WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - Civil rights advocates want a federal court to allow them to make public two documents they say will prove Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach tried to change federal voting law, saying he misrepresented them in a lawsuit challenging the state’s voting law.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion late Monday asking the U.S. District Court of Kansas to force Kobach to more fully reveal a document he was photographed taking into a November meeting with then-President-elect Donald Trump, as well as an internal document containing draft amendments to the National Voter Registration Act.
Kobach, the state’s most senior election official, was required to produce documents earlier this month as part of an ACLU lawsuit challenging the state’s voter registration law. But when Kobach turned over the documents to ACLU lawyers, he had marked them as confidential to shield them from public scrutiny, the group wrote.
The ACLU said in the motion that Kobach has displayed “a pattern of misrepresentation and a fundamental lack of candor directed at obscuring documents” that he did not wish to disclose.
Kobach’s conduct delayed the discovery phase of the lawsuit and raised “basic questions about the integrity” of his representations to the plaintiffs and the court, the ACLU wrote.
The ACLU has said Kobach’s apparent efforts to change the federal statute suggest he may be struggling to comply with federal law the way it is written.
Kobach’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
The ACLU motion seeks to remove the “confidential” designation and wants Kobach to pay some of their attorney’s fees. The group also wants to reopen the evidence-gathering phase of the case so it can question Kobach about the documents that he delayed turning over for months.
Under Kansas’ voter registration law, prospective voters must be able to prove their U.S. citizenship with documents such as a birth certificate, passport or naturalization documents to get on the voter rolls.
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