A lawsuit was filed Friday afternoon challenging the surprise move by the head of a federal elections agency to require proof of citizenship to register to vote in three states. The suit alleges that Brian Newby — the executive director of the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) who unilaterally approved the change to the federal form — acted outside of his authority and departed from several commission protocols in making the change.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by the League of Women Voters, Project Vote, the Georgia State Conference of the NAACP and others. It is asking for preliminary injunction that voids the recently-added proof-of-citizenship requirement on the federal registration forms for Kansas, Georgia and Alabama.
“The timing of the Executive Director’s decision jeopardizes the integrity of several upcoming federal elections,” the suit says, noting Kansas’ caucus and Alabama’s primary next month.
Newby’s decision to change the federal voting registration forms in Kansas, Georgia and Alabama to require proof of citizenship late last month was seen as an unexpected reversal from previous decisions by the EAC that rejected requests for the change.
The suit accuses Newby of breaking at least five different commission policies in pushing the change, including acting out of the scope of his authority and posting the change without a public comments period.
Adding scrutiny to his move is that Newby previously worked under Kris Kobach — Kansas’ Secretary of State and a champion of voter restriction laws — as a local elections official in the state’s largest county. Kobach’s latest request to the EAC to change the federal form came shortly after Newby was appointed.
“Just two weeks after Newby was appointed as the EAC’s Executive Director, Kansas submitted its fifth request to amend the Federal Form,” the suit says. “Tellingly, while Mr. Newby failed to provide formal public notice and an opportunity to comment before changing the EAC’s policy, on information and belief, he entertained several ex parte communications from the Kansas Secretary of State, along with similar communications with officials from
Alabama and Georgia, before he approved the States’ requests.”
Civil rights activists say proof-of-citizenship requirements disenfranchise lower income people, minorities, the elderly, and other who may not have access to the documents necessary to register to vote under the mandate.
For years, the states that have passed laws requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote have been unable to fully implement the requirement because residents could still register using the federal form, which previously required a sworn affidavit that one is a citizen.
States wishing to require voter proof of citizenship have also lost a number of court battles seeking to add the requirement to the federal form.
Read Friday’s lawsuit below:
Makes My Day and Week-End.
Finally, the voice of sanity… with a properly indignant tone to it. It took long enough. Another naked, aspiring sub-emperor with a penchant for dictating laws whenever democracy fails him.
Kobach’s fooling so few of the people all of the time now, he has to be living in a self-insulated realm to imagine anyone still thinks he’s protecting democracy or anything even like that.
Kobach’s a blatant suppressionist, he’s crossed the line to conspiracy so many times, the only reason he’s not called a criminal is because he’s the one with the legal authority.
Anyone who can, with a straight face, say Kobach’s travels and conspiracies were for the purpose of protecting democracy is one of the liars.
Federal law says it is illegal to conspire to keep people from voting, and that is the ONLY thing he was trying to do, it was not some side effect. And Kobach appears unaware or unconcerned about the negative and microscopic legal exposure it has generated, on the contrary, the more extreme the situation gets the more he embraces the extreme. He doubles-down recklessly, and very publicly, as if he fancies himself as some Tea Party Slim Pickens ridin’ that Red White and Blue doomsday nuke down on all those godless evildoers.
Voter suppression isn’t just another cause to him. He has become it.
Now he’s taken it on as a personal-glory stage on which to act out his neoroyal aspirations, and he has nowhere to go but down, at the hands of a dying oldstream media that is glad to help him go there.
And unless he’s lying to himself, Kobach’s no boy scout. Some might try to disagree, but the thought he really believes he’s some knight for democracy is a knee-slapper, it would take a mighty confused AND deeply delusional “Leave it to Beaver” boy inside a wily Ivy League lawyer to maintain that reality chasm.
No doubt that is what he wants his FOX-addled followers to think, but anyone who’s done serious GOTV work knows how obvious it is to the sane eye that this is SUPPRESSION, not protection.
How far the mighty fall, when they deign to place themselves above the rule of law they represent.
i live in a purple state and have had to show my driver’s license at the polls ever since i started voting, which was for carter by the way.
and really, how much redder can kansas really get anyway?
What all the GOP strategists know is that old white people are dying. Immigrants generally don’t vote for people who hate them, think Republicans. The only way they can win is by preventing more and more of the wrong people from voting. Short of fixing the voting machines to win electkons, this is the only chance they have to win elections.
In the absence of a caption one would assume by the way the article starts out that the photo is of Brian Newby, but unless Newby is a dead ringer for Kris Kobach one would be wrong.