Dahlia Lithwick writes: It’s hard to imagine how Kris Kobach could have screwed things up so badly.

Here is a man, seemingly hatched from an underground lab devoted entirely to perfecting the fine art of vote suppression, given a golden opportunity to suppress votes nationally by way of Donald Trump’s sore loser–based election “integrity” commission.

Here is a man who has pledged the better part of his legal career to ensuring that fewer people can vote and to treating any and all immigrants—documented or otherwise—like criminals. Here is a man, in short, who had a meeting with destiny.

As Kobach put it to Ari Berman last month, his whole master plan for world dominion was so simple: to create in Kansas—where he is running for governor and has been secretary of state for a number of years—a template for programmatic vote suppression nationwide. If he created “the absolute best legal framework,” other states and the federal government would follow. Somehow, though, Trump’s “election integrity” commission turned into one of the most colossal cockups in an administration already overflowing with them. [Continue reading…]