In a bizarre mixed ruling combining several challenges to a 2021 election law, Kansas’s supreme court has ruled that its residents have no right to vote enshrined in the state’s constitution.
The opinion centering on a ballot signature-verification measure elicited fiery dissent from three of the court’s seven justices. But the majority held that the court failed to identify a “fundamental right to vote” within the state.
The measure in question requires election officials to match the signatures on advance mail ballots to a person’s voter registration record. The state supreme court reversed a lower court’s dismissal of a lawsuit that challenged that. The majority of justices on the state supreme court then rejected arguments from voting rights groups that the measure violates state constitutional voting rights.
In fact, writing for the majority, Justice Caleb Stegall said that the dissenting justices wrongly accused the majority of ignoring past precedent, holding that the “fundamental right to vote” within the state constitution “simply is not there”.
That finding is contrary to the US constitution, which dedicates large portions of itself to the right to vote for citizens.
Justice Eric Rosen, one of the three who dissented, wrote: “It staggers my imagination to conclude Kansas citizens have no fundamental right to vote under their state constitution.
“I cannot and will not condone this betrayal of our constitutional duty to safeguard the foundational rights of Kansans.”
Conversely, the high court unanimously sided with the challengers of a different provision that makes it a crime for someone to give the appearance of being an election official. Voting rights groups, including the Kansas League of Women Voters and the non-profit Loud Light, argued the measure suppresses free speech and their ability to register voters as some might wrongly assume volunteers are election workers, putting them at risk of criminal prosecution.
A Shawnee county district court judge had earlier rejected the groups’ request for an emergency injunction, saying that impersonation of a public official is not protected speech.
But the high court faulted the new law, noting that it doesn’t include any requirement that prosecutors show intent by a voter registration volunteer to misrepresent or deceive people into believing they’re an election official, and it thus “criminalizes honest speech” where “occasional misunderstandings” are bound to occur, Stegall wrote in the majority opinion.
“As such, it sweeps up protected speech in its net,” Stegall said.
Because the lawsuit over the false impersonation law’s constitutionality is likely to succeed, the state supreme court ordered the lower court to reconsider issuing an emergency injunction against it.
“For three years now, Kansas League of Women Voters volunteers have been forced to severely limit their assistance of voters due to this ambiguous and threatening law,” said the state chapter’s president, Martha Pint. “The league’s critical voter assistance work is not a crime, and we are confident this provision will be quickly blocked when the case returns to the district court.”
Loud Light’s executive director, Davis Hammet, said he hopes the lower court “will stop the irreparable harm caused daily by the law and allow us to resume voter registration before the general election”.
Neither the Kansas secretary of state, Scott Schwab, nor the state’s attorney general, Kris Kobach, responded to requests for comment on that portion of the high court’s ruling.
Instead, in a joint statement, Schwab and Kobach focus on the high court’s language bolstering the signature-verification law and its upholding of a provision that says individuals may collect no more than 10 advance ballots to submit to election officials.
“This ruling allows us to preserve reasonable election security laws in Kansas,” Schwab said.
Supporters have argued the ballot collection restriction combats “ballot harvesting” and limits voter fraud. The Republican-led legislature passed it over a veto by Kansas’s Democratic governor, Laura Kelly.
Critics have said it’s a Republican reaction to baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election, in which Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump, was not valid, prompting a wave of misinformation and voter suppression laws across the country.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
