Donald J. Trump's Hallucinatory Quest: Catching the Illusive Illegal Immigrant Voter!

IF YOUR DEMOCRACY-LOVING HEAD is spinning, who would blame you? In four short months, we have seen President Trump (a.k.a. Orange Mussolini ) vilify the press, chastise an independent judiciary and work to block an F.B.I. investigation. Even though, trust Trump and his sycophants: There’s no there, there. 

James Comey? 

Sad!

Unfortunately, Trump’s efforts to undermine democracy may prove more dangerous than we fear, abetted by a supine GOP that finds it difficult to win elections fairly. 

You may not know anything about Secretary of State Kris Kobach of Kansas. Trust me: the man is dangerous. Having spent the last two years hunting illegal immigrant voters in every sunflower patch in his state, Kobach is about to take futility national. As the Kansas City Star reported earlier this month, “Kobach, who repeatedly has made questionable claims of rampant voter fraud, will co-chair President Donald Trump’s new Commission on Election Integrity.” 

Did you know Trump had created a Commission on Election Integrity? Now you do!

For good reason people who care about civil rights were quick to criticize the choice of Kobach. For his part, the Kansas Secretary of State was “very excited and honored to have this opportunity to serve the country.” “The commission,” he claimed, “does not begin with foregone conclusions. All members…are approaching it with an open mind…The objective is to go where the facts lead us.”

That’s the problem: where “the facts” lead Kobach.

THE POOR FELLOW IS NUTS.

Not quite the face of the illegal immigrant voter the GOP has in mind.

Unfortunately, it has become increasingly clear in recent years that the GOP’s fundamental problem is dark-skinned people voting. Hispanics voting legally? A terrible idea. African Americans? You get the impression Trump & Co. would be delighted to repeal the Fifteenth Amendment.

In fact, the GOP is intent on making it hard for college kids to vote, perhaps because many are working on their tans.

Those commies!

Take for example a strict Texas voter ID law, which has been struck down repeatedly by the courts. A variety of judges have described it as a thinly veiled attempt to keep 600,000 otherwise eligible, but mostly dark-skinned or tanned young citizens from casting ballots. Under the proposed law, a voter must have one of a handful of proper kinds of photo IDs to vote. Many poor Hispanic and African American voters don’t have the official birth certificate needed to get the ID they require. Then again, if you show up at the polls you can vote if you present a concealed carry license. You can’t vote, though, if all you have is a photo ID from, say, the University of Texas.

Makes sense, right? 

THIS IS WHERE KOBACH and the “Commission on Election Integrity” take their bows. According to Trump a tidal wave of three to five million imaginary illegal immigrant voters swamped the polls in 2016. Every one voted for “Crooked Hillary.” Not one imaginary voter pulled an imaginary lever for Orange Mussolini.

(Actually, that’s true, in an imaginary way.)

Luckily, in Kansas, that tide was staunched by Secretary of State Kobach. Out on the Great Plains, he was doing his best to save America, so Trump could make it great again and maybe bring back the poll tax. For two years, under Kansas law, Kobach was hard at work ferreting out trillions and trillions of illegals who, he insisted, infested voter registration rolls across the nation. In fact, if you recall Trump’s insistence that he would have won the popular vote if all those illegals hadn’t voted, you might keep in mind Kobach was his main source for his absurd claims.

This is where the delusions of Trump and the anti-democratic instincts of the GOP intersect to perfection. If you set out to suppress the vote and capture Bigfoot you need a leader who believes Bigfoot exists to lead the search—and suppress the minority vote in the process. Using rare powers vested in him by a GOP-controlled legislature, Kobach left no suffrage stone unturned. He cleaned out criminals left and right. 

Like fascist right. 

This past April the Kansas City Star proudly proclaimed that, “Victor David Garcia Bebek has pleaded guilty to voter fraud.”

Bebek is dark-skinned for sure, a native of Peru, who ran afoul of Kobach after qualifying for citizenship and applying to vote legally. It turned out Bebek had been confused about his legal status, had already cast ballots in two elections, and a brand new citizen was hauled into court and fined $5,000.

With that, the total number of illegal immigrant voters caught and convicted by Kobach since July 2015 rose to…one.

One!

HERE A LIBERAL—OR ANY LOGICAL HUMAN—might suggest Bebek voted because he got mixed up, not because he was part of a nefarious plot to subvert the nation. Bebek wouldn’t be the first citizen, new or used, to be unclear how democracy works. It took Trump five years to figure out Hawaii was part of the United States and President Obama was therefor an American citizen. In a recent poll 57% of adults couldn’t name a single justice on the Supreme Court, even though they had nine chances. (You figure they didn’t know there were nine justices, either.) In another stunner, only 1 in 3 Americans could correctly name the three branches of government, and 1 in 8 agreed the U.S. Constitution guaranteed the right to own a pet. During the 2016 campaign, 59% of Trump supporters still believed Mr. Obama was the first alien to land in the Oval Office. 

So it’s no surprise that Trump, who has clearly never read the U.S. Constitution, and many loyal Trumpsters believe Bigfoot exists.

Look at the evidence from Kansas!

According to the Topeka Capital-Journal, Kobach has managed to prosecute a total of nine people for voter fraud in two short years, collecting $30,000 in fines in the process. Sadly, eight of nine convictions involve noticeably white, native-born citizens, who voted in two different states during one election. The Wichita Eagle highlighted Kobach’s “success” in May 2016, when Ron Weems, 77, pled guilty to three misdemeanors, including double voting in Kansas and Colorado.

Soon a fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth criminal fell to the blazing guns of the Kansan Kobach.

Nine cases—out of 1,788,673 registered Kansas voters.

Sure, the “fake news” folks might quibble. CNN might point out that one Kansan criminal, Randall Kilian, 62, was a registered Republican.

MSNBC might focus on Steven Gaedtke, also surprisingly white, who paid a fine after voting in Kansas and Arkansas in 2010.

Some damn liberal might point out his crime was committed six years before Trump ran for office.

When Kansas newspapers (and even Fox News) scoffed, Kobach defended his efforts, claiming he had uncovered many more cases. In Sedgewick County he said he had turned up 25 illegally registered criminals, their evil deeds spread over a a lawless period of thirteen years. Some had even cast ballots! In many cases, Kobach discovered “criminals” who registered to vote, realized they weren’t eligible, and didn’t. In one particularly egregious case five Kansans in one county illegally registered—and then self-reported their errors. And it was too bad when a Shawnee County judge struck down new voter registration rules, pushed by Mr. Kobach, on the judicially flimsy grounds that…um…18,000 Kansans who had every right to vote would have been denied ballots.

SADLY, WE’VE SEEN THIS SORRY SAGA play out before. In North Carolina a federal appeals court ruling that another GOP-supported voter ID law was drafted in a way to “target African Americans with almost surgical precision” and insure they didn’t cast ballots was upheld (meaning the law was nullified) by the U.S. Supreme Court.

And consider the case of Florida. With an estimated 850,000 illegal immigrants residing in that state, Governor Rick Scott set out in 2012 to purge the voting rolls and protect democracy at its roots. First, the Florida Department of State created a list of 182,000 men and women who might be voting illegally. 

Bigfoot! Sooooo scary!

A second careful check of records, duplicate names, wrong addresses, and more, quickly cut that figure to 2,700.  

Less scary!

Then more checking reduced the total to 200 possible illegals, one of whom turned out to be an 85-year-old World War II veteran. 

Eventually, after many tax dollars wasted, the state did manage to purge 85 names from the rolls.

Not at all scary! 

(Unless you care about the tens of thousands of eligible voters who nearly got kicked off the rolls.)

IN ANY CASE,, President Donald J. Trump pledges a massive effort to catch millions of illegal voters. He has promised to spend millions and millions in taxpayer dollars on his hallucinatory quest.

Kris Kobach will do his part to find Bigfoot and work hard to justify keeping as many dark-skinned individuals as possible away from the polls. “This is really a first-of-its-kind enterprise,” he told reporters after hearing of his appointment. “For the first time having a national body gather data from all 50 states. The objective of the commission is to bring those hard facts together on a national level.”

So, good luck, Mr. Kobach. Sometime soon, we know you’ll find Illegal Immigrant Voter #2.

MAYBE THE K.K.K will even pitch in and help you.