{"id":16990,"date":"2018-08-09T13:29:43","date_gmt":"2018-08-09T18:29:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=16990"},"modified":"2018-08-09T13:29:43","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T18:29:43","slug":"hand-him-the-rope-see-what-he-does","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2018\/08\/09\/hand-him-the-rope-see-what-he-does\/","title":{"rendered":"Hand Him The Rope, See What He Does"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> (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<\/a> by Professor Clarkson (he won).\u00a0 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<\/a> from Steve Benen, for one very good reason:<\/p>\n

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\u2019t disappoint: Kobach currently leads by\u00a0191 votes<\/a>\u00a0out of over 311,000 cast.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not over just yet, though, and in the coming days, officials will\u00a0still have to count<\/a>\u00a0provisional and mail-in ballots. The prospect of a recount is very real.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where this is likely to get tricky.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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:<\/p>\n

The Kansas City Star reported yesterday, \u201cNo law requires Kobach to recuse himself, but legal and political experts said that he should do so to maintain trust in the election.\u201d<\/p>\n

And yet, as of yesterday, Kobach \u2013 the state\u2019s top elections official \u2013 said he has no plans to recuse himself from the process, despite the apparent conflict of interest. The far-right Republican said his office \u201cserves as a coordinating entity overseeing it all,\u201d but since his team wouldn\u2019t literally count ballots, Kobach is satisfied that he\u2019s detached enough.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To my mind, this is not scandal – it’s a test<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n

And they can kick him right out of public service as someone who doesn’t understand how government service should be conducted.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, ya gotta give folks a bit of rope just to see if they hang themselves with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16990"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16991,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16990\/revisions\/16991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}