A bill proposed in the Kansas House seeks to remove people who are not U.S. citizens from the state’s voter rolls through temporary driver’s license records, invoking concern for potential disenfranchisement of Kansas voters.
The organization of Kansas county election officers told legislators they opposed a Republican-sponsored bill that would prohibit counties from continuing the practice of mailing unsolicited advance ballot applications to registered voters.
Secretary of State Scott Schwab is refusing to turn over provisional ballot records in advance of the primary election, despite an appeals court ruling that says he is violating state open records law.
Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab violated state open records law when he ordered a software vendor to disable the ability to produce a public record, the Kansas Court of Appeals ruled on Friday.
Support for Senate Bill 484 is fueled by faith-based anti-LGBTQ interests who package the proposal as a necessary protection for girls against a hypothetical threat. The proposed legislation would ban transgender girls from participating in school activities with other girls, or transgender boys from playing with other boys.
The Kansas Secretary of State’s office and voting rights advocates are urging Senate lawmakers to reject a bill banning the use of drop boxes for advance ballots except under certain conditions.
In more than nine years serving as election commissioner for Sedgwick County, Tabitha Lehman said, she saw several instances of policymakers acknowledging election policies they support could suppress the vote of some marginalized Kansans to benefit their party.
Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector
An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas says the state’s open records law might as well not exist if Secretary of State Scott Schwab is allowed to keep public information hidden by reconfiguring software.
