The federal trial over a law that disenfranchised tens of thousands of voters in Kansas is expected to end tomorrow. For the past two weeks, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has attempted to defend not just his signature legislation, which requires people to show documentary proof of citizenship such as a birth certificate or passport when registering to vote, but to support his claim of rampant voter fraud.

He failed spectacularly on both scores. Here are the courtroom highlights:

Kobach’s “iceberg” of fraud:

Kobach has been looking for proof of illegal voters for years, and he’s had unparalleled resources to do so. In 2015, he successfully pushed Gov. Sam Brownback for the power to criminally prosecute cases of voter fraud, making him the only secretary of state in the country with such sweeping authority.

So what exactly did he come up with?

At trial, Kobach was only able to identify 18 noncitizens — out of 1.8 million voters —who have successfully registered to vote over a nearly 20-year period. Only five of them actually cast a ballot. Kobach was not able to show that these 18 instances constituted intentional cases of fraud, rather than mistakes stemming from clerical errors.

Regardless, Kobach claims that these numbers represent “just the tip of the iceberg.” In his crusade to find the rest of the non-existent mass, he seems willing to accept the more than 35,000 people who were actually blocked from registering to vote under his law as collateral damage.

Kobach’s expert witness failed to identify a single federal election changed by noncitizen voting. 

Kobach presented Hans von Spakovsky to the court as an expert on elections, election administration, and voter fraud. A senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, von Spakovsky has been a vocal proponent of restrictive voter ID laws to combat noncitizen voting. He previously served with Kobach on President Trump’s now-disbanded commission on Election Integrity.

Prior to trial, von Spakovsky produced a report stating that Kansas’ documentary proof-of-citizenship requirements pose no burden to voters. And during cross-examination, von Spakovsky said he could not name a single voter registration requirement in effect that he would consider burdensome to voters.

He was unable to name a single federal election where the outcome was changed by noncitizen voting.

Von Spakovsky is no expert on voting, and it appears he knows nothing about citizenship in the United States. He does not believe that anyone born on American soil is, in fact, an American citizen. Rather, he said on the stand that “to be a U.S. citizen at least one of your parents has to be a U.S. citizen.” This is absolutely false.

Kobach’s other expert witness offered no evidence of rampant voter fraud in 2016.

Kobach has repeatedly cited research by Jesse Richman, an associate professor at Old Dominion University, to support his claims about voter fraud. He cited that research to support his theory that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election, costing Trump the popular vote.

Under cross-examination, Richman said that his study does not support Kobach’s conclusions and he doesn’t know of any studies that do.

Before the trial, Richman had produced several highly questionable estimates of the number of noncitizens registered to vote in Kansas, which ranged from 1,000 to 18,000 individuals. When asked about the 18,000 figure, Richman admitted that it was an unweighted estimate with a small sample size and that a weighted sample size would, in fact, produce a better estimate.

The ACLU also presented an open letter signed by 200 political scientists who criticized Richman’s work and methodologies for identifying noncitizens on the voter rolls. One of these methods was flagging “foreign-sounding” names.

During cross-examination, Dale Ho, the director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, asked Richman if he would have flagged the name “Carlos Murguia” as a foreign-sounding name. After Richman answered yes, Ho informed him that Murguia is a federal judge in the same courthouse as the trial.

As trial wraps, opposing sides will make closing arguments and the judge will rule on a motion to hold Kobach in contempt of court for repeatedly refusing to comply with the court’s preliminary order blocking the law, and with related orders on notifying the public about voter registration requirements. A federal magistrate has already sanctioned Kobach for making “patently misleading representations to the court."

Ultimately, we’ll need to wait until Judge Julie Robinson rules to know the trial’s outcome – and whether Kobach’s law will pass muster under the National Voter Registration Act. However, the trial has already shown that while Kobach can cry voter fraud all he wants, but when it comes time to offering proof, he came up empty-handed.

The next time President Trump trots him out as a national authority on voting, we should all remember that.

After years of work by activists, stakeholders, community groups, and lawmakers, Gov. Jay Inslee signed the Washington Voting Rights Act into law. This historic legislation paves the way for communities across Washington state to find local solutions for an issue that has existed since the founding of our democracy — how to ensure minority representation in a system of majority rule.

The WVRA improves voting rights by expanding on the protections of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. Almost all local elections in Washington currently use an at-large system where the entire community chooses who represents them on multi-member bodies such as city councils, school boards, and port districts. In areas where polarized voting occurs, at-large elections may prevent a minority group from electing any candidates that represent their community. Because the votes of the minority group become diluted in the at-large system, the makeup of the elected body does not truly reflect the community it is supposed to represent. This has had damaging effects for minority groups in Washington and around the country.

For example, the city of Yakima, Washington, was found to be in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act. No Latino official had ever been elected to the city council despite the fact that over 40 percent of the city’s population is Latino. Because Yakima held at-large elections, this entire community was effectively shut out of council elections and having a voice in city government. The alternative used to fix this imbalance was switching to district-based elections, which divided the city into districts from which members of the legislative body were chosen. Because these districts were drawn to better reflect the demographics of Yakima than a single at-large district, the resulting elected body can now more accurately represent the population it serves. In the first election after Yakima switched to district-based elections, three Latina candidates were elected to the city council.

Yakima’s history isn’t unusual. Cities and counties from California to Georgia also used at-large voting systems that undermined the representation of minority groups, and they were challenged in the courts by activists.

Before the WVRA, no mechanism existed for local governments in Washington state to change their election systems without first undergoing a lawsuit that was often expensive and time-consuming. This law now empowers communities to voluntarily reform their election systems without resource-draining litigation.

Any voter in a community who feels that the local election system is not in accordance with the federal Voting Rights Act can now file a notice with the local government that describes both the potential violation and a proposed remedy. The local government and the notice filer can then work together to find a solution that fixes the problem. It is only if no satisfactory remedy is implemented within the prescribed time frame that legal action is taken. While district-based elections could solve such issues, the WVRA does not prescribe them as the only solution and allows room for creativity in developing the proper system for each individual community.

Activists with ACLU’s People Power like me worked to support the WVRA as part of the nationwide Let People Vote campaign, which began in October. We and our partners reached out to state lawmakers, attended committee hearings at the statehouse, and advocated for this change through grassroots organizing in our local communities alongside allies in the Washington Voting Justice Coalition.

In tumultuous times, we need to find solutions to common problems while ensuring minority rights and representation. Washington’s new voting rights law will help to do just that. Its passage shows that committed activism makes our democracy stronger and more representative.

It’s no surprise that the Trump administration would like to find a way to stop the flood of leaks coming from the White House. But avoiding embarrassment is no grounds for government censorship, and the latest leak-plugging effort we’ve heard of violates the First Amendment.

The Washington Post has reported that senior White House staff members were pressured to sign nondisclosure agreements prohibiting them from revealing any non-public information they learn of at work. The draft NDA supposedly requires them to stay silent, not just while they are employed at the White House, but even after they leave — and to pay damages into the federal treasury if they speak out. In other words, it aims to muzzle them forever.

Such a broad agreement is unenforceable because the First Amendment protects federal employees’ right to speak in a private capacity about matters of public concern — and certainly the functioning of a presidential administration raises many issues that are of public concern.

Indeed, countless former White House officials have talked and written books about their time working for presidents, covering everything from decision-making processes and substantive policy debates to interagency turf battles and personal vendettas. Putting a gag order on these officials would leave the public in the dark about how the government works, preventing the kind of informed debate that is critical to democratic accountability.

To be sure, the government can restrict its employees from sharing certain information, such as properly classified material. But even then, laws restricting the sharing of classified information should allow room for whistleblowers to reveal evidence of government illegality or misconduct.

The ACLU has previously attempted to shed light on the federal government’s restrictive prepublication review system, which requires certain past and present federal employees to submit any works for security review before publishing them. That system gives government officials too much power to censor messages they don’t like.

The White House NDA, as reported, is far too broad to pass First Amendment muster. It purports to bar the discussion of basic details about the inner workings of the White House, even if the government has no legitimate interest in keeping that information secret. This would prevent the public from learning about many issues of critical public importance, including what decisions get made and who is making them.

It is ironic that the very existence of this unconstitutional tool meant to plug White House leaks was exposed by the press. But these NDAs can be harmful even if the White House never attempts to enforce them, because of the potential chilling effects they could have. Former aides could self-censor to avoid the risk of a legal fight, depriving us all of relevant information and opinions that could affect public debate. The First Amendment protects government employees’ free speech rights to avoid that very outcome.