Jason Kander believes that there is an issue with elections. Kander, a veteran of Afghanistan and former Secretary of State for Missouri, doesn’t just think that elections are rigged; but rather that they are rigged by the ones crying wolf.

Kander arrived at Iowa State Thursday to raise awareness of what he believes to be voter suppression and to advocate for his program working to combat it; Let America Vote. Let America Vote is a political action organization that was founded in February 2017 shortly after Kander lost the 2016 U.S. Senate election for Missouri to Roy Blunt, a Republican. Kander is the president of the organization.

“The reason I am here and the reason we have an operation in Iowa and several other states is that they are places that have been recent voter suppression activity where we thought we could create a political consequence and this is one of those places,” Kander said.

Kander believes the GOP has a voter suppression strategy that utilizes three steps to gain an advantage in elections.

“Step one is they undermine faith in American democracy,” Kander said. “Step two they create obstacles to voting and step three they create obstacles to those obstacles.”

Kander said this was part of the Republican strategy in Missouri.

“That to me was just exactly what I had seen them try to execute in Missouri, I was familiar with it, I knew we had to fight it politically and not just in court, and that’s why I started Let America Vote,” Kander said.

Kander believes that the GOP uses a broad range of tactics to disrupt conventional voting techniques.

“I mean you look across the country and there are things like consolidated polling places in urban areas so there are longer lines and fewer opportunities to vote,” Kander said.

Kander also believes that the Republican Party uses techniques such as cutting back on early voting hours and changing the registration system to reduce the amount of unwanted votes.

Let America Vote has endorsed several prominent Iowa Democrats, including Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Fred Hubbell, and secretary of state candidate, Deidre DeJear.

Let America Vote also consists of a board of directors that include notable individuals such as the filmmaker and speechwriter to Barack Obama, Jon Favreau, and human rights activist Martin Luther King III.

“It’s a fantastic advisory board,” Kander said. “It’s an organization with an outstanding staff, a really robust staff with great people, but really the lifeblood of the organization is our interns, the college students.”

Kander says that Let America Vote has a unique internship program that provides opportunities for professional development.

“It ain’t hanging out answering phones and mailing envelopes,” Kander said. “It is getting out knocking on doors, meeting voters, but more importantly, it is learning how to organize. It is being in charge of people and resources and being given real serious responsibility.” 

Kander has relied upon interns to propagate much of his mission to end voter suppression and encourages students to apply to the organization. Kander says interested individuals can apply at letamericavote.org/intern or text “intern” to 44939.

“We have a robust intern program, just since June our interns and volunteers here in Iowa have knocked on 67,000 doors and they are going to make an enormous difference in these elections and as we move forward into the fall we are ready to bring in all new class of interns,” Kander said.

Kelly Shaw, a professor of political science at Iowa State, says that the issue of voter suppression is definitely a topic of discussion within the political science community.

“The movement of voter suppression is a concern certainly that we have in political science, [though] not as much in the United States as we do in other places,” Shaw said.

However, Shaw says that within the country, the concern is certainly on people’s radars.

“Depending on who you ask it is either a big deal or not as big a deal,” Shaw said. “But we all realize that the vote is compared to other countries, low. We tend not to vote as frequently as other western democracies and so to add any insult to injury in terms of voter suppression or voter ID laws or ballot access those type of things, kind of raises a red flag in the mind of a lot political scientists.”

Many Iowans believe that individuals should have to present valid voter identification before they can vote. A joint poll by Mediacom and the Des Moines Register in February 2017 revealed 69 percent of Iowans favored a law requiring voters to present a government-issued identification card.

To Kander, the issue is not with the constituents of the Republican Party, but rather the politicians themselves.  

“It’s really important that we make the distinction that I’m not talking about “Republicans” wholesale,” Kander said. “I am talking about Republican elected officials and Republican Party officials at the national level and the state level who have decided that rather than trying to win the argument over issues…they’ve just decided to eliminate those voters from democracy as a way to make it easier to win an election,” Kander said.

Kander will be touring Iowa to continue to bring awareness to Let America Vote and its mission. He will also be running for mayor of Kansas City, Mo., in 2019.

“We are going through a time, where I refer to it as ‘grabbing an oar’ territory, but is also just kind of a time where your kids and your grandkids one day are going to ask what you did during this time,” Kander said. “You don’t have to be graduated, you don’t have to be out of school, or even know what you want to do when you grow up to be able to get out there and make a difference and elect some good people.”