One last glimpse at the racially tinged amateur hour that Kris Kobach seems to have put on in defending his strict voter registration law:
ACLU lawyer Dale Ho cross-examined Jesse Richman, a witness for Kobach, about the methodology in a controversial study Richman produced showing significant rates of non-citizen voting. In the study, Richman coded certain respondents who had “foreign”-sounding names, for weighting purposes.
Tierney Sneed reports:
After going over some of the names Richman coded as foreign — two respondents with the last name Lopez were coded as foreign, and three Lopezes were not — Ho asked Richman how he would code the name “Carlos Murguia.” Richman said he’d probably code the name as “foreign.” Ho pointed out that Murguia is a federal judge in the same courthouse in which the trial is taking place. Richman admitted he wasn’t aware of that.
“You’re not here to advocate, you’re not here to trash the advocate, you’re not here to argue with me.”
That was Judge Julie Robinson just now, upbraiding Kobach witness Jesse Richman, for interrupting her and the ACLU’s lawyer, Tierney Sneed reports.
Richman is the “expert” whose study of non-citizen voting was cited by the White House to support Trump’s false claim that he would have won the popular vote if it weren’t for millions of illegal votes.
A truly epic week on the voting rights front.
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It sounds like voter fraud huckster Hans von Spakovsky’s claims about rampant illegal voting were given the thorough debunking they deserve by the ACLU’s Dale Ho during the trial over Kansas’s proof of citizenship law Friday.
Tierney Sneed reports:
Ho moved on from the report itself to claims that von Spakovsky — and Kobach — have made in op-eds, that Somali nationals voting illegally tipped a state legislative race in Missouri.
A state court ruling found that there was no fraud in the race.
Von Spakovsky said he “was not aware of that” when he wrote his op-ed. Asked if he attempted to retract the claim, von Spakovsky said he didn’t recall when he found out.
That’s kind of how it went.
