In Orwell’s “1984,” the Ministry of Truth was responsible for propaganda, the Ministry of Peace prosecuted endless war, and the Ministry of Love enforced loyalty to Big Brother through fear, torture, and brainwashing. Now in Trump’s dystopian present we have the “Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity,” which, not surprisingly will do nothing to maintain the integrity of elections. In reality, it’s part of a long-term plan by Republicans to prevent minorities and young people — in short, anyone likely to vote for Democrats — from exercising their right to vote
Behind the chillingly named commission is Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of state. During the Obama campaign, Kobach was such a dedicated birther that he tried to keep Obama off the Kansas ballot even after Obama had released his birth certificate. Kobach has been called the “king of voter suppression” by the ACLU and labeled “the most racist politician in America” by Kansas’ Senate minority leader —no doubt the very qualifications that led Trump to choose him for the important task of maintaining the “integrity” of our elections.
Kobach’s tool of choice to deny the vote to likely Democratic voters is the “Interstate Voter Crosscheck Program,” a program adopted by 28 Republican-led states in response to the widespread Republican accusations of voter fraud in the mid 2000s. Crosscheck looks for voters with the same first middle and last name, birthdate, and last 4 social security number digits who are registered in multiple states. Voters who match in multiple states are sent a deliberately confusing postcard asking for identity confirmation. Failure to reply means you’re automatically removed from the voting rolls. And you won’t be told until you show up to vote.
Even on the surface, it doesn’t take much thought to realize how shaky this scheme is. What, after all, is the most likely cause for the same voter to be registered in two states? Fraud? Telekinesis? No. Obviously most voters who actually are registered in two states have simply moved. When I moved to California from New York did I notify the New York election commission? Of course not. Likewise the oft repeated charge by Republicans that the voter rolls are filled with “dead people,” which may sound chilling if you’ve only got half a brain, is similarly ridiculous. When Uncle Morty dies, do you immediately call the registrar of voters and tell them Morty won’t be voting any more?
But if Crosscheck, run as originally intended, would only yield a list of voters who have moved, the actual way in which it’s being implemented is to a much darker purpose. Although the states that participate in crosscheck are supposed to keep the duplicate lists secret, no doubt so that voters won’t know they’ve been taken off the rolls until it’s too late, Rolling Stone reporters managed to obtain the crosscheck lists for several states and what they show is frightening.
The Social Security Number match? None of the lists obtained by Rolling Stone even contained SSNs. A quarter of the names the lists lacked a middle name match. Jr. and Sr. designations were ignored. So what Crosscheck actually does is simply spit out a list of common last names. And because the list of common last names includes a disproportionate number of minority voters — US Census data shows that minorities are overrepresented in 85% of the most common last names — Crosscheck ends up flagging minority voters, which is no doubt what it was intended to do all along. According to Rolling Stone, one in six Hispanics, one in seven Asian-Americans, and one in nine African-Americans in the Crosscheck states were flagged by the program. Kobach is a smart guy. He went to Yale Law and has a Ph.D. from Oxford. The results of the shoddy Crosscheck methodology could not have escaped him.
With demographic trends against them, the Republicans will increasingly need to resort to voter suppression to maintain control of the government. Crosscheck is a sophisticated scheme to do just that, all the while disguising itself as a tool to maintain “election integrity.” Chalk up another win for Orwell.
Orange Alert Chronicles 