Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is known for instituting strict restrictions on who has access to the ballot box.

But does Kobach’s controversial two-term tenure have anything to do with the chaos currently unfolding in his own undecided GOP gubernatorial primary, where he’s leading by only dozens of votes?

Not directly, say local political experts. But in some oblique ways, it does.

First off is the matter of resources. Kobach used thousands of state dollars for the frivolous voter fraud suits that he initiated and argued on Kansas’ behalf. His opponent, Gov. Jeff Kolyer, has argued that Kobach should be on the hook for the $26,000 in legal fees he owes over the proof-of-citizenship lawsuit he lost in federal court earlier this year.

“When you’re working on something, there’s also what you’re not doing,” Michael Smith, Chair of the Political Science Department at Emporia State University, told TPM.

“Instead of looking for illegal voters who did not exist,” Smith said, Kobach would have better-served his state by ensuring that Kansas “had better voting equipment and reporting procedures.”

Then there are the errors made by entities he technically oversees as secretary of state.

Clerks in two counties said that the vote totals they turned over to his office were not accurately reported on the secretary of state’s website. Once Kobach’s office corrected the mistake, his lead dropped notably.

Poll workers trained by the county election commissioners Kobach oversees also slipped up. Some voters reported receiving the wrong type of ballot, while other unaffiliated voters said they were not provided with the document they needed to fill out in order to vote in partisan primary races.

These missteps prompted Colyer’s campaign to ask Kobach to recuse himself. Providing guidance on how to address voting problems in a race that he himself stood to win was inappropriate, Colyer’s team said.

Kobach reluctantly agreed to do so, but then appointed his deputy, Assistant Secretary of State Erick Rucker, to see out the primary process. Rucker has donated to Kobach’s gubernatorial campaign.

As Burdett Loomis of the University of Kansas put it to TPM: “Where irony comes into play here is he’s a tough-minded individual on fraud, but every time you see a decision being made that would help him [in the primary race], its not necessarily a strict constructionist decision. It’s a decision that would help Kris Kobach.”