Only 73 Kansans affected by court rulings cast ballots in August

Only 73 of the voters who gained the right to vote four days ahead of the Kansas primary cast ballots in the election.

A pair of court rulings ensured that more than 17,000 people who had registered at the DMV would be able to vote in all races for the August primary even though they hadn’t provided proof of citizenship as required by state law.

However, fewer than 100 actually cast ballots statewide.

“If anything this is just an obvious result of a confusing system of laws,” said Sophia Lin Lakin, an ACLU attorney who represented the voters in court. “It’s not surprising that voters don’t know whether or not they should turn out to vote, whether or not their vote will count, whether it’s even worth it.”　

Dale Ho, director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project, said an e-mail that those 73 voters “would have been disenfranchised, all to chase phantom allegations of non-citizen registration” if the courts hadn’t intervened. Ho also said that “this demonstrates why voter registration should be simple and easy, as required by federal law, rather than the administrative maze that Secretary Kobach has established.”

Secretary of State Kris Kobach contended Thursday that many of the DMV registrants who did not vote “are probably people who have already moved away from the state of Kansas or moved to a different county.”

“Therefore that voting identity is no longer really valid because there’s no longer a person living at that address by that particular name,” said Kobach, who had fought in court to keep these registrants off the voter rolls.

A federal court ruled earlier that those voters were allowed to cast ballots under the federal “motor-voter” law, which expanded voting rights by allowing people to register when they apply for a driver’s license. Kobach then contended the federal court ruling applied only to federal elections. But state Judge Larry Hendricks ruled days before the Aug. 2 primary that those voters’ ballots should be counted in local and state races as well.

Next round

Kobach appeared before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals last week in an effort to reverse the earlier federal ruling. He will go before Hendricks in Shawnee County on Sept. 21 for the next round of the state-level case.

Hendricks’ previous order applied only to the primary. The judge still has to weigh whether to let the DMV registrants vote in state and local races in the November general election.

Kobach said his office is not going into that hearing “with a high degree of confidence,” explaining that “Judge Hendricks made his views pretty well known” at the previous hearing.

Lakin said the ACLU is “hopeful that given the way Judge Hendricks ruled in (July) that he’ll see that the problem hasn’t changed. That Kobach still doesn’t have any authority to do this dual registration system …nothing has changed between July and today as far as we’re aware in terms of his getting any legislative authority to put in place this type of system.”　

Kobach hinted that he could appeal the decision if Hendricks rules against him again and noted the federal appeals court ruling could potentially make the state case moot.

Turnout rates

Kobach was joined at a meeting of the State Board of Canvassers by Gov. Sam Brownback and Attorney General Derek Schmidt. The three executive branch officers certified the results of the primary election Thursday.

He noted that the primary featured “an unusually large number of incumbent losses in the Kansas Legislature this year.”

Sedgwick County had a turnout rate of 17.4 percent for the primary, according to the data provided at the meeting. That’s below the statewide turnout rate of 23.5 percent and far below the counties with the highest turnout rate.

Two western Kansas counties, Wallace and Greeley, had turnout rates of more than 60 percent, probably driven by the competitive congressional primary between U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp and Roger Marshall, a doctor who won the contest.

Contributing: Hunter Woodall of the Kansas City Star

This story was originally published September 1, 2016 at 12:28 PM with the headline "Only 73 Kansans affected by court rulings cast ballots in August."