(Updated to reflect bill was sent to the governor
The Kansas Legislature has passed a bill intended to keep noncitizens from voting with a proposal requiring the secretary of state to match names on voter rolls with a list of noncitizens who have driver’s licenses.
The bill calls for the division of motor vehicles within the Department of Revenue each quarter to relay a list of all permanent and temporary driver’s licenses issued to noncitizens to the secretary of state to determine if they’re on the voter rolls.
The bill passed the Senate on a 32-8 vote on Wednesday and the House sent it onto the governor with an 83-35 vote on Thursday.
The bill requires the list to include names, addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, alien registration number, dates of birth, temporary driver’s license numbers and their expiration dates.
If any matches are found, the secretary would direct the county election officer to remove the names of any noncitizens who appear on the voter registration rolls within five business
days.
The bill would require the county election officer to reinstate the person if they provide proof of citizenship.
There’s already a “handshake agreement” between the secretary of state’s office and the motor vehicles division to share that data.
However, there are some concerns that a future governor or administrator could end the arrangement to provide that information to the secretary of state.
“This is just one way clean up the voter rolls. It doesn’t affect a lot of voters, to be honest,” said Republican state Sen. Mike Thompson of Shawnee and chair of the Federal and State Affairs Committee.
“It doesn’t happen a lot, but it’s still a good mechanism to check.”
There were about 38,000 people in Kansas who had active temporary drivers licenses as of December.
Out of the state’s more than 2 million voters, state officials found 202 potential matches when comparing a temporary driver’s license list to the voter rolls.
About 120 of those were false positives, and 85 warranted additional investigation, according to the secretary of state’s office.
Twenty-one of the 85 had a voting history and would require even further investigation to determine citizenship status.
Dinah Sykes, the top Democrat in the Senate, pressed Thompson about how the data would be exchanged between agencies and whether someone’s identity could be stolen.
Thompson struggled in responding, saying he would have to ask the secretary of state’s office what security measures it has in place.
“I assume that they’re not sharing it outside of those agencies so as to protect the identities of anyone who may be affected by this,” he said.
“I don’t have a specific answer on that one, I’m afraid,” he said.
Sykes responded, “I think that lack of a specific answer causes alarm.”
The Democratic senator from Lenexa also questioned the premise for the bill.
“It is a crime for a noncitizen to apply to vote,” she said. “We have seen time and time again that this not happening in Kansas.
“This is a false narrative that noncitizens have voted. It’s been going around for hundreds of years,” Sykes said.
“But repeated investigations have found zero evidence of this happening.”
The bill will have to return to the House to work out slight differences between the legislation passed in each chamber.
