TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - Nearly all double voter registrations uncovered by a Kansas program that compares registration records of more than two dozen states are the unintentional result of people moving from one state to another and re-registering to vote, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach said.
The program, called Interstate Crosscheck, or “The Kansas Project,” goes through more than 100 million voter records from 27 participating states and works to clear up registration rolls, Kobach told The Lawrence Journal-World (https://bit.ly/1mplBfT ). The project was started in 2007 by former Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh.
“It’s a state-run program that Kansas has developed and it’s a service for the whole country,” Kobach said.
In addition to detecting double registrations, the computer program also works to find people who may have voted in two separate states, Kobach said.
Because of Kobach’s partisan background as former Kansas Republican Party chairman and his push for photo ID laws to vote and proof of citizenship to register to vote, his registration check work has raised suspicions among some Democrats in other states. While most of the 27 participating states are solidly Republican or lean Republican, none of them are solidly Democratic or lean Democratic.
Kobach has increased the number of states in the program, but in recent years at least two have dropped out: Florida and Oregon.
Republican officials in North Carolina, a key battleground state, said earlier this month that Interstate Crosscheck uncovered proof of widespread voter fraud. After those initial reports, however, officials scaled back their assertions and were focusing on investigating a much smaller number of potential cases.
Kobach said there is nothing partisan about the effort.
“You hear Republican secretaries of state talking about the security of voter rolls probably more than Democrat secretaries of state, but they (Democratic secretaries of state) care about it just as much,” he said.
___
Information from: Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World, https://www.ljworld.com
Please read our comment policy before commenting.