Kansas, Missouri lawmakers want to suppress the vote. They fear free, fair elections

Last week, the Kansas Senate approved two bills designed to solve problems that don’t exist.

One bill prohibits the governor, or others in the executive branch, or the courts, from modifying state election laws through executive orders or judicial fiat. That one is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Another measure would make it a felony for someone to deliver more than five advance ballots cast by others. It requires signature matching for advance ballots.

Final votes on both bills are still to come.

Taken together, the bills suggest Republican Secretary of State Scott Schwab, and local election officials, did horrible jobs overseeing the 2020 election. That’s why restrictive reform is necessary.

Except, of course, the 2020 elections in Kansas were actually fair, and appear to have been fraud-free. It’s “very difficult to steal an election in Kansas,” Schwab said last November.

To the east, Missouri is also advancing bills making it harder to vote, including a new voter ID requirement. Republican Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft must have really screwed up balloting last November.

Except, of course, he didn’t. The 2020 elections in Missouri were also fair and well-run. We know that because Ashcroft has said so, repeatedly.

The 2020 elections in Kansas and Missouri were as open and transparent and free as those conducted in every other state. There was no measurable election fraud in 2020, no matter what the insurrectionists — and fellow-travelers Sen. Josh Hawley and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt — want you to think.

So why are Kansas and Missouri lawmakers joining the stampede to make it harder to vote?

We know the answer. Republican majorities in both states, and across the country, are terrified they’ll lose high-turnout elections. When more people vote, they seem to believe, Republicans suffer.

There is no evidence this is so. Republicans swept to victories in Kansas and Missouri last November, despite high turnouts. The same is true in other states.

Donald Trump lost, but voting irregularities — and high turnout — played no role in his defeat. Trump was a disaster. That’s why he lost.

It’s anti-democratic and anti-constitutional to change voting rules for perceived partisan advantage. Both parties should be focused on making voting easier and more transparent, not on restricting access to the voting booth.

In Missouri, that should mean no-excuse early voting. In Kansas, it means leaving election laws intact, or expanding absentee voting opportunities. Both states should be working to make voting easier, not enact needless roadblocks encouraged by the loony right.

We do not support H.R. 1, the “For the People Act,” a federal bill designed to expand voting opportunity in national elections across the nation. H.R. 1, and a companion bill in the Senate, are too long and cover too many subjects.

But we fully endorse the ideas behind both bills, which are these: Voting is a right, not a privilege. It should be protected by law for voters of all races, and both genders. Casting a ballot should be simple, as convenient as possible, secure and transparent.

“We all have a duty to protect everyone’s right to vote,” the CEO of Coca Cola, James Quincey, said Thursday, after Georgia lawmakers enacted voter suppression laws.

Republicans in Kansas and Missouri seem to believe the opposite. They want voting restricted to people who think like them, and look like them, and they want courts to be powerless to stop it.

It’s hard to imagine a more dangerous, anti-American approach to the vote.