The wingnut laboratory lab rat known as where-the-fk-else-Kansas is up to its corn-fed eyebrows in political shenanigans again. First of all, delusional Governor Sam Brownback and his pet state legislature have mucked up the state's finances so badly that it looked for a while that the entire judicial system might have to shut down.

The possibility of a court shutdown loomed after a judge in a different county appeared to trigger the funding cutoff when he struck down the law giving local courts the power to select chief judges. The judge, Larry Hendricks, ruled in September that the selection law violated a state constitutional provision giving the supreme court general administrative authority over all state courts. Hendricks put his ruling on hold pending appeal…"This delay should eliminate talk of any 'constitutional crisis,' except perhaps among outside groups itching for a fight, and will give every Kansan involved an opportunity to thoughtfully reassess the situation," Schmidt said.

Yes, it would take those dreaded "outside groups" to point out that Kansas has handed over its government to the economic equivalent of the Heaven's Gate cult so thoroughly that it might not have been able to keep its courts open.

Elsewhere along the dusty, wire-edged prairie roads, there's a nice lady statistician out at Wichita State named Beth Clarkson who's got her teeth firmly affixed to the tibia of Secretary of State Kris Kobach, and it doesn't look like she's going to let go any time soon. She has been trying to sue Kobach to get voting records released and she's finally found a lawyer to take the case.

His only stipulation – that I let him have control of the legal case. That is, I had to let him make the decisions regarding his area of expertise rather than trying to run the show myself. Not an easy choice for me and I mulled it over both before and after putting on a 3-day seminar in South Korea last week. I try not to be a control freak, but apparently, people do perceive me that way sometimes. Anyway, I've agreed to that condition and look forward to working with him on this case. I was able to speak with the Sedgwick County Courthouse regarding scheduling of a discovery hearing. It's to be at 1:00 October 19th. My understanding is that this is a short hearing to determine the amount of time needed in order to schedule a trial. I don't know more than that, but I'm grateful to have legal counsel arranged before this occurs.

Clarkson has been at this for a while now. Her attempts to pry open the voting records for Sedgwick County have barely made a ripple nationally but, in the world of voter-suppression, this is a big deal I guess it would have been to the advantage of Kobach, who is the dark genius behind nationwide anti-immigrant and nationwide voter-suppression laws, if the Kansas courts actually had shut down. Clarkson is speculating not only that votes were suppressed, but also that there was some severe monkey-mischief played with the votes that were counted. This is an entirely different – and more serious – thing.

The mathematician wanted to examine the voting tapes after something didn't add up.Clarkson explained, "I don't understand why those patterns are there, the patterns are very definitely real. But we don't know what's causing them or why they're there. They do fit what would be expected if election fraud is occurring, and that's very concerning." In Sedgwick County, the voting tapes record every stroke a voter makes on the machine. The Election Commissioner there said the tapes are 385 feet long and are stored in 42 boxes. However, in Johnson County, voting is done primarily on electronic machines where there is no automatic paper trail. They're machines which Clarkson said can be easily hacked.

And, I remind everyone again that both Brownback and Kobach were re-elected by healthy margins, and that the 2014 midterms may have been the worst national elections that the country has seen since the ones that burped up the four stooges who were president before Lincoln.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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