Kobach and Schwab take opposite sides on ballot drop boxes, reflecting Kansas GOP divide
Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab have taken opposing sides on a proposal to effectively end the widespread use of ballot drop boxes, illustrating the sharp divide among the state’s Republicans over elections.
The two Republican officeholders took turns this week trying to sway a Kansas Senate committee over a bill that would limit drop boxes to one per county, prohibiting the networks of boxes currently in Johnson, Wyandotte, Sedgwick and other large counties.
The legislation, supported by Kobach, would authorize a single drop box inside each county’s election office and require that it be continuously monitored by two individuals of different political parties. Schwab, a vocal supporter of drop boxes, opposes it.
Kobach, a former state secretary of state who championed voting restrictions in his old office, won this round. The Kansas Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee voted 5-4 on Tuesday to set up a debate on the bill by the full Senate, despite two Republican senators joining Democrats in voting no.
Kobach told the committee during a Monday hearing that Kansas’ current ban on ballot harvesting – defined as someone returning more than 10 ballot envelopes – is unenforceable because of drop boxes.
“At the end of the day, I think you have to decide: Do we want to keep our crime against ballot harvesting and if you do, do you want it to be enforceable to unenforceable?” Kobach said.
Schwab said Kansas elections are “very secure” and that he doesn’t know of any unmonitored drop boxes. “This doesn’t solve a problem,” Schwab said, adding that eliminating drop boxes would push more voters to return their ballots by mail.
“And why in God’s green earth would you want the federal post office or the federal government in charge of your ballot,” Schwab said, noting delays in mail delivery.
During the 2022 election, 167 drop boxes were used across the state, according to an estimate from Schwab’s office. Statewide statistics on drop box use aren’t collected by the Kansas secretary of state.
During the 2020 election about 33% of ballots cast were advance mail ballots, which were returned through a combination of drop boxes and the mail.
The clash between Kobach and Schwab is the latest front in an ongoing fight over election security and voter access roiling the Kansas Republican Party. Since former President Donald Trump and his allies falsely claimed the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent, a contingent of Kansas Republicans have either embraced election conspiracies or flirted with those who do.
“That’s why our party continues to shrink and why we continue to lose elections,” state Sen. Jeff Longbine, an Emporia Republican, said of the drop box bill.
Longbine, who sits on the Senate committee, voted against advancing the measure.
“As we continue to shift farther and farther right, we lose the middle and the left of our party, which shrinks our party,” Longbine said.
The intense focus on the specter of fraud among some Republicans has emerged again and again over the past year.
In August, anti-abortion activists paid for a recount of the state’s overwhelming vote against an amendment to the state constitution that would have allowed legislators to ban abortion despite a lack of evidence of fraud. The recount had virtually no effect on the vote totals.
Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden, a Republican, has been conducting a long-running investigation into the county’s elections. But Hayden has not provided evidence of fraud and has acknowledged he lacks probable cause to recommend charges.
And earlier this month, the Kansas Republican Party narrowly elected Mike Brown, who has promoted election conspiracies, as chairman after Hayden nominated him. Brown, a former Johnson County commissioner, ran an unsuccessful primary campaign against Schwab that included calls to ban drop boxes.
Brown, now the head of the state party, urged lawmakers to prohibit drop boxes in written testimony to the Kansas Senate committee. While officially taking a neutral stance on the bill, he wrote that the “security of the ballots placed in a ballot box cannot be assured,” despite repeated assurances by Schwab and other election officials that the drop boxes are safe.
The Republican divide over drop boxes is even evident in differences between the Kansas House and Senate.
Last year, the Senate narrowly approved a less-restrictive bill that would have limited drop boxes based on a county’s population and required mail in ballots to arrive by 7 p.m. on Election Day. But the proposal died after the Kansas House didn’t vote on it.
This year, a House committee has advanced a bill that would give Schwab, a former state representative, the authority to regulate drop boxes in sharp contrast to the Senate bill, which comes close to an outright ban on drop boxes while still allowing them in very narrow circumstances.
For their part, Democrats have opposed attempts to limit drop boxes. They view the legislation as a path to restricting voter access – taking aim at a method of returning ballots that’s been used in several elections without problems.
“Ultimately, it just feels like this would be a limit that would be put out there that disenfranchises people who, again, are doing their best to participate in our elections,” said state Sen. Cindy Holscher, an Overland Park Democrat.
State Sen. Mike Thompson, a Shawnee Republican who chairs the committee, cast the tie-breaking vote Tuesday to advance the Senate’s drop box bill. He said he wants to ensure people have confidence in elections.
But appearing to nod to the divisions among Republicans, Thompson referenced Kobach’s testimony explaining his support of the bill to a reporter but avoided any kind of hearty endorsement during the committee’s meeting on Tuesday. When it came time to vote, he said only that “this demands a little bit more debate.”
“Within a party you can have differing opinions on what is the right thing to do,” Thompson said before the meeting.
This story was originally published February 21, 2023 at 1:25 PM with the headline "Kobach and Schwab take opposite sides on ballot drop boxes, reflecting Kansas GOP divide."
