Trump’s voter restrictions gets a boost by Kansas state representative | Opinion
President Trump — wildly unpopular, facing a possible GOP wipeout in the midterm elections this fall — this week issued a new executive order that purports to greatly restrict voting by mail.
It’s a clear attempt at voter suppression, likely unconstitutional because it’s the states that run elections, not the president. (The order is also an end-run around a GOP-led Congress that won’t pass Trump’s so-called “SAVE America Act.”) There’s a pretty good chance that federal courts will knock down Trump’s dictate in short order.
State Rep. Pat Proctor — the Leavenworth Republican who wants to run Kansas elections — is a big fan nonetheless.
“Thank you, @POTUS, for the roadmap to ensure only US citizens vote,” Proctor wrote Wednesday on X.
Of course, it is already illegal for non-citizens to vote. And it doesn’t happen all that often, either nationally or in Kansas. The story of Joe Ceballos, the former Coldwater mayor charged last year with illegal voting, was extraordinary in part because his case was such a rarity.
But Kansas Republicans — egged by Trump and his can’t-let-it-go lies about his loss in the 2020 presidential election — have made “election security” one of their defining issues.
And Proctor — who appears to be the leading GOP candidate to be Kansas’ next Secretary of State — has made himself the party’s point man on such matters.
Put it this way: He’s shaping up to be the next Kris Kobach.
That’s not a compliment.
Striking a balance
When the job is done right, a secretary of state strikes a careful balance between ensuring the integrity of Kansas elections and ensuring access to the ballot. Current Secretary of State Scott Schwab, now running for governor, has mostly succeeded on that front.
Sometimes, though, the balance gets out of whack.
We probably don’t need to rehash — again — Kobach’s stint running Kansas’ elections. Everybody remembers how he backed a “proof of citizenship” law aimed at keeping migrants from voting, how he defended that against a federal lawsuit and how he lost that case in embarrassing fashion.
A key thing to remember about that moment: 31,000 Kansans were blocked from registering to vote because of Kobach’s law. (Just for reference: Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly beat her GOP challenger in 2022 by roughly 22,000 votes.) His efforts did more to keep eligible voters away from the polls than it did to protect elections from interference.
The lesson from the Kobach debacle: Don’t put an ideologue — left or right — in charge of elections. Proctor? He’s definitely an ideologue.
Making it harder to vote
It’s not just the fanboying over Trump, though there’s that.
As chair of the House Elections Committee, he’s been a key figure in bills that would eliminate no-excuse mail voting and the three-day grace period for county elections offices to receive and count mail votes, as well as a proposed state constitutional amendment — on the ballot this fall — to restrict voting to U.S. citizens.
He blamed the defeat of the 2022 vote on an anti-abortion constitutional amendment on young women “stealing it fair and square.” And he has referred to the League of Women Voters — the League of Women Voters! — as being among his “enemies.”
The point here is not just that Proctor is pugnacious, although that’s maybe not a temperament you want in a technocratic position overseeing the state’s elections.
The bigger problem is that his efforts mostly make it harder for Kansans to vote and for those votes to be counted. Getting elected as secretary of state would magnify that power. Thanks to Kobach, we’ve already seen how that story plays out.
This story was originally published April 2, 2026 at 12:38 PM.
