A second lawsuit was filed for the second consecutive day contesting a new election law that it says places unconstitutional restrictions on the distribution of advance mail voting applications.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court on Wednesday, was brought by the Campaign Legal Center on behalf of VoteAmerica and the Voter Participation Center.
Both organizations – one based in California and the other in Washington D.C. – run operations aimed at promoting advanced voting by mail.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday is different from a separate and broader legal challenge filed in state court by four civic activist groups on Tuesday.
“Kansas’s new law is the latest in a nationwide trend by state legislatures moving to restrict the freedom to vote,” said Paul Smith, vice president for litigation and strategy at the Campaign Legal Center.
“Beyond just targeting voters, however, laws like (this) specifically take aim at the ability of nonpartisan, public interest organizations to help people navigate confusing systems and encourage them to exercise their ability to vote by mail,” Smith said in a statement.
The lawsuits against Kansas had been talked up on social media by Marc Elias, a leading Democratic lawyer who is an national expert in election law.
Both lawsuits had been posted on Democracy Docket, the website he founded that’s described as a “progressive platform dedicated to opinion, advocacy, and information about voting rights, elections, redistricticting and democracy.”
Clint Blaes, spokesman for Attorney General Derek Schmidt, described the litigation as “political” because reporters knew about before the state.
“Kansans can rest assured we will vigorously defend the common-sense election integrity measures enacted into law this year,” Blaes said in an email.
The latest lawsuit focuses on parts of HB 2332 addressing advanced ballots.
The bill bans anyone who does not live – or is domiciled- in Kansas from mailing an advance mail ballot application to a Kansas voter.
The law also bars mailing any advance mail ballot application that has been personalized with the voter’s information.
The lawsuit contends that those restrictions stifle political speech and activity in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The lawsuit says the bill passed by the Legislature prohibits the groups from employing their most effective means of persuading voters to engage in the democratic process -mailing advance mail ballot applications to registered Kansas voters.
The lawsuit says the groups are hindered by the law because they can’t send voters mail ballot applications with a pre-addressed return envelope, and personalizing the applications by filling in the individual’s name and address information.
“Providing Kansas voters with printed copies of advance mail ballot applications sends a powerful message encouraging eligible Kansans to vote with advance mail voting ballots, reassuring Kansans that voting by mail is safe and secure,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit says the restrictions violate the groups’ constitutional right to “core political speech” and discriminates against them based on the content of their communications.
It also claims that the ban on sending advance mail ballot applications from out of state violates the constitution because it runs afoul of the Dormant Commerce Clause.
The Dormant Commerce Clause prohibits states from passing laws that excessively burden interstate commerce.
The new law “implements new protectionist measures affecting interstate commerce that explicitly disadvantage plaintiffs as non-residents of Kansas and their use of the instrumentalities of commerce, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit filed in federal court comes a day after four civic activist groups filed a legal challenge to HB 2332 and another bill – HB 2183 – that capped at 10 the number of ballots third parties can collect and deliver to election offices on behalf of someone else.
One of the plaintiffs is VoteAmerica, a California-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission of helping voters to engage in the electoral process with an emphasis on voting by mail.
VoteAmerica says a key component of its messaging is providing voters with information and resources to complete their applications for mail and absentee ballots.
VoteAmerica’s absentee and mail ballot tool delivered personalized advance mail voting applications to Kansas voters by email during the 2020 election cycle, the lawsuit says.
During the 2020 election cycle, the web tool offered users in four states— Texas, Montana, Ohio, and Utah — the option to receive a pre-printed personalized advanced voting application by mail in addition to email.
In 2020, VoteAmerica mailed 16,520 absentee ballot applications to voters in these states, the lawsuit says.
VoteAmerica plans to provide this personalized print-and-mail feature nationwide and is actively planning to offer the service to Kansas voter, the suit says.
At least 7,700 Kansas voters used VoteAmerica’s absentee and mail voting tool during Kansas’s most recent elections to receive a personalized advance ballot application, the lawsuit says.
VoteAmerica also says it helped more than 6,000 Kansas voters register to vote through its online tools and mailed voter registration forms to 981 Kansas voters.
At least 28,500 Kansas voters currently subscribe to VoteAmerica’s educational emails and reminder text messages, the lawsuit says.
VoteAmerica had planned to continue offering its absentee and mail Voting tool to Kansas voters going forward, including after January 1, 2022.
The Voter Participation Center, meanwhile, is focused on voter registration, early voting, vote by mail, and get-out-the-vote resources to traditionally underserved groups, such as young voters, voters of color, and unmarried women, the lawsuit states.
The center has designed and implemented direct mail programs to send mass mailers to their target demographics with resources for prospective voters to submit registration applications and absentee ballot applications.
It’s estimated that in 2020, the Voter Participation Center sent more than 60 million absentee ballot application nationally, the lawsuit said
In 2018, VPC distributed more than 6.8 million absentee ballot applications nationally.
“In Kansas, these direct mail efforts are VPC’s primary and, VPC believes, most effective form of communicating with and assisting Kansas voters,” the lawsuit says.
In 2020, using state-generated voter registration lists, VPC paid for nearly 1.2 million advance mail voting applications to be sent to Kansas voters.
It partnered with another nonprofit called the Center for Voter Information to send the mailers.
In 2018, VPC mailed more than 90,000 advance mail voting applications to Kansas voters.
An estimated 69,577 Kansas voters submitted an advance mail voting application
provided by VPC to their county election official in the 2020 general election, the lawsuit said.
And an estimated 5,342 voters did so for the 2018 general election.
