Kansas Republicans almost did the right thing on primaries — but still messed it up | Opinion

Even when the Kansas Legislature does a good thing, it often chooses to do it in the worst way possible.

Not that it does good all that often. It has been an extraordinarily dreary, depressing legislative session in Topeka. The GOP supermajority has gone out of its way to make life more difficult for transgender Kansans, shift funding from public to private schools, and to give big tax breaks to the rich. It’s unclear how the Republican agenda in 2023 actually preserves the state’s future or makes the state a better place to live for most of its residents — or even if it is intended to. What a shameful performance.

But one small, positive accomplishment has come out of the chaos: a presidential primary in 2024.

Kansas often feels like an afterthought in America’s presidential elections. Our electoral votes so reliably go to the Republican nominee — no matter who that nominee might be — that we often view the campaigns from afar. We don’t get many visits from presidential candidates, or even from presidents after they’ve been elected.

If the Sunflower State is going to have an impact in our broader national democracy, then, it has to do it when the parties are selecting the nominees. But even that doesn’t even happen all that consistently: Last time around, the Democratic primary — paid for by the state party — was held in May 2020, weeks after Joe Biden had pretty much wrapped up the nomination. (Republicans, with incumbent Donald Trump running for reelection, didn’t bother with a contest.)

Kansas didn’t have zero voice in the 2020 presidential process. But it was pretty close.

So yes, it really is a positive development that the Kansas House this week approved a bill to hold presidential primary elections on March 19, 2024. As The Star’s Katie Bernard and Jonathan Shorman point out, that’s two weeks after the big Super Tuesday primaries and caucuses mostly across the South. “If the race remains competitive after Super Tuesday,” they write, “Kansas would take on greater significance as campaigns fight for delegates.”

In other words: We might actually make a difference in 2024!

The tiny bit of joy the news provides is tempered by the struggle that went into the achievement. The House initially rejected the bill because a few penny-pinching legislators balked at the possibility of spending up to $5 million on the primaries — a rounding error in the state’s $23 billion budget.

“This is taking the taxpayers’ money and giving it to the Republican Party and the Democratic Party,” grumbled state Rep. Trevor Jacobs, a Republican from Fort Scott.

Another way of looking at it — a better way of looking at it — is taking taxpayer money and using it to give those same taxpayers a voice in our national elections.

So what changed? Well, that’s where the bad news comes in. The Kansas Reflector reports that the vote in the House flipped after legislators decided Kansas could hold a primary on the cheap by reducing the number of polling locations available to voters, particularly in Sedgwick County, the second most-populous county in the state.

That’s the Kansas Legislature for you: One hand gives voters more of a say in their government, while the other immediately makes it more of a chore to use that voice. It’s easy to imagine Wichita voters showing up at the polls on primary day 2024 — only to find out that the polls are someplace else.

State Rep. John Carmichael, a Wichita Democrat, was properly cranky about the proposed reduction in polling places for the primary — a burden that will most likely be borne by his constituents. He voted against the bill.

“Reducing the number of polling places in an attempt to reduce the cost of this primary election sows voter confusion not only for the primary election … and suppresses the vote in those following elections,” he said.

Funny how that works out.

But it also serves as a nearly perfect capstone to this putrid, discouraging legislative session. Even when they do good things, the Republicans who run the Kansas Legislature don’t seem to be much interested in serving all of the state’s residents. Why start now?

This story was originally published April 6, 2023 at 5:00 AM.