Kris Kobach, thug.

Kris Kobach, thug.

Four state lawmakers, including one Republican, have come out against the proposal, claiming it would disproportionately impact low-income, minority and elderly voters who may need more than 90 days to provide their proof of citizenship. State Rep. Jim Ward (D) told ThinkProgress that not every Kansas citizen has a drivers’ license and other forms of identification can be hard for people to procure in a short period of time. “[Kobach] said we gave more time than other states who have imposed this purge rule, and we thought it was fair,” Ward said. “But there really wasn’t any kind of analysis on how long it would take” voters to produce a proof of citizenship. Soon after taking office, Kobach advocated for a law requiring new voters in Kansas to show proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register. The law took effect in 2013, and immediately 12,000 people were placed in limbo because they could not prove their citizenship, despite the fact that the threat of non-citizens casting a ballot of virtually non-existent. As of now, more than 30,000 voters have begun the registration process but are being held in suspense because they have not showed the required identification. Currently, voters can provide the required documents up until Election Day, but Kobach wants to change that. He told a Kansas newspaper the proposal is intended to save election officials time and money and cut down on reminders they send voters to submit their citizenship documents.

In 2014, more than 22,000 Kansas voters were disenfranchised by Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has made it his life's mission to make life a living hell for minorities, particularly Latinos. His speciality has been voter suppression, though he's also known for authoring the anti-immigration "papers please" law, SB 1070 in Arizona. Kobach's latest efforts are to conduct a massive purge of 30,000 voters from the Kansas rolls, and to use his newly created powers to start prosecuting people for voter fraud.The legislature can't really stop Kobach from changing this rule, Ward told ThinkProgress. "If this was not Kris Kobach and voter suppression, an agency would have seen this as a problem," he said, continuing "if you had that many people on this kind of committee saying they didn't like what you were doing, they might have taken a step back." Kobach won't step back from this purge.

He also won't step back from his brand-new powers to prosecute what he calls voter "fraud." Yes, the secretary of state of Kansas now has the power to prosecute—more like persecute—people. He's the only secretary of state in the nation that can. He's going to start those prosecutions next month, he told the Northeast Johnson County Conservatives. Koback says that he found 18 cases of what he's calling fraud from 2010 and 2012, but somehow that number remarkably rose to more than 100 potential cases in 2014. He does concede that some of those might be "false positives." Kobach insists he has to have this power because state prosecutors are just too busy, though state Rep. Ward says state prosecutors have said they've never had a voter fraud case referred to them.

Kobach isn't going to let the fact that voter fraud is a myth stand in his way of making sure Republicans continue to be elected in Kansas, where they can pursue their goal of just finishing the whole idea of state government off.