Kansas’s two election committees are fast at work in the Kansas Statehouse this year and have already had hearings on some of the more controversial election bills being considered.
Kansas has taken on a flurry of election security bills since 2020, when President Donald Trump baselessly blamed widespread voter fraud for his defeat. Some of the laws that passed in the Statehouse fell flat in the courts, namely the prohibition of “impersonating an election employee.”
Democrats have signalled that they’re not willing to work on many of the bills being considered.
“Anything that makes voting more difficult for Kansans is going to be a nonstarter with us,” said Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, D-Lenexa….
In 2017, the Kansas Legislature approved a three-day grace period for ballots that were sent before Election Day, but received by a county election office up to three days after the election. A bill that would make a hard deadline of 7 p.m. on Election Day for ballots was recommended to be passed by the Senate Committee on Federal and State Affairs despite substantial pushback from opponents….
Sen. Mike Thompson, R-Shawnee, introduced a bill that would ban ranked-choice voting in Kansas, which hasn’t been adopted by any city thus far. Current state law doesn’t have a method for ranked-choice voting outlined in statute, meaning cities couldn’t do it unless lawmakers passed a law allowing it according to the Kansas Revisor of Statutes.
Madeline Malisa, a visiting fellow at Opportunity Solutions Project, argued that ranked-choice voting has been a “nightmare” in Maine, where she lives. She said the tabulation process throws out ballots, is too complicated and increases the chance of less-popular candidates to gain office.
Maine adopted ranked-choice voting in 2018, but several Republican-led states have soured on the idea after Alaska elected its first Democrat in decades in its first ranked-choice election…..