To the editor:

“Consistent conservative” Kris Kobach last held office as Kansas’ secretary of state. He won office by promising to catch and prosecute the thousands of illegal voters he claimed had been stealing Kansas’ elections.

Once in office, our “conservative” Legislature (avowed enemies of “government over-reach”) gave Kobach investigative and prosecutorial powers that the Kansas Constitution never gave a secretary of state. They also gave him extra money so he could stop the illegal voting he claimed was rampant in Kansas’ elections.

In eight years in office, Kobach presided over four Kansas elections, in which 4.3 million votes were cast. With his extra-constitutional powers (and our money), Kobach claimed in a recent debate that he discovered and prosecuted 12 illegal voters. Most were elderly registered Republicans confused about where they were supposed to vote, but Kobach boasted that he succeeded in getting two of those convictions upheld in federal court.

Now Kobach wants to be attorney general, the office to which Kansas’ Constitution legitimately gives our state’s highest law-enforcement powers.

Should we expect that Kobach will use that office (and our money) to conduct the state’s legitimate legal work or that he will make a self-promoting show of pursuing his party’s national “Stop the Steal” fable, which Kobach himself largely invented … and disproved?

Steve Hicks,

Lawrence