Kansas Supreme Court rules voting isn’t fundamental: What’s next for voters?
A split ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court last week in a lawsuit over the 2021 election law found that voting is not a fundamental right listed in the state constitution’s Bill of Rights.
The decision was sharply criticized by the high court’s three dissenting justices. The Associated Press looks at what the decision could mean for Kansas residents and future elections.
What’s the matter?
The decision itself is sweeping, covering various lawsuits at various stages of litigation that challenge three separate sections of the 2021 election law passed by the Kansas Legislature. It was a lawsuit challenging a ballot signature verification measure in which the high court majority found that the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights contains no right to vote.
The measure requires election officials to match signatures on advance mail ballots to a person’s voter registration records. The high court reversed a lower court’s decision to dismiss that suit and directed the lower court to consider whether the measure violates voters’ equal protection rights. But four of the court’s seven justices rejected the argument that the measure violates voting rights under the state’s Bill of Rights.
what’s the big deal?
The decision was written by Justice Caleb Steagall, considered the most conservative of the court’s seven justices, five of whom were appointed by Democratic governors.
Steagall, overruling the strong objections of the dissenting justices, held that Section 2 of the Bill of Rights did not contain a “fundamental right to vote,” as the groups had argued.
Dissenting justices said it ignored long-standing precedent set by the Kansas Supreme Court. Justice Eric Rosen said “it boggles my imagination” that Kansas citizens have no fundamental right to vote and called the majority opinion “a betrayal of our constitutional duty to protect the fundamental rights of Kansas people.”
Justice Melissa Taylor Standridge called the ruling troubling and far-reaching in its implications, saying it “defies history, law and logic, and is simply wrong.”
“For more than 60 years, this interpretation of Section 2 has been our precedent,” he wrote. “Without giving any indication that this was happening, today the majority has overturned that precedent.”
What are the implications of this decision?
Jamie Shaw, the elections official for Douglas County — Kansas’s most populous county — said the ruling that voting is not a fundamental right could encourage state lawmakers to impose further restrictions on advance voting and mail-in ballots.
Shaw said the constant changes in election law are confusing not just for election officials, but for voters as well.
“This morning two voters came up to me and said, ‘I read in the paper about signature verification. Will my signature be rejected?'” he recalled. “They were very nervous about that.”
Shaw said election laws have remained fairly stable since Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965. But that changed in 2013, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key provision of that act.
“Since then, the rules have constantly changed,” Shaw said. “And I think our job is to make sure that voters not only don’t get confused, but don’t get frustrated and stop showing up to vote.”
How did we get here?
The Republican-led Legislature passed several election law changes in 2021 despite vetoes from Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, despite some in the Republican Party falsely claiming that the 2020 presidential election was not legitimate. Since that election, there have been lawsuits over voting across the country, and partisan election law battles continue in high-profile states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin. Battles for electoral advantage are also being fought in smaller states like South Dakota and Nebraska.
What will happen next?
Shaw said he and other elections officials will focus on fairly enforcing the state’s voting laws and helping to make sure the public understands them.
Justice Dan Biles said in his dissent that courts should insist that the signature verification requirement — if it survives a lawsuit against it — be handled reliably and uniformly throughout the state. This includes analyzing the processes for how a mismatched signature is flagged, how a voter is notified of the mismatch and whether the voter is given a fair opportunity to fix the problem.
“The Kansas Constitution clearly establishes and fully protects a citizen’s right to vote as the foundation of our democratic republic, so it is a serious matter when a government official in one of our 105 counties rejects an otherwise valid ballot by looking at the signature on the outer envelope,” Biles wrote.