OPINION AND COMMENTARY
Editorials and other Opinion content offer perspectives on issues important to our community and are independent from the work of our newsroom reporters.
It’s not a surprise, but still warrants public notice: Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden’s effort to ferret out election fraud in Kansas is officially a huge, wasteful flop.
As The Star’s Katie Bernard reported this week, two years of investigation by Hayden’s office following the 2020 presidential election have produced precisely one recommendation of criminal charges to local prosecutors — and that single count involves an allegation of voter intimidation a few days prior to the Kansas abortion referendum vote in August 2022.
It’s hardly the stuff of widespread voter fraud.
That hasn’t stopped Hayden from suggesting that a conspiracy somehow flipped Johnson County to Joe Biden’s column during the 2020 election. Hayden even took his claims to the 2022 Las Vegas convention of the Constitutional Sheriffs & Peace Officers Association, a group of cranks who argue that county sheriffs’ authority supersedes that of state and federal officials.
That’s a crowd, naturally, sympathetic to Donald Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
“President Trump did not carry our county,” Hayden told the group. “First time since 1914 that Johnson County didn’t vote Republican.”
Hayden added that he was concerned because he actually received more votes during that election than Trump,...
Police have launched an investigation into alleged false accusation by Park Cheol-min, a former member of the Seongnam International Mafia. Park, ahead of the 2022 presidential election, raised al...