By Sherman Smith, The Topeka Capital-Journal
 
The American Civil Liberties Union in Kansas is renewing calls to accelerate the “long, agonizing death” of the Crosscheck voter registration system and put the program “out of its misery.”
 
Kansas for 14 years has operated the program, which compares voter registrations to eliminate potential duplicates.
 
Last year, the ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit against Kansas over the revelation that partial Social Security numbers for 945 voters were exposed by Florida officials through an open records request.
 
The ACLU said former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach weaponized the Crosscheck system in his quest to stamp out voter fraud, even though the program produced false positives 99 percent of the time and relied on the exchange of sensitive data through unsecured emails between election officials.
 
“Unless the goal is to continue denying Kansans their voting rights and leaving them vulnerable to identity fraud, why would we keep using this program?” said Lauren Bonds, interim executive director of ACLU Kansas.
 
ACLU was responding to the recent decision by Arizona to abandon Crosscheck, lowering the total number of states still participating to 23.
“I am not willing to take any chances with the security and accuracy of our voter registration list,” said Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.