When Kris Kobach asked the Kansas Legislature for the power to prosecute election crimes, his argument was straightforward: county prosecutors, busy with other work, rarely pursue voter fraud, and Kansas needed someone who would. In 2015 the Legislature agreed, making him the only secretary of state in the country with that authority. Over the next several years his office filed 15 cases. This article reviews what those cases were, how they were found, and how they ended, using news coverage, court records and the secretary of state’s own press releases and newsletters. Assistance from Claude AI.
How the authority came about
In 2013 the secretary of state’s office proposed Senate Bill 63, which would raise penalties for some election crimes and let the secretary prosecute them. Kobach explained in the office’s newsletter that county prosecutors with limited resources tend not to investigate or prosecute election crimes, and that photo ID does nothing about forms of fraud such as voting in two states in the same election. The authority was enacted in 2015 (Senate Bill 34) and took effect that July. The same law raised several unlawful-voting offenses from misdemeanors to felonies for future conduct.
The office’s first cases came on October 9, 2015: Lincoln Wilson in Sherman County, and Steven and Betty Gaedtke in Johnson County. All three were registered Republicans, according to the Associated Press. The Gaedtke complaint, signed by Assistant Secretary of State Eric Rucker, rested on an affidavit from Johnson County Election Commissioner Brian Newby and concerned the 2010 election. Kobach said he started with 2010 because of the five-year statute of limitations.
The cases
Almost every case followed the same pattern: a person with ties to two states who voted in both in the same election. Several were retirees splitting time between Kansas and a second home.
| Defendant | Kansas county / other state | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Steven Gaedtke | Johnson / Arkansas | Pleaded guilty Dec. 2015 to one misdemeanor; $500 fine |
| Betty Gaedtke | Johnson / Arkansas | Charges dropped before trial (2016) |
| Randall Kilian | Ellis / Colorado | Plea April 2016; $2,500 fine |
| Ron Weems | Sedgwick / Colorado | Guilty plea May 2016; $5,500 fine; two felony perjury counts dismissed |
| Michael Hannum | Johnson / Nebraska | Guilty plea; $5,500 fine plus costs |
| Lincoln Wilson | Sherman / Colorado | Pleaded guilty 2017 after spending about $50,000 on his defense |
| Victor Garcia Bebek | Sedgwick; noncitizen | Pleaded guilty April 2017; $5,000 fine |
| Preston Christensen | Shawnee / Texas | Pleaded guilty May 2017; $1,000 fine |
| Sergio Salgado-Juarez | Johnson; alleged noncitizen | Dismissed April 2019 |
The Sunflower State Journal’s 2019 roundup of all 15 cases lists fines from $500 to $6,000 and no jail time. Apart from the two dropped cases, the list shows pleas or convictions (one entry, Lee Arthur Orr, shows a penalty but no recorded disposition). A 2020 working paper by Columbia undergraduate Alexander Siegal puts the number of convictions at nine, apparently relying on earlier counts.
A few details from the individual cases:
- Randall Kilian said he received a Colorado mail ballot in 2012 and voted on that state’s marijuana-legalization amendment, thinking he could vote on a Colorado ballot measure. He had also voted in Hays. Ellis County’s prosecutor had looked at the same facts in 2012 and declined to file, telling KCUR that a jury would be unlikely to convict a man with a spotless record who paid property taxes in two states. Kilian said no one from the secretary of state’s office ever called to hear his side. He also said he bore Kobach no ill will.
- Michael Hannum told the Wichita Eagle he had been traveling between Johnson County and Omaha after his father’s death, and that prosecutors in both states had earlier closed their investigations because they didn’t believe the double voting was deliberate.
- Ron Weems’ lawyer said he voted in both states intending to vote only in local races. Colorado’s elections director told the Eagle it is not unusual there for residents to list a Colorado home address with a mailing address in another state.
- Betty Gaedtke: the office gave different explanations for dropping her case. In April 2016 a spokesman said the signature on her absentee ballot did not match her actual signature. The Sunflower State Journal later reported the office concluded her husband was the one who violated the law.
The noncitizen cases
Kobach’s best-known rationale for stricter election laws was noncitizen voting. In January 2016, a legislator asked how many of his first six defendants were noncitizens. None were, Kobach said. He added that he was certain noncitizens had voted before the state’s proof-of-citizenship requirement, but did not have enough evidence to prosecute them.
In October 2015 his office said it had identified more than 30 noncitizens who had either registered or tried to, calling that “just the tip of the iceberg.” In the end, two noncitizens were charged.
Bebek, a Peruvian national, voted in a 2012 special election and the 2012 and 2014 general elections in Sedgwick County. He pleaded guilty in April 2017, the first noncitizen voting conviction in Kobach’s office. The other case, against Salgado-Juarez in Johnson County, was the last of the 15 and was dismissed in 2019. District Attorney Steve Howe called it “a legitimate case actually of a noncitizen voting” but said investigators could not prove who actually cast the ballot, given that voting is private.
Where the cases came from: Crosscheck
KCUR reported in 2017 that all six of the first convictions came from the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, which the secretary of state’s office ran. Crosscheck began in 2005 with Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and Nebraska. Kobach called expanding it one of his highest priorities, and it grew to roughly 28 states by 2014.
The program matched voters on first name, last name and date of birth. Kobach’s own office acknowledged in a participation guide that the output contained many “false positives.” It was meant as a first step, with states expected to check middle names, suffixes and Social Security digits before acting. KCUR reported the first six convictions were mostly older Republican men, with one Democrat and one woman.
Critics, including Kansas City attorney Mark Johnson and former Missouri Secretary of State Jason Kander, argued the cases were a publicity tool. Johnson said the same outcome could have come from a letter instead of a criminal charge. Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights called Crosscheck “clunky” and “sloppy” but said she had not seen evidence it was as damaging as some critics claimed.
A study by Sharad Goel and colleagues, cited by KCUR, estimated that purging voters flagged by Crosscheck would remove about 200 legitimate registrations for every double vote prevented. Florida, Washington and Oregon dropped out of the program; Oregon said it had found a better tool, the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). Crosscheck was suspended in a lawsuit settlement in 2019 over data-security concerns. Siegal’s paper adds that states with Republican-controlled legislatures were far more likely to join, though that paper is a student working paper and has not been peer reviewed.
It is worth separating two things. Being registered in two states is not a crime, as KCUR noted; voting twice in one election is. Crosscheck flagged the first; prosecutors had to show the second.
The case for the prosecutions
Kobach’s argument, repeated in his releases and in legislative testimony, was that each illegal vote cancels out a legitimate one, and that close elections in Kansas can turn on a handful of votes. State election director Bryan Caskey made the same point to CJOnline. Kobach also said prosecution would deter double voting. After Weems’ plea he said: “In Kansas, if you double vote we will catch you.” His office also pointed to the stiff fines: the $2,500 given to Kilian was the maximum for the misdemeanor charge. By April 2017 the office said it had collected $29,000 in fines.
Double voting is also a real crime, and most defendants did vote twice in the same election. Kobach’s defenders can fairly say the law was applied to people who broke it. Kobach’s critics respond that the cases show mostly confusion, not fraud, and that charges were filed where local prosecutors had earlier declined.
After Kobach
Scott Schwab took office as secretary of state in January 2019 without an in-house prosecutor. A bill backed by Schwab and Attorney General Derek Schmidt to strip the office of prosecutorial power died on the House calendar that year. In December 2021 Schwab’s office launched an Election Security Initiative with an online form for reporting voter fraud and intimidation.
What the record shows
The 15 cases support a few narrow conclusions. Double voting across state lines happens, and some Kansans were convicted of it. It was rarely the work of organized schemes: the typical defendant was an older person with homes in two states. Noncitizen voting, the problem that motivated the broader election-law package, produced one conviction and one dismissed case. And the main tool that generated the cases was a database its own sponsor described as producing false matches.
The documents do not settle how much double voting or noncitizen voting went undetected. Kobach and his supporters argue that is the point of deterrence; his critics argue the small number of cases suggests the problem is small. Readers should weigh both.
Sources
- Wichita Eagle, Jan. 25, 2016: “Kobach files 3 more election crime cases, including one in Sedgwick County”
- Kansas City Star, Dec. 3, 2015: “Former Olathe man pleads guilty in unlawful-voting case”
- AP (via Marin Independent Journal), Oct. 13, 2015: “Kansas elections chief files 3 criminal cases under new law”
- CJOnline, Jan. 14, 2017 and Jan. 25 and April 22, 2016 stories on Kobach’s voter fraud cases and Randall Kilian
- KCUR, Feb. 7, 2017: “Kansans Caught In Crosscheck System Singled Out For Kobach’s Voter Fraud Campaign”
- Sunflower State Journal, April 10, 2019: “Prosecutors drop last voter fraud case brought by Kobach”
- News21 Voting Wars, Aug. 2016: “Kansas official: Tough law is a ‘model for other states’”
- State of Kansas v. Steven K. Gaedtke, Johnson County Case No. 15 CR2447, complaint
- Kansas Secretary of State news releases (2015-2017, 2021) and Canvassing Kansas newsletters (2011-2016)
- Alexander Siegal, “Voter Fraud’s False Advertisers,” SSRN working paper, 2020