Far worse than the bird Shawn Raynard Ross flipped at a South Dakota judge last June is the bird Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach flipped at federal judge Julie Robinson and thousands of Kansas voters:
In 2016, Robinson ordered Kobach to fully register thousands of Kansas voters who had registered at the DMV but had failed to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, as required by a Kansas law that Kobach crafted.
Robinson had earlier scolded Kobach for initially informing the voters covered by her order that they were registered only for the 2016 election and for failing to ensure that they receive the same postcard notifications about their registration as other voters.
Robinson told Kobach during a 2016 telephone conference that she would hold him responsible for directing counties to send out these postcards. He promised to do his best and narrowly dodged a contempt hearing in 2016 because of this agreement.
“He admitted several times during the hearing that he understood the Court’s order meant he was to treat those covered by the preliminary injunction the same as all other registered voters, which included sending the standard postcard upon registration,” Robinson said in Wednesday’s order [Hunter Woodall, “Federal Judge Finds Kris Kobach in Contempt of Court in Voting Rights Case,” Kansas City Star, 2018.04.18].
Ross and Kobach were both ruled in contempt of court. For his angry, impulsive, physical gesture of contempt for his judge and courthouse decorum, Shawn Ross, an American Indian, got 30 days in jail. For his repeated, long-term efforts to defy a judge’s order and deny thousands of disproportionately minority Americans their right to vote, Kris Kobach, a white man who has worked for white-white supremacists, a crony of Donald Trump, a candidate for Kansas governor, gets no time in jail. The court has ordered him to pay the plaintiffs’ attorney fees, which for such a well-connected establishment politico won’t be hard to rustle up.
Given all the help (?) he’s given Shantel Krebs by endorsing her in South Dakota’s Congressional race, maybe she’ll send him a check.