Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab said Tuesday that drop boxes are a more reliable and secure way for delivering ballots than the U.S. Postal Service.
“I don’t understand the angst with drop boxes,” Schwab told the House elections committee Tuesday.
“If I owed you $1,000, do you want me to put that cash and mail it to you, or would you rather me drop it off?” Schwab asked in response to a question from Republican state Rep. Pat Proctor of Leavenworth.
“When you’re mailing a ballot, you’re giving it to someone who is not a poll worker and if you’re on the eastern side of the state it goes to Kansas City; it leaves the state and is brought back into the state,” he said.
“If you’re on the western side, it goes all the way to Denver,” he said.
“Or you can just drop it off at the county office in their box,” he said. “I don’t know why you would give to the post office when you can just drop it off.”
He questioned why it’s not better to drop a ballot in a location where there is a Democrat and a Republican in the chain of custody compared to a postal worker who is “treating it like a Bed Bath & Beyond coupon.”
Schwab said his office was still receiving ballots for the November 2020 election in March of 2021.
The debate over drop boxes is expected to part of a much larger dialog this legislative session, following up from one last year when the Legislature passed two bills that were challenged in court.
The question about drop boxes comes at a time when they’re under increased scrutiny, driven in part by criticism from former President Donald Trump.
The boxes became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic and amid fears that the U.S. Postal Service would have trouble delivering ballots on time before the election.
The boxes came under attack in 2020 from Trump and his Republican allies who went to court to restrict their use in states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio in their battle against voting by mail. Trump called the boxes a “voter security disaster.”
Now, there are a couple of bills addressing ballot boxes that are waiting action in the Legislature, including one introduced this week that bans them outright.
The bill would allow the drop boxes to remain if they are under the personal observation of an election official or their designee whenever the box was available for ballots to be dropped off.
The bill is backed by the Florida-based nonprofit group Opportunity Solutions Project, a 501(c)(4) organization headquartered in Tallahassee.
Republican Sen. Richard Hilderband of Galena introduced a bill that would effectively eliminate ballot boxes by requiring voters to return advance ballots personally to the county election office or through the United States Postal Service.
Schwab said he would like the power to regulate the security of drop boxes to ensure that it’s equal from county to county.
“The last thing I need is a county getting sued because their county’s security isn’t like this county’s security, he said.
“If we could put in a baseline line of security, that would be helpful,” he said. “We would like to set standards so everybody’s handling is the same.”
Schwab pointed out that drop boxes aren’t new and that they have been used by government agencies for years, whether it’s been by the court system or motor vehicle offices.
Republican state Rep. John Toplikar of Olathe asked Schwab whether the drop boxes made it possible for someone to get around a state law that limits the number of ballots someone can deliver to the election office on behalf of someone else.
The law passed last year limits to 10 the number of ballots that could be delivered to an election office by a third party, which would curtail efforts to collect ballots in mass.
“Who is there to man the box in remote locations to ensure that only 10 were dropped off by one person?” Toplikar asked.
Schwab said the mail box is more prone to someone trying to skirt election laws than drop boxes that are already under video scrutiny in most counties.
“If someone were to break that law…I don’t think they’re putting it in a drop box,” Schwab said.
“You’re going to put it in a post office box because there’s no camera on the post office box. They’re going to go to the local grocery store and put it in the mail slot.”
Toplikar asked about complaints that the video of drop boxes can be blurry and fuzzy and is not always watched by election officials.
Schwab there are locations where the cameras are of good quality while it may not be as good in other areas depending on the resources available.
He said the state has no authority over local video of drop boxes, adding that video is all owned by the counties.
The drop boxes, Schwab said, were a way for county elections officials to collect ballots during the pandemic in a secure way so that ballots never left the state.
“You’re not nervous at all about people dumping ballots into those boxes?” asked Republican state Rep. Tatum Lee of Ness City.
Schwab reiterated that he believed the drop boxes were more secure.
“They’re not going to dump them there, they’re going to dump them in the post office,” he said. “There’s less security at the post office than there is at the drop box.”
Schwab’s testimony came about a week after a Senate committee held a hearing in which election skeptics – without hard evidence – voiced concerns that Kansas elections were at risk of fraud.
The hearing included Ohio mathematician Douglas Frank who promotes election fraud theories that have been debunked.
“I want to be clear: Dr. Frank did not accuse any fraud in Kansas last week,” Schwab said.
“He said where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But there was no smoke because we did over 300 post-election audits. If there was smoke, it would have shown up in the audits.
“He’s not a Kansas election expert. He’s a mathematician,” he said.
Schwab said some people might be surprised that Johnson County would be carried by a Democrat, but he added that the county’s demographics have been shifting for years.
It’s not a matter of fraud, he said.
“Population shifts. Voting trends shift,” he said. “Johnson County is becoming very Democratic for years. It’s a battleground county.”
Schwab said he wasn’t “real big” on making changes in how people vote.
He said advance voting in Kansas is widely used, explaining that about a third of Kansas voters cast ballots before Election Day.
Lee pressed Schwab about whether allowing voting to last so long could make the election system vulnerable to fraud. He disagreed.
“What’s the difference to me voting Friday before Election Day and on Election Day,” Schwab said. “It’s the same system. It’s not more nefarious on Friday than on Tuesday.”
He predicted that Kansans would push back against efforts to limit advance voting.
“I don’t think you’re going to change them wanting that,” he said.
“But that’s a policy decision for you. You guys are the policy makers. We execute them.”
Lee responded, “We just listen to the people.”
She said her constituents are skeptical of the security of Kansas elections.
“They don’t feel like they’ve had secure elections, certainly not every county.”
