Staff in Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office say they have filed criminal charges related to voting crimes. As KPR’s Stephen Koranda reports, these are the first three cases brought by the by secretary of state after his office was granted the power to prosecute.
Kobach said in an interview this summer that the cases would have to come by early next month, because of a statute of limitations. Kobach said he was looking at instances of double voting.
“The only real way to reduce it is to deter it and the way we deter it is prosecuting it, getting the message out that we can tell when it happens, we’ll catch you after the fact and there’s going to be a heavy fine,” Kobach says.
Two of the cases are in Johnson County with an additional case in Sherman County on the Colorado border. All three allege the defendants voted in Kansas and in another state. Kobach says double voting undermines some of the nation’s basic election principles.
“Because we’re based on the principle that each person only has one vote and that all citizens are equal in the voting process. It’s one person one vote, not one person two votes,” Kobach says.
Kansas lawmakers gave the secretary of state’s office the power to prosecute voting crimes earlier this year.
