The trial is the result of a lawsuit that the American Civil Liberties Union filed in 2016 against Mr. Kobach on behalf of the League of Women Voters and individual Kansans. Whatever the outcome — a judge is not expected to render a verdict for at least a month — much rests on what people in this conservative state come away thinking.
“With Kobach, you either love him or hate him,” said Stuart Clark, a Republican from Lenexa, Kan., as he wandered through a shopping mall in Overland Park, south of Kansas City, on the first evening of the trial. “Sometimes, I think he pushes at the edge a little too much. But overall, I like what he says, and I guess he figures he can defend the law as well as anybody.”
Mr. Clark, who owns a plumbing business, said he supported Mr. Kobach’s efforts on voter identification laws.
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“Why would you have a problem having to show an I.D.?” he said. “We show I.D. for so many things. It just seems like common sense.”
Others are less convinced by Mr. Kobach’s claims that voter fraud is pervasive and widespread. “To me, it’s a fix to a problem that doesn’t exist,” said Jeff Nielsen, standing behind the counter of a pawnshop he manages in Olathe, Kan. Mr. Nielsen, who works in Kansas, lives across the border in Missouri, grew up Republican and supports gun ownership — a wall of rifles was behind him in the shop — but now votes for Democrats. “I think Kobach should be a little more concerned with Russians picking our president than with Mexicans voting,” he said.
In 2016, Federal District Judge Julie A. Robinson in Kansas ruled that the proof-of-citizenship requirement of the state law that Mr. Kobach championed violated federal law. If Judge Robinson rules against Mr. Kobach in the current trial, thousands of Kansans who attempted to register to vote at a Department of Motor Vehicles office but did not provide proof of citizenship will see their registrations reinstated. If Mr. Kobach prevails, it could become more difficult for residents without proof of citizenship to vote in the 2018 elections.
Early in the trial, Judge Robinson reprimanded Mr. Kobach, who frequently stumbled on legal procedure, for attempting to display documents that had not been formally introduced as evidence. “Evidence 101 — not going to do it,” she said.
In his opening statements, Mr. Kobach, Harvard-educated and Yale Law School-trained, criticized current rules as weak and porous, arguing that a requirement that voters attest on a form at the Department of Motor Vehicles that they are citizens — risking a penalty of perjury for a false statement — is not enough. “All you had to do was check a box,” he said. “That was essentially it.”
Mr. Kobach says that even though he has documented a relatively small number of noncitizens in Kansas who have attempted to vote, he has reason to believe that they are only “the tip of the iceberg” and that thousands more exist on the state voter rolls.
But Dale Ho, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U., said that the law Mr. Kobach lobbied for has made it difficult or impossible for some state residents who do not have a birth certificate, passport or other proof of citizenship to vote. Experts in election law say that noncitizens successfully voting rarely happens.
“Enforcing this law is like taking a bazooka to a fly,” Mr. Ho said. “The collateral damage in this case has been thousands of Kansas voters.”
In his closing statements on Monday, Mr. Ho added, “The iceberg, on close inspection, your honor, it’s more of an ice cube.”
The trial made headlines around the state for two weeks and was closely watched in Johnson County, a densely populated cluster of suburbs outside of Kansas City. The county is home to close to 600,000 of Kansas’s 2.9 million residents, including Jeff Colyer, the state’s new governor, who still keeps a plastic surgery practice there. Mr. Kobach, who has been secretary of state in Kansas since 2011, was a member of the Overland Park City Council in Johnson County from 1999 to 2001.
Sam Brownback, a Republican who served as Kansas’s governor for seven years, left office last month to take an ambassadorship in Washington, leaving Mr. Colyer, formerly the lieutenant governor, leading the state. Mr. Kobach intends to challenge Mr. Colyer for the Republican nomination in an August primary; the general election will take place in November.
A poll in February showed Mr. Kobach locked in a tight race with Mr. Colyer, who kept a low profile during his years as lieutenant governor and whose positions are something of a mystery to many Kansans. Half of the Republican voters in the poll had no opinion of Mr. Colyer, while a little more than one-third had a favorable opinion.
For his part, Mr. Kobach has a far more visible national profile as an ally of Mr. Trump and a familiar face on cable news.
At the Wooden Spoon restaurant in Overland Park, Victor Vallejo and Therese Allinder, both Republicans, said they had been hearing news of the Kobach trial and were encouraged that he was fighting for stricter measures on voting.
But Ms. Allinder, 57, an architect, said that did not translate to an automatic vote in the primary election for Mr. Kobach, whose single-minded focus can leave her unsettled. “He’s so extreme,” she said. “Brownback could never admit when he made a mistake. He made the state go broke with that tax cut, and he could never say, ‘I messed up.’ Kobach reminds me of him.”
Mr. Vallejo, 71, her companion, said he knew little about Mr. Colyer, the governor, but that Mr. Kobach was a familiar face. He welcomed Mr. Kobach’s message on immigration and voting rights. “I like Trump, so I like Kobach,” he said. “He’s on my side of the aisle.”
Mr. Kobach did not respond to a request for comment.
Democrats say they have tried to blot out the noise from the trial. At a recent forum in Topeka, seven candidates from the Democratic side took the stage, but the party has yet to coalesce around a single contender. To stand a chance in conservative Kansas, the Democratic nominee must attract significant numbers of independents and moderate Republicans.
At a mall in Overland Park, Larry Altman, a Democrat and retired lawyer who occasionally does volunteer work for the A.C.L.U. on education issues, shook his head at the mention of Mr. Kobach’s role in the courtroom that day.
‘You know the saying,” he said. “‘He who represents himself has a fool for a client.’”
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