No such thing as partial voter registration

Registered Kansas voters should be able to vote in races up and down the ballot, regardless of what registration form they used. It was a relief to see a Shawnee County District Court judge defend this fundamental idea in the latest legal smackdown of Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s crusade against what he imagines to be rampant voter fraud by noncitizens.

Kansans who’ve registered to vote using the state form since 2013 have been required to provide documentation that they are U.S. citizens. After Kobach lost a lawsuit trying to force federal officials to change a federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship for Kansas applicants, he bizarrely pursued a bifurcated system barring federally registered Kansas voters from voting in state and local races.

But in a summary judgment last week in a case brought by two voters and the American Civil Liberties Union, Judge Franklin Theis wrote that “there is no such thing as ‘partial registration’ to be found in the Kansas statute books,” that “a person is either registered to vote or he or she is not,” and that the secretary of state lacks authority to “encumber the voting process as he has done here.”

The decision also noted that election officials violate the secrecy of the ballot by giving provisional ballots to federally registered voters and then throwing out any votes they’ve cast in local or state races, observing that “voting precinct personnel are often not indifferent strangers.”

Kobach said Friday that “the case is far from over,” promising to file a motion to reconsider or appeal the ruling. But he should think better of burning up more taxpayer money on this cause.

One risk in Theis’ decision is that by pointing out Kobach’s lack of statutory authority to count some votes and not others based on how people register, the judge will only encourage Kobach to seek such power from the Legislature.

State lawmakers – who are complicit in Kobach’s actions, and just as responsible as he is for the trouble that tens of thousands of Kansans have had complying with the citizenship paperwork law – at least should have the good sense to stand down now.

Better yet, they should take stock of the problems created by Kobach and the unnecessary laws he championed, and roll them back or otherwise act to encourage registration and voting in advance of the 2016 elections. In “matters that touch upon the very essence of our democracy,” to use one of the judge’s phrases, surely state leaders should be on the side of would-be voters, not standing in their way.

This story was originally published January 19, 2016 at 6:07 PM with the headline "No such thing as partial voter registration."