(Updated to include new comments from House minority leader with edits throughout)
Gov. Laura Kelly on Wednesday vetoed a bill eliminating the three-day grace period for advanced mail ballots to arrive at election offices, saying it would disenfranchise members of the military from casting a ballot.
“As the daughter of a career Army officer, I cannot support measures that would disenfranchise members of our armed services – who fight for our freedoms, including the right to vote – from casting their own ballot,” Kelly said in a statement.
“It would also likely result in too many rural Kansans not having their votes counted in important elections. That is unacceptable,” she said.
“We should be doing everything we can to make it easier – not harder – for Kansans to make their voices heard at the ballot box.”
The bill failed to get enough votes in either the House or the Senate to override the veto.
It passed 23-14 in the Senate and 76-48 in the House.
In 2017, the Kansas Legislature passed a law that allowed ballots postmarked on or before Election Day to be accepted for three days after the election.
Six years ago, the law creating the three-day grace period passed 123-1 in the House and unanimously in the Senate
Some of the same lawmakers who voted for creating the grace period initially in 2017 voted to kill it this year.
But times have changed as critics suspicious of election outcomes in Kansas believe that the grace period fosters doubt as vote totals change after the polls close at 7 p.m. on Election Day.
Advocates for shortening the deadline argue it assures the public that the election is run cleanly by only counting ballots that arrive by Election Day.
“Kansans demand secure elections,” said House Speaker Dan Hawkins.
“With the Postal Service no longer postmarking most mail, it is impossible to know if a late arriving ballot was mailed by Election Day,” Hawkins said.
“Gov. Kelly’s veto continues to allow potentially illegal ballots to be counted. House Republicans will continue to work to close this loophole and secure elections.”
The top Democrat in the House blasted the bill in February when it was first considered and again Wednesday when it was vetoed by the governor.
“I got whiplash when some legislators – who voted to create the grace period only a few short years ago – also voted to remove it after seeing an increase in voter participation across the state,” House Minority Leader Vic Miller said in a statement.
“I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. There is a clear reason we have such an anti-democratic bill before the Legislature right now: A small group of vocal loonies who can’t tolerate losing,” Miller said.
“They’re sore losers — pure and simple. They scream about voter fraud and spread disinformation. Repeated enough, people start to believe it.
“Our elections are safe and secure. Let the people vote. End of story.”
Opponents of the bill said the fluctuating results after Election Day are attributable to the counting of provisional ballots.
They noted that the Postal Service is less reliable now than it was when the law was first enacted, making it important to give voters more latitude to get their ballots into their local election offices.
They said changing the law so soon after it was enacted only cultivates more distrust in the election system.
Republican state Rep. Pat Proctor, chair of the House elections committee, noted that the secretary of state reported that 3,547 votes arrived after Election Day last year.
He stressed that the bill was about ensuring trust in Kansas elections.
He said the bill would bring Kansas in line with 31 other states with similar laws on the books.
“There is nothing more fundamental to our system of government than confidence for voters that the results of the election reflect the will of the people,” Proctor said.
“Anything that we can do to improve that confidence is public good, a policy good and something that we should be trying to do,” he said.
