Reeling from Horrifying GOP Health Care Bills? Just wait till you lose your Voting Rights, just around the corner.

While everyone is still wondering how Republicans could ever seriously fix their health care bills that drop 22 to 23 million Americans with a few more insane amendments, voting rights is about to take a huge hit:

The Republican presidential tactic of crippling agencies you don't like by putting either the incompetent or the actively hostile in charge of them (continues) ... Kris Kobach, the godfather of the national movement to suppress the votes of people the GOP would prefer not to exercise the franchise (was) named as vice-chairman of his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, a snipe hunt the only apparent purpose of which is maintaining the fiction that masses of people, many of them brown, are gaming our elections. 

Here's the most damning news that might just alert us to specific Republican governors who take the bait:

Kobach wrote a letter to his fellow secretaries of state that left many jaws on the floor. From The Kansas City Star: In a Wednesday letter, Kobach asked the Connecticut secretary of state's office to provide the commission with all publicly available voter roll data, including the full names of all registered voters along with their addresses, dates of birth, the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, voting history and other personal information ... he sent similar letters to election officials in every state. 

Quite simply, any secretary of state who complies with this request is either too stupid to hold the job, or is in sympathy with Kobach's goal of whitewashing the electorate.  Alex Padilla, the Secretary of State for California, said, "California's participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud made by the President, the Vice President, and Mr. Kobach. The President's Commission is a waste of taxpayer money and a distraction from the real threats to the integrity of our elections today: aging voting systems and documented Russian interference in our elections."

Connecticut Secretary of State Denise Merrill was a bit more discreet: "The courts have repudiated his methods on multiple occasions but often after the damage has been done to voters. Given Secretary Kobach's history we find it very difficult to have confidence in the work of this commission."

BREAKING: Scott Walker gives up voter information to Trump's big government demands. Hey, we just had a recount too. All is well?

Wisconsin elections officials said Friday that they'll sell some voter information to a presidential commission investigating election fraud. Administrator Mike Haas issued a statement Friday saying data is available for purchase and the commission must release it to buyers, adding that the commission routinely sells the information to political parties, candidates and researchers. The commission would charge the presidential panel $12,500 for the data.

Having done a lot of research on "the right to vote," I found that despite the guarantee in the 14th, 15th and 19th Amendments...with help from the Voting Rights Act (now destroyed by activist conservative Justices), voting seems to be the least defended squishy right ever. In fact, I could make the argument that women and African Americans were definitely given the right to vote, but anyone else including white guys...nope.

What if Obama did this? Always the best test against hypocritical Republican policy:

As Vanita Gupta points out in that same K.C. Star report, if someone in the Obama administration had made this request, at the very least, there would be a full week of howler monkeys screaming about federalism from every perch in every conservative think-tank in the jungle. At the most, there would be hearing after hearing about the Obama administration's plan to seed thousands of the president's fellow Kenyans in every crucial precinct in Ohio and Florida. What's more important, though, is that the national campaign to roll back voting rights now has reached the highest levels of government, with the blessing of the president* and the president*-in-waiting. This is the final step backwards across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Kansas' Sec. of State Kobach will break Law, throw out tens of thousands of votes for local and state races, protecting "integrity" of elections.

Republicans are lying bull sh***ers when they say they want to protect the integrity of elections and make sure every vote counts. Don't they always say, one stolen vote is one too many. I guess they weren't talking specifically about just throwing votes away for the heck of it.

Welcome to Kansas, where Republican Secretary of State Kris Kobach is about to steal away the vote of citizens who did everything right. Breathtakingly defiant of a court order, upwards of 50,000 voters could get their ballots tossed. ABC News:

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is planning (according to an email he sent out) to use provisional ballots during the upcoming elections and then throw out all of the votes for state and local races cast by the thousands of voters who register to vote at motor vehicle offices without providing proof of citizenship … in the wake of a federal court order requiring Kansas to allow these voters to cast ballots at least in the federal races. 

Shawnee County District Judge Franklin Theis found Kansas law does not allow Kobach to implement a bifurcated voter registration system … Kobach's planned response "flies in the face" of the decision, said ... the ACLU of Kansas.

Kobach (will) allow election officials to go back into those provisional ballots and throw out any votes cast in state and local races and count only votes cast for president and U.S. Senate and House … estimated to affect as many as 50,000 who registered to vote when they got their driver's licenses without providing the citizenship documentation.

U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson noted in her decision last month that the evidence shows only three instances in Kansas where noncitizens voted in a federal election between 1995 and 2013, and about 14 noncitizens confused about their eligibility who attempted to register during that period.

Party of law and order, freedom and liberty, defenders of the Constitution, who constantly remind us that it's a "republic" (power is explicitly vested in the people, who in turn exercise their power through elected representatives) but are always trying to take our votes away. Nice con if you're allowed to get away with it.

What's next after Voter ID? Skies the limit if Kansas Sec. of State Kris Kobach has his way...

Voting in Republican dominated states is intentionally becoming more difficult and inconvenient.

Some have suggested a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to vote with few restriction. That would take control out of the hands of a few very creative and repressive state governments.

The best argument against state control of elections? Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Rachel Maddow put together the most amazing timeline of voter suppression and partisan electioneering you'll probably ever see...until at least next year.

This proves Republicans will do anything to game the system, no matter how it looks, knowing their base of voters won't do a thing about it. After all, they're fuming over Benghazi, school lunches and Obama's presidential power grab: