A Thousand Voices: Respondents opposed to Kobach’s power to prosecute

In this photo taken Monday, Jan. 12, 2015, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach presides over the Kansas House while new members are sworn in during the opening day of the Kansas legislature in Topeka, Kan.

A new Journal-World survey shows a majority of 1,000 LJWorld.com users do not agree with the state’s decision allowing its top elections official the authority to prosecute alleged voter fraud — a power that’s recently been wielded.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach gained the power to prosecute election crimes in June, when Gov. Sam Brownback signed legislation Kobach had crafted and pushed.

Although most respondents to our survey didn’t like that decision — or Kobach’s job performance — they were almost evenly split on the validity of a state law requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote.

About this article

A Thousand Voices is a new feature that will measure how at least 1,000 readers of LJWorld.com feel about a variety of issues being debated by the public. The Journal-World will regularly conduct a poll that captures a representative sample of the approximately 35,000 users of LJWorld.com. All polling will be conducted by our partner, Google Consumer Surveys. The Google system chooses participants for the poll at random, has mechanisms in place designed to prevent a single user from casting multiple votes, and calculates results using margins of error and 95 percent confidence levels common to the polling industry.

If you have a topic you would like to see as part of a future poll, please suggest it to Nikki Wentling at nwentling@ljworld.com

Here’s a look at the results:

• In the first question about the state’s voter identification law (specifically the provision requiring people to show proof of U.S. citizenship when registering), the results were too close to call. About 42.5 percent said that yes, they agreed with the law, and 45 percent answered “no.” The remainder were unsure. Margins of error ranged from 1.9 to 3.

• When asked about Kobach’s power to prosecute, results were more definitive: 56.6 percent said they didn’t agree with the decision to grant that authority. Those who said they did agree with the decision accounted for 25.7 percent of votes, and 17.6 percent were unsure. Margins of error on these results ranged from 2.2 to 3.

• Lastly, we asked LJWorld.com readers how they viewed Kobach’s job performance. Half of the respondents — 50.7 percent — selected “very unfavorable.” “Somewhat unfavorable” received 11.3 percent of the votes, and 27.4 percent said they were neutral. “Very favorable” and “somewhat favorable” each garnered about 5.5 percent (5.4 percent for “very favorable and 5.3 for “somewhat”). Margins of error ranged from 1.2 to 3.1.

Maybe we can draw from this that readers have more opposition to Kobach generally, rather than the state’s voter identification laws.

One thing that could also play into the responses was that only registered voters (those who said they were registered, anyway) were allowed to take the survey. We asked that as a screening question before the other questions popped up.

Recent news on voter ID

In his first move since he was given the authority, Kobach filed in October criminal charges against three people accused of voter fraud in the 2010 election.

On Oct. 29, The Associated Press reported that Olathe residents Steven and Betty Gaedtke, who are two of the three facing criminal charges, filed an advance voting ballot in Kansas and voted in person in Arkansas when they were moving back and forth between homes in each state.

The Gaedtkes are scheduled to appear in court Dec. 3.

Something else to note: Lawrence attorney (and former Democratic lawmaker and gubernatorial candidate) Paul Davis is one of two lawyers who filed a federal lawsuit in September over Kobach’s plan to remove incomplete voter registrations 90 days after they’re filed.

In a separate lawsuit, the American Civil Liberties Union is challenging the state’s proof-of-citizenship requirement.