Issues that have risen in the past week raise concerns about voting in Kansas and underscore the need for the Legislature to tackle serious election reforms.
Last week, an uproar emerged in Dodge City, a southwest Kansas town of 27,000 that moved its only polling place from the civic center in Dodge City to a site outside of the city. To compound matters, Ford County sent newly registered voters an official certificate of registration that listed the wrong place to cast a ballot in the general election. Dodge City is majority Hispanic, and the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit arguing the polling place decision will make it more difficult for Hispanics with less access to transportation and less flexible work schedules to exercise their right to vote.
The ACLU is seeking an injunction that would force Ford County to open a second polling location in Dodge City.
In a separate incident, Lawrence voter Jennifer Tucker was forced to cast a provisional ballot when she voted early. Tucker was told her name was deleted from the voter registration list on Oct. 12.
It turns out that another person named Jennifer, with a different last name but the same date of birth, recently moved to Ellsworth County and registered to vote there. Ellsworth County Clerk Shelly Vopat said that when her office entered that persons information into the statewide voter database, the system automatically flagged Tuckers registration as a possible match, and a clerk in her office mistakenly confirmed it as a match, thereby deleting Tuckers Douglas County registration.
One has to wonder, how many other voters are victims of such clerical errors? Provisional ballots are used far more often in Kansas elections than almost any other state. In the 2016 election, Kansas used more than 40,000 provisional ballots and rejected more than 13,000. Only six states all significantly larger than Kansas rejected more ballots.
Elections officials should bend over backward to make voting as accessible and open as possible. But the Tucker incident and the episode in Dodge City both indicate that the opposite is happening.
A major problem is that Kansas has little uniformity when it comes to election laws. County election officials have broad discretion to decide, for instance, which provisional ballots to discard and how many polling places to use.
That shouldnt be. Red flags are being raised around Kansas elections and the time is past due to adopt legislation that advocates for voters. There should be a minimum number of polling places per registered voter. There should be consistency across the state on when provisional ballots are used and discarded.
Election officials should do all they can to support and help voters. Too often in Kansas, it appears the opposite is true.
Lawrence Journal-World