Trump aims to ‘nationalize’ voting. Do candidates for Kansas election chief agree?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Trump urges “nationalize” voting; Kansas candidates split on the idea.
- Democrats condemn intervention; Republicans want more details before deciding.
- All candidates say Kansas elections are free and fair; views on intimidation vary.
Kansas is gearing up to choose its next top election official as President Donald Trump doubles down on his calls for the Republican Party to “nationalize” voting in U.S. elections.
If states “can’t count the votes legally and honestly, then somebody else should take over,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday, a day after suggesting on a podcast that “Republicans ought to nationalize the voting” in at least “15 places.”
His extraordinary comments came as former White House strategist Steve Bannon called this week for the president to deploy ICE agents and U.S. Army troops to “surround the polls come November” as an election security measure.
The Star asked each of the four candidates running for Kansas secretary of state to share their opinions on federal intervention in the electoral process, given the constitutional guarantee that states must be allowed to administer their own elections.
The two Democratic candidates condemned Trump’s comments, while the two Republican candidates said they would need more information about the president’s plans before making up their minds.
All four candidates expressed confidence that Kansas elections are free and fair.
“I don’t think Kansans appreciate anyone wanting to interfere in the process of our elections,” said Jennifer Day, a former Democratic state representative from Overland Park. “They’ve been run well for the last several years by a Republican secretary of state, and they will continue to be run well in the future under a Democratic secretary of state.”
Rep. Pat Proctor, a Leavenworth Republican who chairs the House Committee on Elections, noted that Kansas’ election integrity laws are among the top eight most stringent in the country, according to the America First Policy Institute.
Even though there’s no evidence supporting claims of widespread voter fraud, Proctor said it’s reasonable for Trump to consider taking unprecedented action in states he has long accused of rigging the vote against him.
“I have not heard his exact comments, but I share his concerns with some of the states that don’t require a voter ID. States that don’t have a paper trail for their ballots,” Proctor said. “I don’t know what he’s proposing in terms of taking over elections or anything like that.”
Rep. Ken Rahjes, an Agra Republican who’s challenging Proctor in the primary, stressed his support for Trump in an interview. But he pointed out that any federal intervention in elections could set a precedent for future administrations.
“What happens in the day when Donald Trump is not president? Then what happens?” Rahjes said.
But any top-down election security proposal deserves careful consideration, he said.
“The president has his ideas, and rightly so,” Rahjes said. “There’s a lot of questions I think still to be asked.”
Sam Lane, a Shawnee construction worker and first-time candidate running as a Democrat, said that in decades past, Republicans would have balked at the prospect of a federal takeover of elections.
“Nationalizing elections — I think the party has gone a long way from being a small government party, hasn’t it?” Lane said.
“(Election administration) is part of our constitution,” he added. “States have the right to do this thing. In Kansas specifically, we delegate that right down to the county level.”
In a social media post last August, Trump claimed that states are “merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes.”
“They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do,” Trump wrote.
Last week, FBI agents seized 2020 ballots and other voting records from an election center in Fulton County, Georgia. The raid came as Trump continues to stoke distrust in voting systems ahead of a pivotal midterm election that will determine whether Republicans can maintain their slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives through 2028.
Security vs. intimidation
Federal law prohibits sending “any troops or armed men” to the polls. Nonmilitary federal law enforcement, including FBI agents and marshals, are also barred from the polls if armed.
Bannon, the conservative strategist, on Wednesday pointed to a 19th-century law that Trump could invoke to circumvent that prohibition.
“You’ve got to put — not just, I think, ICE — you’ve got to call up the 82nd and 101st Airborne (Divisions) on the Insurrection Act,” Bannon said. “You’ve got to get around every poll and make sure only people with IDs, people … actually registered to vote and people that are United States citizens vote in this election.”
Trump has repeatedly suggested he might invoke the Insurrection Act for various purposes, including as a response to public unrest in Minnesota over his administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown and the killing of two U.S. citizens last month.
On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she wasn’t aware of any formal plans to station federal agents outside polling locations.
Day said she believes the goal of any such mobilization would be to intimidate voters. It could easily backfire on the Trump administration, she said.
“Just looking at what’s been happening in Minneapolis and other places around the U.S. in response to ICE enforcement, I think that you’re going to wind up with even more people turning out to vote,” Day said.
“It would probably serve to intimidate a couple of people, but I just don’t know that it would intimidate all the voters they think it would,” she added.
Lane said there should be no tolerance for any such federal presence inside or outside of polling stations.
“I honestly think if anyone in an ICE uniform steps too close to an election site, they should be charged with voter intimidation,” he said.
Proctor dismissed the notion that any such scenario could play out here in November or beyond.
“I don’t think there’s going to be a problem with Kansas elections,” he said.
Rahjes was willing to entertain the scenario. He said he expects that any federal presence would be concentrated in highly populated areas. As secretary of state, he said, he would work closely with county election officials and talk to the governor about the state’s options.
He said election integrity is important, but so is making sure voters feel safe while casting their ballots.
“Would (ICE presence) make people more comfortable or would it be a point of intimidation? That would kind of change a lot of the tone of the election,” Rahjes said.
Scott Schwab, Kansas’ current secretary of state and a Republican candidate for governor, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.
This story was originally published February 6, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
