Sedgwick County election officials find 1,700 matches on suspended voter list

Sedgwick County election officials are reviewing birth and marriage records from the Bureau of Vital Statistics before they remove names from the county’s suspended voter list.

The names of voters who have failed to provide proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, will be removed from the suspended voter list after 90 days under a rule pushed by Secretary of State Kris Kobach that took effect Friday. The policy has been criticized as a purge; Kobach has said it will save counties money by eliminating the need to mail reminders to people on the list.

Sedgwick County Election Commissioner Tabitha Lehman said it will be several days before the county election office begins removing names from the list. It first will compare them with the vital statistics records sent by the Secretary of State’s Office to determine whether some of the people are citizens.

“Our office received over 1,700 matches on that list,” she said.

That would be more than a fifth of the people on the suspended voter list for the county, which stood at about 8,300 last month.

Lehman said if the records show a prospective voter was born in Kansas, he or she would become registered. But she cautioned that some people might stay on the suspended list for another reason.

“And while they now no longer need to prove citizenship, they still didn’t sign the registration card,” she said. “There are people in here who have an incomplete application in here for multiple reasons. In this case, we’ve taken care of one reason, but we still have to get something from the voter for the other reason. So this will be a long process.”

Lehman said she went into the office on Sunday to work on that process. She noted that the task comes on top of her office’s other duties.

The policy of removing names faces a legal challenge brought by Paul Davis, who ran as the Democratic nominee for governor in 2014, on behalf of two suspended voters.

This story was originally published October 5, 2015 at 1:25 PM with the headline "Sedgwick County election officials find 1,700 matches on suspended voter list."