SCOTUS making itself an enemy of "the people"

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

GOP: the party of grifters

So THAT's what Berman was so exercised about.  Kudos to Berman and Strauss.

Steve Bannon.  Who would have imagined?

2/ The crowdraising campaign raised more than $25 million, and pledged that the founder would "not take a penny in salary or compensation" and that "100% of the fund raised ... will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose." Lying to get someone's money is fraud.

3/ The indictment alleges that Bannon received over $1 million from the campaign, which he used to secretly pay the founder and to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in his own expenses.

If this sounds like a very simple case to get your head around, that's because it is. 

4/ There are some twists and turns in this story. The crowdfunding website suspended the "We The People Build The Wall" campaign, which pledged to give all of the money to the federal government to build the wall, early on. 

5/ The website said they would return the funds unless the founder identified a non-profit to which the funds could be transferred. Bannon used a separate 501(c)(4) non-profit group that he already controlled to receive the funds, with the new purpose of funding a private wall. 

6/ The indictment alleges that Bannon and his associates continued to lie, claiming that the founder would "take no salary" and would receive not "a penny of compensation from these donations." These alleged lies were repeated many times, according to the indictment. 

7/ Yet Bannon paid the founder hundreds of thousands of dollars in "salary" and did so in a manner meant to conceal the payments, by making payments to the founder's spouse. Bannon falsely reported on the 1099 tax form that the payments were for "media." 

8/ In sum, the indictment alleges that Bannon, the founder, and their other co-conspirators each received hundreds of thousands in donor funds from the effort.

If this case didn't involve Steve Bannon, or an effort to ripoff Trump's base, it would be a garden variety fraud. 

9/ Federal prosecutors routinely investigate and prosecute cases like this one.

It can be complicated to prove that otherwise legitimate companies or individuals engaged in fraudulent activity. This isn't one of those cases. The whole organization looks like a scam. 

Everything connected to Donald Trump is a scam.

10/ If the prosecutors can prove what is alleged in the indictment, it's hard to imagine a jury hesitating to convict the defendants. This case raises questions about Barr's recent attempt to fire and replace the SDNY U.S. Attorney, or whether Trump will pardon Bannon. /end

What will his current one be busted for?  (Reminder that the current one is recently replacing one that was siphoning hundreds of thousands to buy luxury automobiles and boats and in general have a fabulous lifestyle.)

Countdown to Trump saying he hardly knew Steve Bannon and never met the others.*

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:

Also, Bill Barr's "right-hand man" appointed to the DC justice office is going to probably have some extra headaches now, because his name happens to the same as one of the indicted crooks: Timothy Shea.

UPDATE:

*UPDATE:  And there it is...

He didn't know "those three people."

Kansas Republicans figuring it out

KC Star
Time

Also, Kris Kobach is a failing bag of wind

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Did Kris Kobach ever have a client?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Art of the deal

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:





I would say I wonder why he's being considered for anything after the fiasco/failure of the voter fraud bullshit he conducted, but I know that failure is not a deterrent to working in the Trump administration.  It's more of a prerequisite.

UPDATE:

The "voter security" commission he chaired never was more than a laughing stock. His campaign for governor of an extremely red state had all the charm and vitality of a pauper's grave. And now, with a glimmer of a chance at recapturing something close to political relevance, and getting to knuckle brown people at the same time, Kobach demands a private jet and, hilariously, that the president* agree to take his side in any argument against cabinet members or other members of the senior staff.

Good god, who is this knucklehead when he's at home? Even the Trump people found this high-handed.

The existence of the list has become known among officials in the Trump administration, some of whom were taken aback by what they regard as its presumptuousness.

Roll that around in the ol' cortex for a spell. Trump administration officials thought Kobach was farting higher than his own arse. He might still get the job; he's just the style of jackboot that the president* loves. But what is it with these guys and private jets? There's a severe binky problem with them, that's for certain. But it's become clear that, without big government to loot, all these small-government conservatives would have to reach into their own pockets and that, my dear young people, simply is not done.

  Charles P Pierce

GoFundMe border wall update

A decorated veteran who raised more than $20 million to finance construction of a wall along the southern U.S. border has announced that he will instead use the money to finance a new nonprofit group that will build the wall itself—or at least a couple miles of it.

[...]

Now Kolfage, a prolific operator of conspiracy theory Facebook pages, has recruited a team of prominent figures in President Donald Trump’s orbit to run a new 501(c)(4) nonprofit, named We Fund The Wall, to do some wall construction of its own. The new group’s board, Kolfage announced on Friday, includes Erik Prince, the founder of infamous military contract Blackwater; David Clarke, the former scandal-plagued sheriff of Milwaukee County; Fox News contributor Sara Carter; Tom Tancredo, an immigration hardliner and former Colorado congressman; and former Kansas Secretary of State and voter fraud crusader Kris Kobach

  Daily Beast

And their salaries will eat up how much of the money?

Kolfage’s fundraising campaign was initially designed to help finance that construction with private contributions. He insisted that he had been in contact with a number of federal officials and members of Congress devising ways to funnel the massive amounts of money raised on GoFundMe to the federal treasury.

It appears that that plan went awry.

It didn't go awry. It wasn't well researched in the first place, and it turns out you can't give money to the government for a specific project. If you give money to the government, it goes into the general fund and is spent according to Congressional budget appropriations.

“The federal government won’t be able to accept our donations anytime soon,” Kolfage said in an update on the GoFundMe page on Friday.

"Any time soon." Like, ever.

GoFundMe is emailing donors with an option to proactively agree to send their money to We Fund the Wall, but if donors decline or never respond to that option, they’ll receive a refund.

[...]

Dustin Stockton, a conservative activist and We Fund The Wall spokesman, said he expects that enough people will agree to redirect their GoFundMe contributions for the group to retain a sizable portion of the funds.

I, on the other hand, have a feeling that $20 million is going to drop dramatically.

“When the campaign was created, the campaign organizer specifically stated on the campaign page, ‘If we don’t reach our goal or come significantly close we will refund every single penny,’” GoFundMe’s statement reads. “He also stated on the campaign page, ‘100% of your donations will go to the Trump Wall. If for ANY reason we don't reach our goal we will refund your donation.’ However, that did not happen.”

[...]

Rather than financing federal efforts to build the wall, We Build The Wall plans to go the route that its name suggests and finance construction on its own, according Stockton. He said the group to secure enough funding from its initial GoFundMe supporters to build “at least two miles” along the southern border, which is nearly 2,000 miles long.

LOL.

The group has already been in touch with landowners in Texas about buying or leasing their land for wall construction, Stockton said. It’s also retained two law firms to deal with regulatory issues that are sure to dog the project, including Barnes & Thornburg and Foley & Lardner. Cleta Mitchell, an attorney with the latter, who Stockton said is working with the new nonprofit, is a prominent conservative lawyer representing a host of political and nonprofit groups aligned with President Trump’s agenda.

Oh, Hell, there won't be ANY money left for construction.

We Build The Wall is also staffing up administratively, a hiring spree that Stockton said is being financed by private donors, not GoFundMe contributions. He declined to name any of the donors.

Imagine that.

We Build The Wall is convinced that private funding for wall construction, to the extent it can be marshalled, is preferable, given Washington’s inability to agree on a funding package. “We expect we’re going to be able to construct the wall so much more efficiently than the government,” Stockton said.

Well, two miles of it, anyway. And, hey, come to think of it, that IS more than the government is going to get done.

Keep up the good work, gang.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another sudden discovery in primary voting

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s narrow lead over Gov. Jeff Colyer in the GOP primary race for governor shrunk on Thursday after officials discovered a mistake in voting totals.

Kobach’s lead has been sliced from 191 to 91 votes after officials noticed a discrepancy in Colyer's totals in Thomas County. Results remain unofficial, and the race is still too close to call.

The secretary of state’s website lists Kobach with 466 votes to Colyer’s 422 in Thomas County.

However, the Thomas County election results page shows Colyer with 522 votes to Kobach's 466.

  The Hill

Hmm. And who is Secretary of State?

Bold move on the secretary's part.

Kansas elections director Bryan Caskey told The Associated Press that officials noticed the discrepancy during a routine post-election review of voting totals.

[...]

[Kobach] was the vice chairman of Trump's since-disbanded commission to investigate unfounded claims of voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election, which he said cost him the popular vote to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Voter fraud? I think it's obvious where the fraud lies.  But wasn't he just the perfect Trump pick to head something called the Election Integrity Commission?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

We know where the fraud lies

And it's not with voters.

Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, a Democrat who served on President Donald Trump’s voter fraud commission, published a trove of documents Friday that he said show zero signs of mass voter fraud, declaring that the White House’s claims about wide-scale fraud are "false."

"I have reviewed the documents made available to me and they do not contain evidence of widespread voter fraud," Dunlap wrote in a letter that took aim at Trump’s repeated — and baseless — claims that millions of people voted illegally.

Dunlap had sued the government to obtain the records he published Friday, which he said the administration had been hiding.

The commission’s co-chairs, Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, had claimed that widespread fraudulent voting required stringent new regulations, which critics said would block people of color who are legally registered to vote and who tend to lean Democratic, from accessing the polls.

The documents were all posted online.

  Buzzfeed

And, speaking of Kris Kobach...

Kris Kobach’s gubernatorial campaign employs three men identified as members of a white nationalist group by two political consultants who have worked with Republicans in Kansas.

  Topeka Capital-Journal Online

I assume that's a winning point for many, if not most, of Kobach's supporters.

Kobach spokeswoman Danedri Herbert rejects the accusation as a baseless distraction from real news in the closing days of a contested GOP primary race.

[...]

The consultants in early July independently named the three men, all in their early 20s, as members of American Heritage Initiative, a splinter of Identity Evropa, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as as a campus-based white supremacy group that builds community from shared racial identity.

[...]

Herbert said the three told her they never heard of American Heritage Initiative and aren’t members of such a group.

[...]

“It is baffling to me, a black woman who serves as Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s spokeswoman, that so many in the media are digging up fake news when they should be investigating real stories.”

[...]

None of the three responded to messages seeking comment this week.

[...]

[One of the men] attracted attention for remarks he made last year in a discussion group for the Kansas Federation of College Republicans. He posted an image of a student reading “Brown is the New White,” a book by Steve Phillips about a progressive, multiracial majority who could win elections if mobilized.

In his comment under the photo, Gustin used the N-word and complained of people who are “openly anti-white.”

“These people know they’re not oppressed,” he wrote. “They just hate white people and are jealous of us. They know they can bully us with the oppression stuff until they’re granted EXTRA rights, because most have been brainwashed with disingenuous, weaponized, cherry picked history into white guilt. They won’t stop until we grow a spine. The USA is the least racist country in the world. We have so much racial tension because we ALLOW and SUBSIDIZE tens of millions of people from other groups to come here.”

[...]

Last year, SPLC reported Kobach met with an adviser in Topeka who was fined for hate speech in Austria. He also spoke in 2015 at a writer’s workshop for The Social Contract Press, which publishes white nationalist material. He defended the group and takes contributions from K.C. McAlpin, executive director of the group’s parent organization, US Inc.

A devastating story by The Star and ProPublica showed that Kobach’s lucrative career chasing anti-immigrant legislation is a sham. The secretary of state has earned at least $800,000 over the years traveling from city to city to draft and defend rickety ordinances aimed at restricting immigration.

To their deep regret, officials in those communities did not know what Kansans have learned: Kobach is a terrible lawyer. In city after city, his poorly drafted ordinances were struck down by the courts, even though Kobach was paid handsomely to write them and defend them in court.

Valley Park, Mo., taxpayers coughed up $300,000 because officials there were sold on Kobach’s pitch. The city’s immigration ordinance, drafted with Kobach’s help, was eventually gutted.

Grant Young, Valley Park’s former mayor, described Kobach’s approach: “Let’s find a town that’s got some issues or pretends to have some issues, let’s drum up an immigration problem, and maybe I can advance my political position ... and maybe make some money at the same time,” he said.

It may be the best description ever of Kris Kobach’s understanding of public service.

It wasn’t just Valley Park, of course. Farmers Branch, Texas, ended up $7 million in the hole. Hazleton, Pa., borrowed $1.4 million to pay for Kobach’s folly. Taxpayers in Fremont, Neb., raised property taxes to put money in Kobach’s pocket.

[...]

Kobach was sanctioned by a federal judge for contempt. He has been ordered to take remedial classes in basic courtroom rules.

Kobach helped President Donald Trump form a voting commission aimed in part at exploring the laughable contention that Trump actually won the popular vote in 2016. Predictably, the commission collapsed from its own silliness.

  Kansas City Star

And now he's running for governor of Kansas. Any bets?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Kobach is still in office??

I thought that asshat was discredited a long time ago.

A federal judge on Monday permanently struck down Kansas's proof-of-citizenship voter registration law, handing down a blistering ruling against Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, one of the country's most vocal advocates of voter-ID laws.

In the 118-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson wrote that the state’s requirement that voters show proof of citizenship during registration violated both the Constitution and the National Voter Registration Act.

Robinson struck down the stringent law, and ordered Kobach to take six additional hours of continuing legal education that “pertain to federal or Kansas civil rules of procedure or evidence.”

  The Hill

Ouch. That's personal.

At issue was Kobach’s pride and joy—a law that required any Kansan to provide a proof of citizenship before they are allowed to vote.

(This law combines two of the larger bats in Kobach’s belfry—that America is being overrun by illegal immigrants and that millions of them are voting.)

The law is nakedly unconstitutional and clearly designed to keep from voting those people whom Kobach finds inconvenient. Luckily for those people, however, Kobach decided to argue his own case and, in doing so, revealed himself to know less about the law than anyone who simply watches reruns of Law and Order.

[...]

His team botched rudimentary rules of evidence and discovery so egregiously that Judge Robinson appeared ready to apply the gavel to their watery heads. Then, on Monday, she brought an even bigger hammer down on them, tossing the law as far as judicial discretion allowed her to throw it.

[...]

“The court will not rely on extrapolated numbers from tiny sample sizes and otherwise flawed data.

[...]

[A]s part of her ruling on the case, in addition to shredding Kobach’s political love child, as well as shredding all the purported “evidence” Kobach brought to court, she also ordered him to…go back to law school.

[...]

His repeated last-minute efforts to introduce new evidence showed a pattern of “flaunting disclosure and discovery rules that are designed to prevent prejudice and surprise at trial,” she said.

[...]

I would have ordered him to go back to law school in a dunce cap while sitting at a grade-school desk. But I’m a law-and-order type of guy.

  Charles P Pierce

Election integrity, indeed

This is starting to just get sad.

Prior to receiving notice from Gizmodo this morning, Kris Kobach’s office was leaking sensitive information belonging to thousands of state employees, including himself and nearly every member of the Kansas state legislature.

[...]

In the interest of accountability, the information added to those forms is supposed to be public record. But the form itself also includes an “optional” field that asks for the last four digits of the employee’s Social Security number, explicitly for one purpose: to aid the state in properly identifying individuals whose full names may be shared by other state employees.

[...]

Among a bevy of personal information that, according to a statement on the website, was intended to be public, the Kansas Secretary of State’s website was exposing the last four digits of Social Security numbers (known as SSN4) of thousands of current and former candidates for office, as well as thousands, or potentially tens of thousands, of high-ranking state employees at apparently ever Kansas government agency.

The combination of a person’s name and SSN4 creates what’s commonly called “personally identifiable information,” the unauthorized disclosure of which is unlawful under numerous state and federal laws.

[...]

It became quickly apparent that counting the number of lawmakers who were not exposed would be far easier than counting those who were: Ninety percent of the Kansas state legislature included SSN4 information on their forms, including 117 out of 125 state representatives and 34 out of 40 state senators. (Previous state lawmakers were also found in the database dating back several years.)

[...]

Gizmodo notified the Kansas Secretary of State’s office of the exposure on Thursday morning, and the site was taken down within roughly an hour. A request for comment was not returned.

[...]

Kobach’s office has spent the past few weeks trying to convince the Kansas legislature that it is, in fact, equipped to handle voluminous amounts of sensitive voter records. The interstate Crosscheck program, which is overseen by Kobach’s office, has lost control over voter data—including partial Social Security numbers—on several occasions over the past six months.

[...]

Kobach is currently running for governor of Kansas.

  Gizmodo

I'm guessing that's not gonna go so well.

How many states are right now patting themselves on the back for not turning over voter information to that failed Election Integrity Commission Kobach headed up? Yeah, all of them that didn't.

The Kansas Secretary of State’s office sent Gizmodo the following statement, in which it is argued that the sensitive information had to be released by law, but was removed from the website anyway.

[...]

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach does not believe that the last four of a person’s social security number should be part of this publicly available information. However currently Kansas law requires the entire SSI to be released. [...] The statements are still available for someone to request in person pursuant to Kansas statute.

Do Kansans know that?!?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Could this be why Trump's "election integrity" commission decided to destroy all its data before shutting down?

President Donald Trump’s election fraud commission asked every state and the District for detailed voter registration data, but in Texas’s case it took an additional step: it asked to see Texas records that identify all voters with Hispanic surnames, newly released documents show. In buying nearly 50 million records from the state with the nation’s second largest Hispanic population, a researcher for the White House panel checked a box on two Texas public voter data request forms explicitly asking for the “Hispanic surname flag notation,” to be included in information sent to the commission, according to copies of the signed and notarized state forms.

[...]

Commission member Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap (D), who has sued the panel to disclose records that he says were not provided to him, said the selection of Hispanic names appeared improper and could explain why the panel has sought to act in secret.

[...]

“It’s all speculation because they haven’t disclosed anything, but if they are breaking things down along racial and ethnic lines,’ Dunlap said, it indicates why they are guarding this information like hungry dogs cornered in a trap.”

[...]

White House and Texas officials said the Texas voter data was never delivered because a lawsuit brought by Texas voting rights advocates after the request last year temporarily stopped any data handoff.

The commission was disbanded Jan. 3 after Trump cited a host of ongoing state and federal lawsuits and resistance from state officials over the sweeping pursuit of information about more than 150 million voters across the country. The commission said it would destroy all voter data it had gathered, without detailing any data purchases.

[...]

The commission vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris W. Kobach (R) who launched the drive to collect data from every state, said “at no time did the commission request any state to flag surnames by ethnicity or race. It’s a complete surprise to me.”

[...]

Such “information does not, did not advance the commission’s inquiry in any way, and this is the first I’ve heard the Texas files included that,” Kobach said Friday.

  WaPo

Riiiiiiight.

Who knew they were buying records in the first place?

The documents appear to show for the first time that the Trump commission paid for the processing and release of records from 10 states in September. Earlier, voting rights groups had identified 20 states that turned over information voluntarily.

I hope those ten states are suing to get their money back.

The commission faces lawsuits by at least 10 voting and public accountability groups, seeking information on what other data the panel may have assembled, if any analysis was done and whether information has been shared outside the White House.

[...]

“There was never a request made to flag people based on their ethnicity,” the White House official said Friday. “That was never asked for, nor is that what this [Texas] response is saying, though I can see why some could read it that way,” the official said.

Can you now?

Records of the Texas data purchase were disclosed after Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Nov. 13 requested information about interactions between the U.S. General Services Administration and the commission.

Good for Claire. She's been working hard lately. She tried to get military pay exempted from the government shutdown, but was shot down by that mean old fossil McConnell. But she did let us down by voting to extend the NSA surveilance recently, so I can't give her a clean bill of health.

UPDATE:

She also just voted to let the Democrats be played for fools by the Republicans again on the government shutdown, where they should have been holding out for a DACA deal.

UPDATE:

Oh, lord.

On Monday, the Washington Post reported that the panel had purchased Texas election records that flagged all registered voters with Hispanic last names. Kris Kobach, who led the commission, claims he was unaware of that acquisition, which was made by a researcher who was recently arrested on child pornography charges.

  Slate

Somebody must have asked how this story could be worse.

According to Kobach, it was Ronald Williams II, a policy adviser on the commission, who bought the data. “Mr. Williams did not ask any member of the commission whether he should check that box or not,” Kobach asserted, “so it certainly wasn’t a committee decision.”

I'm guessing Kobach decided that Williams was already persona non grata, so why not lay the blame on him?

In October, Williams was arrested and charged with the possession and distribution of child pornography. (He has pleaded not guilty.) While the Post was not able to reach Williams for comment, the available evidence does bear out Kobach’s version of the events. Only Williams’ name appears on the invoice, and he indeed merely had to check a box to request the Hispanic voter data. The records also indicate Williams handled these kind of requests with virtually no oversight.

Yeah, OK. Why wouldn't Kobach give the commission's data to commission members? Why did Matthew Dunlap have to sue to get access to documents on a commission he was part of?

A judge ruled in Dunlap’s favor, but Kobach, through the Department of Justice, still refuses to turn over the requested records. “Perhaps the only surprising aspect of the Department of Justice response,” Dunlap said in response, “is their rich blend of arrogance and contempt for the rule of law.”

Unbelievable.

"Election Integrity Commission" Gets "Hosed"

ht Bradd Jaffy

Nice one.

Election Integrity Czarina Won't Cooperate With Himself

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach will not hand over information to his own commission.

“In Kansas, the Social Security number is not publicly available. … Every state receives the same letter but we’re not asking for it if it’s not publicly available,” Kobach told the Kansas City Star Friday. It was a change in stance from Thursday, the paper reported, when Kobach said Kansas would provide all requested information to the commission.

Kobach added Friday, hedging somewhat: “If the commission decides that they would like to receive Social Security numbers to a secure site in order to remove false positives, then we would have to double check and make sure Kansas law permits.”

  TPM

Is this the most insane administration in the history of the US? I'd be willing to bet on it.

“If Social Security number is not publicly available, and it is not publicly available in most states, then we aren’t requesting it,” he said.

“So why’d you ask for it?” Velshi interjected.

“Well, because, if it is publicly available — if the public can get it — then the commission would like it, too,” Kobach said.

Then let the Commission get it the way anybody else has to.

Also, Commission Chair Mike Pence's state of Indiana essentially told them to fuck off, too.  As did twenty+ other states.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:
Great response from Mississippi's Secretary of State Delbert Hoseman:

Hosed.

UPDATE:  I don't see any fully complying.

Latest Vote Rigging

When Donald Trump claimed, "the election's going to be rigged," he wasn't entirely wrong. But the threat was not, as Trump warned, from Americans committing the crime of "voting many, many times." What's far more likely to undermine democracy in November is the culmination of a decade-long Republican effort to disenfranchise voters under the guise of battling voter fraud. The latest tool: Election officials in more than two dozen states have compiled lists of citizens whom they allege could be registered in more than one state – thus potentially able to cast multiple ballots – and eligible to be purged from the voter rolls.

  Greg Palast

In both states if they have Republican governors, no doubt.

This could encompass thousands, maybe millions, of people. When you move to another state, do you de-register from the former voter roles? I never did, and I've lived in several different states.

The data is processed through a system called the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, which is being promoted by a powerful Republican operative, and its lists of potential duplicate voters are kept confidential. But Rolling Stone obtained a portion of the list and the names of 1 million targeted voters.

Okay, millions.

So far, Crosscheck has tagged an astonishing 7.2 million suspects, yet we found no more than four perpetrators who have been charged with double voting or deliberate double registration.

You never know. Four votes could cost the Republicans the presidency.

According to our analysis, the Crosscheck list disproportionately threatens solid Democratic constituencies: young, black, Hispanic and Asian-American voters – with some of the biggest possible purges underway in Ohio and North Carolina, two crucial swing states with tight Senate races.

What a surprise.

In the mid-2000s, after the Florida-recount debacle, the Bush administration launched a five-year investigation into the allegedly rampant crime [of voter fraud] but found scant evidence of wrongdoing. Still, the GOP has perpetuated the myth in every national election since. Recently, North Carolina Board of Elections chief Kim Strach testified to her legislature that 35,750 voters are "registered in North Carolina and another state and voted in both in the 2012 general election." Yet despite hiring an ex-FBI agent to lead the hunt, the state has charged exactly zero double voters from the Crosscheck list.

[...]

Some states have dropped out of Crosscheck, citing problems with its methodology, as Oregon's secretary of state recently explained: "We left [Crosscheck] because the data we received was unreliable."

Another big surprise.

At least Crosscheck compares first, middle and last names with birth date and last four social digits. The Florida purges in 2000 (which Greg Palast also wrote about in his book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy) before the Bush election were purging voters, matching names of convicted felons - people stripped of their voting right according to US law - to voter rolls by comparing only first and last names, thus purging thousands of eligible voters - again mostly black.

And those promised birth dates and Social Security numbers? The Crosscheck instruction manual says that "Social Security numbers are included for verification; the numbers might or might not match" – which leaves a crucial step in the identification process up to the states. Social Security numbers weren't even included in the state lists we obtained.

[...]

We had Mark Swedlund, a database expert whose clients include eBay and American Express, look at the data from Georgia and Virginia, and he was shocked by Crosscheck's "childish methodology." He added, "God forbid your name is Garcia, of which there are 858,000 in the U.S., and your first name is Joseph or Jose. You're probably suspected of voting in 27 states."

[...]

We found that one-fourth of the names on the list actually lacked a middle-name match. The system can also mistakenly identify fathers and sons as the same voter, ignoring designations of Jr. and Sr. A whole lot of people named "James Brown" are suspected of voting or registering twice, 357 of them in Georgia alone. But according to Crosscheck, James Willie Brown is supposed to be the same voter as James Arthur Brown. James Clifford Brown is allegedly the same voter as James Lynn Brown.

So, essentially the same as the Florida purges.

The U.S. Census data shows that minorities are overrepresented in 85 of 100 of the most common last names.

[...]

This inherent bias results in an astonishing one in six Hispanics, one in seven Asian-Americans and one in nine African-Americans in Crosscheck states landing on the list. Was the program designed to target voters of color? "I'm a data guy," Swedlund says. "I can't tell you what the intent was. I can only tell you what the outcome is. And the outcome is discriminatory against minorities."

[...]

And not surprisingly, almost all Crosscheck states are Republican-controlled.

[...]

I met Donald Webster, who, like most in his [Dayton, Ohio] neighborhood, is African-American.

Crosscheck lists him registered in Ohio as Donald Alexander Webster Jr., while registered a second time as Donald Eugene Webster (no "Jr.") in Charlottesville, Virginia. Webster says he's never been a "Eugene" and has never been to Charlottesville. I explained that both he and his Virginia doppelgänger were subject to losing their ability to vote.

"How low can they go?" he asked. "I mean, how can they do that?"

I put his question to Robert Fitrakis, a voting-rights attorney who examined our Crosscheck data.  [...]  Fitrakis says that the Ohio secretary of state's enthusiasm for Crosscheck fits a pattern: "He doesn't want to match middle names, because he doesn't want real matches. They're targeting people with clearly defined ethnic names that typically vote for the Democratic Party. He wants to win Ohio the only way he knows how – by taking away the rights of citizens to vote."  [ed: The state will ostensibly send out plain white postcards with tiny type to these people, and they're required to send them back with a signature to verify their status or be purged from the voter roles. So, if you think you are a likely target of this state-sponsored fraud, watch your mail carefully, and don't automatically toss little white postcards that look like some con scheme. They are, but one you want to answer.]

[...]

Crosscheck purge machinery was in operation well before Trump arrived on the political scene – and will continue for elections to come. Low voter turnout of any kind traditionally favors the GOP, and this is the party's long game to keep the rolls free of young people, minorities and the poor.

Who, if they vote, tend to vote Democrat.  So why isn't the Democrat party more anxious to end these types of actual voter fraud?

When I went to tag this post with appropriate labels, I entered the name of the architect of this fraudulent program: Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State. It turns out, back in 2012, I had another post with Kobach as a subject. He was listed at that time as a Romney adviser and "an architect of anti-immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama."

Palast, in the above Rolling Stone article gives this additional information on Mr. Kobach:

After 9/11, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft tasked Kobach with creating a system to track foreign travelers. (It was later shut down over concerns about racial profiling.) He is best known as the author of Arizona's "Driving While Brown Law," which allowed cops to pull over drivers and ask for proof of their legal status. He co-wrote the ultraconservative 2016 RNC party platform, working in a recommendation that Crosscheck be adopted by every state in the Union. He's also the Trump adviser who came up with a proposal to force Mexico into paying for Trump's wall.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

In recent days, the Romney campaign has tried to distance itself from Kansas Secretary of State and anti-immigration activist Kris Kobach by insisting that he is merely a “supporter” and not an “adviser.” According to Think Progress, however,[an] email sent by a Romney spokesperson to CNN on Friday did call Kobach an”informal adviser.”

[...]

Kobach himself has continued to insist that he is not only advising the campaign but fully expects Romney to support the use of Arizona’s draconian SB-1070 anti-immigration law as a national model.

[...]

This is significant because, as Talking Points Memo explains, “Advocates for the Latino community and Democrats have said that Romney’s ties to Kobach — an architect of anti-immigration laws in Arizona and Alabama — are a poison pill that makes connecting with Latino voters all but impossible. ”

  Raw Story

Enter Marco Rubio.