I’ve mentioned Kansas Secretary of State Kurt Kobach a few times over the years. He was on the President’s defunct commission concerning fraudulent voting (despite his vociferous insistence that it was endemic, they found no evidence of same), he was on the answering end of a lawsuit requesting raw electoral data from voting machines by Professor Clarkson (he won). More recently, well, there’s been some unsavory stories which I shan’t repeat. His most recent venture? The Kansas governorship, the Republican primary for which was last Tuesday. We’ll pick this up from Steve Benen, for one very good reason:
One of the most closely watched Republican primaries of the year was held in Kansas this week, where incumbent Gov. Jeff Colyer faced off against Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Everyone expected it to be a close contest, and the results didn’t disappoint: Kobach currently leads by 191 votes out of over 311,000 cast.
It’s not over just yet, though, and in the coming days, officials will still have to count provisional and mail-in ballots. The prospect of a recount is very real.
And that’s where this is likely to get tricky.
As Secretary of State for Kansas, Kobach and his team have supervisory responsibility for his own recount. He’s refused to recuse himself (although Steve later notes he’s hedged that position), which Steve thinks is outrageous:
The Kansas City Star reported yesterday, “No law requires Kobach to recuse himself, but legal and political experts said that he should do so to maintain trust in the election.”
And yet, as of yesterday, Kobach – the state’s top elections official – said he has no plans to recuse himself from the process, despite the apparent conflict of interest. The far-right Republican said his office “serves as a coordinating entity overseeing it all,” but since his team wouldn’t literally count ballots, Kobach is satisfied that he’s detached enough.
To my mind, this is not scandal – it’s a test. Kobach fails the first part of the test, that of recognizing when it’s necessary to take action in order to preserve trust in public institutions. However, he has not yet had a chance to test whether or not he’ll actually try to interfere with the recount for his benefit. If he does, and he’s caught, the citizens Kansas will know they have a real scumbag on their hands.
And they can kick him right out of public service as someone who doesn’t understand how government service should be conducted.
Sometimes, ya gotta give folks a bit of rope just to see if they hang themselves with it.
