The state of Kansas simply wanted to require people registering to vote to show proof of citizenship. That should have been easy.
However, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals held that the roughly 30,000 people who couldn't prove their citizenship shows that the "requirement unconstitutionally burdens the right to vote." And the court ruled the Kansas law unconstitutional. Further, the court ruled that having to prove citizenship violated the "minimum-information" requirement of the Motor Voter law.
There are plenty of partisans who want to make it as easy as possible to register to vote, but that seems like an invitation to fraud. Fraud does happen, and it's hard to ferret out. Voter fraud happens in a number of ways, and efforts are being made to eliminate the various ways to cheat. However, it requires plugging each hole. In the aggregate the number of fraudulent votes could be large, but any one tactic might not yield a huge number of votes. Reformers have to tackle each tactic one by one. The job is made more difficult by the requirement that large numbers of cheaters must be proved before reform is allowed.
Anyway, for a discussion of the case by the the Kansas Secretary of State at the time the law was passed, see Kobach: The Tenth Circuit Wrongly Strikes Down Kansas’s Proof-of-Citizenship Election Requirement. And click FISH v. SCHWAB to read the 10th Circuit's opinion.
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10:15 AM 4/30/2020
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