Advance mail balloting would come to an end in Kansas if the courts strike down a law that requires election officials to confirm signatures on advanced ballots sent by mail.
The Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee heard a bill Monday that potentially sets up a legal dilemma for plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit over signature requirements.
They could pursue their litigation, which already has been to the Kansas Supreme Court, but risk bringing mail balloting to an end.
The lawsuit challenges a law that bars county election officers from accepting advance mail ballots sent by mail unless they verify that the signature on the envelope matches the signature on file in the county voter registration records.
The lawsuit – first filed in 2021 – contends that there is no standard for matching signatures, leaving it up to each county election official to decide how to verify the signatures.
If a court rules that the signature provision is unconstitutional or blocks that provision in a final order that can’t be appealed, the mail-balloting statute would be repealed.
The bill was backed Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, who was represented at Monday’s hearing by general counsel Clay Barker.
“I think it lays down the legislative intent that signature verification is so integrated with mail balloting that it cannot be pulled out separately and stopped,” Barker said.
“Kansas has one of the best procedures for signature verification in the nation,” Barker said.
“Its regulations were designed around every single court case that has looked at signature verification and it exceeded those standards,” he said.
“It has uniform statewide procedures that are based on objective data for verification and it is supplemented by robust due process,” he said.
Since the regulations were adopted in 2021, and across the combined 2022 and 2024 election cycles, more than 300,000 mail ballots have been returned, Barker said.
He said 224 ballots were ultimately rejected for unverified signatures after voters failed to remedy the issue.
“Kansas’s signature verification process has been subject to sustained and expensive litigation for nearly five years, with no clear end in sight,” Barker said in his written testimony to the committee.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas opposed the bill, saying that signature verification disenfranchises voters.
“Signatures vary. They don’t always match,” said Logan DeMond of the ACLU of Kansas.
“The way we sign one thing might be a little different than the way we sign another, especially for people with disabilities, people with degenerative diseases, individuals with visual impairment,” he said.
“Litigation has shown that mismatching discriminates against these folks as well as those who are transgender, women who have changed their name when they get married or get divorced, those who speak a primary language other than English and voters who are voting overseas as well,” he said.
“Voters have challenged this process not because they want to cheat, but because it’s unreliable, it is arbitrary and it is discriminatory,” he said.
“And that’s exactly why the courts step in.
“And if this bill has its way, constitutional challenges will be used as a proxy for ending mail-in voting altogether.”
Lawmakers on the committee didn’t appear persuaded.
Republican state Sen. Bill Clifford of Garden City questioned how someone who was transgender would be harmed by the signature verification requirement.
Republican state Sen. Caryn Tyson of Parker rejected the idea that the law was prejudiced against anyone.
“This is common-sense legislation,” Tyson said, asking why the Legislature wouldn’t enact this type of law.
“I find it offensive that you would say that this is prejudicial against one group or another,” Tyson said.
“How do they know you are based on your signature?” she said.
“Who is discriminating?” Tyson said.
“I know my county clerks would be completely offended by your comments. They are not discriminating against anyone. So, who are you insinuating is discriminating?”
DeMond said he was talking about voters who “are being attacked by the signature verification process.”
Republican state Sen. Adam Thomas of Olathe also didn’t seem convinced by the arguments against the bill.
“I think it’s very telling that we have one side arguing on this bill based off assumptions and one that was able to get up and cite actual court cases to support their argument,” Thomas said.
“It’s not discriminatory at all,” he said. “I agree that this is good, common-sense legislation.”
Two years ago, the state Supreme Court found in favor of the 2021 law that barred county election officers from accepting advance voting ballots sent by mail unless they verified the signature on the ballot envelope matches the signature on file with the election office.
The court found that the signature verification requirement was a “valid effort” by the
Legislature to pass laws that may be needed to ascertain whether a Kansas resident is entitled to the right to vote.
“It is reasonable for the Legislature to impose such proof requirements,” Justice Caleb Stegall wrote.
“It is important for election officials to determine whether a person is who they say they are — which again, is not an extra-constitutional elector qualification, ‘but rather, it is a mode of identifying those who possess constitutionally required qualifications.’”
However, the court sent the issue back to the district court to consider whether the law and its implementing regulations comply with the constitutional guarantees of equal protection and due process.
Barker told the committee that the idea for the bill originated in Colorado.
He said when the Colorado courts ruled that signature verification was an integral component of mail voting, the plaintiffs were confronted with the prospect that invalidating signature verification could eliminate mail voting altogether.
Faced with that outcome, the plaintiffs dismissed their lawsuit, he said.
