Sometimes you have to wonder if a politician actually said something out loud. Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has been repeatedly defeated in the courts in regards to ballot suppression methods, announced his bold new plan to suppress voter efforts: he will simply throw votes away.
www2.ljworld.com/...
WICHITA — Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is planning to use provisional ballots during the upcoming elections and then throw out all of the votes for state and local races cast by the thousands of voters who register to vote at motor vehicle offices without providing proof of citizenship.
An email sent from Kobach's office to county election officials outlines the state's proposed plans for implementing a two-tiered election system in the wake of a federal court order requiring Kansas to allow these voters to cast ballots at least in the federal races.
That’s right. The state has instituted a plan, announced to the public, which will throw away votes of individuals registered with the federal (motor voter) form.
The Secretary of State has worked diligently on the dual-track voting system since 2013, pushing the idea that in order for voters to vote in local races, they must complete either the state form or provide extra paperwork along with the federal form.
This system has been controversial from the beginning, but now, Kobach is looking at the 2016 election as the time to announce he’s boldly moving forward — courts be darned.
Concerns about this ruling abound among ACLU and other advocates, who see it as a way to trash ballots from voters for all races on the ballot.
How? Because without the correct form applied, the Secretary of State has issued an order to county election offices that those who do not have the proper documentation will be required to vote by a provisional ballot.
NOTE: This article has been edited. The below content is now correct from several county election officers. Provisional ballots are prioritized in the count when they are significant enough to potentially change the outcome of a race. While all valid provisional ballots count, the handling of provisional ballots that only count toward federal races means their impact on a race will seldom ever be in question, as federal races are rarely if ever that close.
Since the provisional ballots are excluded from being counted toward state races, they in the end are left spoiled, they do not matter on the outcome of any contested race, a complaint offered by the league of women voters.
www2.ljworld.com/...
"It is a bad law, and we as citizens of Kansas do better to recognize it as bad law. It is not something that can be tweaked," said Marge Ahrens, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Kansas.
"It is not manageable, it is written for no reason. These were laws that were designed for a problem that does not exist and still does not exist," she said.
The confusion in language led to a slight confusion on my part as to what the election officer had meant. This is corrected.
In the end, the semantics are still the same, the votes will basically be rejected and not counted for races in which they could have input.
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