Kris Kobach
| Kris Kobach | |
|---|---|
_(cropped).jpg) |
|
| 31st Secretary of State of Kansas | |
|
Assumed office January 10, 2011 |
|
| Governor | Sam Brownback |
| Preceded by | Chris Biggs |
| Chair of the Kansas Republican Party | |
|
In office January 2007 – January 2009 |
|
| Preceded by | Tim Shallenburger |
| Succeeded by | Amanda Adkins |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Kris William Kobach March 26, 1966 Madison, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Heather Kobach |
| Children | 5 |
| Education |
Harvard University (BA) Brasenose College, Oxford (MA, PhD) Yale University (JD) |
Kris William Kobach (born March 26, 1966) is the Secretary of State of Kansas, serving since 2011. He is a former chairman of Kansas Republican Party and city councilman in Overland Park, Kansas. He ran unsuccessfully for Kansas's 3rd congressional district in 2004. He is currently of counsel with the Immigration Law Reform Institute, the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
Kobach has come to prominence over his hardliner views on immigration, as well as his calls for greater voting restrictions and a Muslim registry. Kobach regularly makes false or unsubstantiated claims about the extent of voter fraud in the United States. As Secretary of State of Kansas, he has implemented some of the strictest voter ID legislation in the nation and has fought to remove nearly 20,000 properly registered voters from the state’s voter rolls. After considerable investigation and prosecution, Kobach has only secured six convictions for voter fraud; all were cases of double voting and none would have been prevented by voter ID laws. According to election-law experts, Kobach is intentionally trying to make voting more difficult for minority voters who tend to vote Democratic.
Kobach was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Janice Mardell (née Iverson) and William Louis "Bill" Kobach. His great-grandparents were Bohemian and German on his father's side and Norwegian on his mother's side; they came to Wisconsin in the 1890s, where they were mostly farmers. At the age of seven, in 1974, Kobach moved to Kansas with his parents and two sisters, and grew up mostly in Topeka where his father owned Bill Kobach Buick GMC, a car dealership.
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