Court defends right to vote

Gratitude is due Shawnee County District Court Judge Larry Hendricks for his ruling Friday that ensures the rights of thousands of Kansans to vote. That same gratitude is due to election officials who updated registration records in time for Tuesday’s primary.

If not for the judge’s decision, Secretary of State Kris Kobach would have carried out his undemocratic plan to count some Kansans’ votes in U.S. Senate and House races Tuesday but not in state and local races.

Kobach had persuaded a state board last month that such a bifurcated voting system was a sound strategy for reconciling federal law, state law and a May order by U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson.

Though a 1993 federal law says people can register to vote when they apply for or renew a driver’s license, a 2011 state law demands all would-be registered voters provide proof of U.S. citizenship. Robinson had found fault with Kobach’s practice of delaying and eventually purging the attempted registrations of such “motor voters” who didn’t provide the state-mandated citizenship proof.

Rather than let Kobach grant only partial voting rights to the perhaps 17,500 motor voters affected, Hendricks ruled Friday that Kobach lacked the authority to create a two-tiered voting system and blocked the rule’s implementation while the American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit is pending.

After the judge ruled, Kobach baselessly speculated that the number of noncitizens among the 17,500 motor voters “may be in the hundreds.” He went even further: “It is entirely possible the majority are not citizens.”

No, it’s not. What’s certain, though, is that 58 percent of the affected motor-voter applicants are 18- through 29-year-olds – a demographic that should be encouraged to vote, not have its votes selectively counted.

And as Hendricks said, the state’s interests in preventing noncitizens from voting “do not outweigh the rights” of the “overwhelming number of U.S. citizens that will lose the constitutional right to vote” under Kobach’s rule.

Hendricks’ decision put Kansas on the side of suffrage on a day that saw major federal court rulings striking down voting restrictions in North Carolina and Wisconsin. Recent weeks have seen court victories for voting rights activists in Texas and Ohio, with judges blocking photo ID laws and other rules as racially discriminatory against minorities.

The Shawnee County decision also demonstrated again the value of having an impartial judiciary in Kansas willing to step in when elected officials or bureaucrats go off the deep end.

This story was originally published August 3, 2016 at 12:07 AM with the headline "Court defends right to vote."