Guest Commentary
Three easy steps to securing our election results in Kansas
Recently the federal district court in Kansas City found that a Kansas law requiring voters to show proof of citizenship is unconstitutional. A recent guest commentary in The Star suggested that the entire basis for the court’s decision was a personality conflict between the judge and Kansas’ current secretary of state.
I disagree. I believe Judge Julie Robinson had ample legal basis for her ruling, which will likely be upheld on appeal. But even if it were overturned and the law were reinstated, it would not make any real difference. Establishing trust and confidence in Kansas elections requires fundamental changes in election administration.
Kansas elections can’t be made more secure without three steps that we could, and should, take now. It’s as easy as ABC:
A. Audit, post-election, the eligibility of voters.
B. Back up all votes cast in Kansas with verified paper ballots.
C. Constantly verify system security, comprehensively and proactively, to ensure protection of online voter registration data.
Prior to adoption of the rejected proof-of-citizenship law, prospective registered voters simply had to swear an oath — under penalty of perjury — that they were U.S. citizens. Because these statements were never validated, some believe many non-citizens have registered and voted. That is likely not the case, but it has been hard to say for sure.
How did the proof-of-citizenship law address this concern in the first place? It didn’t. The requirement to provide documentation fell only on those who were registering for the first time in Kansas, as a result of turning 18 or moving from another state. The law did not require those already registered to disclose whether they were citizens or non-citizens.
To effectively address the belief and concern that non-citizens were registering and voting, wouldn’t it have made more sense to require that all Kansans currently registered, as well as new registrants, provide such proof of citizenship? That way, any non-citizens already registered and voting — if any — would have been discovered, since they presumably would not have been able to supply valid documentation. Applying the law only to prospective voters could never address the belief that non-citizens have registered and voted.
The law’s other weakness was that proof-of-citizenship documents provided by prospective voters were never validated by state election officials. The documents were simply presumed to be valid, just likethe oaths of citizenship under the prior law were presumed to be truthful. Both assumed honesty, but never confirmed it. It was still just an honor system.
So regardless of whether the law is constitutional, it was ineffective in the first place.
We certainly need an election system that gives the legal residents of Kansas confidence that our elections are free and fair, and that only those eligible to vote actually do so.
Whether the proof of citizenship law is found constitutional on appeal is comparatively insignificant. To create and maintain Kansans’ trust and confidence in our elections requires more than just passing a law.
It requires effective management in directing implementation of actions we could, and should, do now without waiting for the appellate court’s ruling.
These are things we do not do now, or should be doing better. We can protect our elections if we remember our ABCs.
Republican Dennis Taylor is former secretary of the Kansas Department of Administration and a candidate for secretary of state.
Comments