Kansas Gov. Kelly reaches agreement on voter registration materials to avoid lawsuit
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly on Friday announced an agreement with civic groups aimed at ensuring the state complies with federal voter registration law and avoids a possible lawsuit.
The deal follows discussions between the governor’s office, the ACLU and Loud Light, a Kansas-based civic engagement organization. Kelly, a Democrat, announced the pact as a new state law that has chilled third-party voter registration efforts is challenged in court.
It is the second time in three months the Kelly administration has announced an agreement with third parties to change state policy in order to head off litigation. In August, the Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services agreed to expand services to help more than 600 mentally ill people institutionalized in the state’s system of nursing homes.
The governor’s office said in September 2020 that the civic groups had completed an investigation of the state’s compliance with federal voter registration law in November 2019 and had notified Kelly and other state officials of areas for improvement. State agencies then sent more than 277,000 remedial voter registration mailings prior to the November 2020 election.
The agreement unveiled Friday requires the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the Kansas Department for Children and Families — two agencies that administer many of the state’s public assistance programs — to include voter registration information in their benefits materials. Voter registration information and applications must also be available on their websites and at agency offices.
The governor’s office said in a statement the agreement “successfully allowed the parties to avoid litigation.”
The governor’s office said that, according to the coalition of civic groups, previous administrations had “allowed the agencies to abandon the obligations” of the National Voter Registration Act, a 1993 federal law most known for allowing people to register to vote at motor vehicle agencies. The law, called NVRA, also requires states to offer voter registration opportunities at public assistance offices.
“Every lawfully eligible Kansan deserves an equal opportunity to cast his or her ballot in every election,” Kelly said in a statement. “By sharing resources and expanding opportunities to get registered to vote, we will encourage more voices to be heard at the polls and more Kansans to exercise this important right.”
BEHIND THE STORY
MOREThe Bigger Picture: Kansas
Shortly after the 2020 elections, Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab said balloting in the state had been “free and fair,” with strong policies in place to ensure a legitimate outcome.
Despite Schwab’s report, Kansas lawmakers joined their colleagues in GOP-controlled statehouses across the country in passing measures making it more difficult for many residents to vote, citing the need to guard against fraud.
One of the new laws impacts the elderly and disabled who have difficulty getting to the polls on their own., making it a misdemeanor for anyone to return more than ten advance ballots to election authorities. Another bars the governor and the courts from altering election laws — a measure aimed at preventing extension of deadlines or poll hours because of a public emergency like a pandemic. It is now a felony in Kansas “to give the appearance of being an election official.”
Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the measures, but the legislature’s GOP supermajority overrode her rejections.
Voting rights groups are challenging the laws in state and federal court.
Davis Hammet, executive director of Loud Light, said the most important takeaway from the announcement is that “we’re opening up opportunities to register to vote.”
“It’s unfortunate and, frankly, unacceptable that Kansas fell out of compliance previously, but we appreciate the current leadership’s cooperation to remedy our concerns and take concrete steps towards fulfilling their obligations to help Kansans register to vote,” Sharon Brett, legal director for the ACLU of Kansas, said in a statement.
The agreement — two memorandums of understanding signed this week by Kelly, other state officials and Hammet — requires the administration to report on voter registration information every quarter. State employees who help the public with benefits will have to undergo annual NVRA training. Each application for public assistance or change of address form will also include a voter registration application unless residents opt out.
Friday’s announcement comes amid ongoing fears from voting rights advocates that state laws passed this spring will deal a permanent blow to registration efforts. The laws, which the Republican-controlled Legislature approved over Kelly’s vetoes, make it a misdemeanor for anyone to return more than 10 ballots on behalf of other Kansans.
They also create disclosure requirements for organizations distributing information about mail-in voting and make it illegal to falsely “give the appearance of being an election official.”
Some groups have suspended voter registration drives in response, concerned they could be prosecuted. Attorney General Derek Schmidt, who is nearly certain to be Kelly’s Republican opponent when she runs for re-election next year, has promised to enforce the law, even as at least one local prosecutor has said she won’t.
The provision faces lawsuits in both state and federal court. Executives at Vote America and the Voter Participation Center have testified in federal court that sending advance ballot applications to registered voters will not be possible in Kansas if rules barring the activity by out-of-state organizations go into effect.
This story was originally published October 1, 2021 at 12:53 PM with the headline "Kansas Gov. Kelly reaches agreement on voter registration materials to avoid lawsuit."
