Coming off his election victory, Secretary of State Kris Kobach is again asking the Legislature to give him authority to enforce election fraud laws in conjunction with the Kansas attorney general. This is a proposal he has unsuccessfully floated before, and it seems likely that, having won another term in office, he believes that he may win a second time around. The power he is asking for would be a radical change. Enforcement of voter fraud currently lies with county prosecutors. In fact, in his prior attempt to acquire this enforcement power, he was opposed by Kansas county prosecutors.

Kobach has made voter fraud his only issue. He spearheaded the movement to convince the Kansas Legislature to adopt voter identification laws although there was little evidence that they were actually needed. In addition, he has assisted a number of states other than Kansas in developing voter fraud and photo ID laws while he has been serving as Kansas secretary of state, activities that some, at least, question as inappropriate for a senior member of our state government. His attempts to convince the Legislature that it should now take enforcement powers away from county prosecutors and vest them in the secretary of state and the attorney general seem to be part of his plan to use the issue of voter fraud as a means of acquiring more power, power that has never been given to the secretary of state.

In my opinion, it would be a serious error for the Legislature to give Kobach the increased powers he is lobbying for. First, so far as I know, Kobach has not made a strong case for the change. He says that local prosecutors have not been enforcing voter fraud laws. What proof has he that this is true? The fact that local prosecutors have not brought a large number of prosecutions of voter fraud is, by no means, solely explicable by their lack of zeal. An equally plausible explanation is that there simply haven’t been that many cases of voter fraud in the state.

If Kobach wants the Legislature to take power away from prosecutors and give it to him, he needs to prove that prosecutors have failed to do their job adequately. Where is that proof? Further, as a policy matter, is it really wise to centralize this power in Topeka? Is the secretary of state in a better position to monitor voter fraud in 105 counties than those counties’ prosecutors? I, for one, doubt that is the case.

There is no question that Kobach won his election race. Whether his victory constitutes a mandate for his policies, let alone lends support for the expanded powers he now seeks is much more questionable. I would hope that the Legislature acts wisely and seeks strong evidence of the need for such a change before it makes such a radical change, a change that seems mainly to benefit Kobach.