. The matter has been studied before, and Kobach knows there is no real voter fraud problem in Kansas. He wants to impose the photo ID requirement for other reasons — reasons that he can’t gracefully reveal.

I think you put your finger on the real reason: He wants to discourage people from voting. He apparently believes, probably correctly, that a majority of the legitimate voters discouraged by the requirement would vote for Democrats if allowed to vote.

I’m sure no legislator will be fooled by the fraud claim, but I’m afraid some would vote for the requirement anyway, to keep down the democratic vote. Let’s hope there are enough legislators who take their oaths seriously who will vote to thwart Kobach’s scheme. After all, the Republicans can now gerrymander the state to severely limit Democrats’ chances for election anyway. Do they need this photo ID overkill?