New York Times calls Kris Kobach a ‘blight’ on democracy

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is a “blight on true democracy,” according to a New York Times editorial published Monday.

Titled “Kansas Zealot Helps Shape the G.O.P.’s Right-Wing Platform,” the unsparing editorial notes Kobach’s efforts to write “extremist positions” on immigration, guns and same-sex marriage into the Republican party platform. The Times also criticizes Kobach for recent actions that may prevent 17,000 Kansans from voting in state and local elections. Kobach is “devious” and “wrong,” the Times editorial board says, in enforcing a law that requires new voters to prove citizenship with a passport, birth certificate or naturalization papers. The editorial continues:

Federal law imposes no such burden. But Mr. Kobach continues to try to force the state requirement onto the books — brazenly persisting in the face of recent federal and state court findings that these legitimate voters are being suppressed and must be allowed their full ballot rights.

On Monday, the well-traveled Kobach was in Cleveland, where he addressed the Kansas delegation attending the Republican National Convention.