ACLU of Kansas Warns Against Kansas Lawmakers' Multitudinal Attacks on Elections and Voters' Rights
PRESS RELEASE
TOPEKA, Kansas – Ahead of pivotal 2026 elections, the Kansas Legislature passed new provisions attacking elections and Kansas voters’ rights from a multitude of directions. The troubling provisions, inserted into previously passed, unrelated “shell” bills to bypass the legislative process are a partial conglomerate of concerning election bills introduced earlier in the session.
“This is an effort at death by a thousand cuts to Kansans’ right to vote in one fell swoop,” said Micah Kubic, Executive Director of the ACLU of Kansas. “Politicians have grown impatient and hurried through a frankensteined attack on the beginning, middle, and end of election administration and Kansans' ability to vote by obstructing voter registration, shifting deadlines, restricting mail-in voting, sharing sensitive data, fabricating the issue of widespread fraud in Kansas elections, and assigning blame to noncitizens. Legislators have opted to do all this before key primary and general elections in Kansas, giving county clerks and voters virtually no chance to adapt to or even understand these changes.”
The provisions include the imposition of new, immediately effective restrictions and threaten Kansas voters’ ability to register and vote in 2026, a year of critical elections in both August and November. The contents of HB 2448 were included in HB 2587, a shell bill which previously was a bill supporting psychiatric hospitals carrying emergency drugs to prevent harm. HB 2448 would require citizenship to be listed on driver’s licenses, but would actually re-birth documentary proof of citizenship laws, which the ACLU challenged successfully in court in a “stinging rebuke” after 35,000 eligible Kansas voters were blocked from registering between 20136-2016.
Language from SB 394 would tie harmful signature verification laws to the repeal of “no excuse” mail-in voting, reverting back to what the law was in Kansas over thirty years ago, in 1995. This language was included in HB 2569, which would require all election-related lawsuits to take place in Shawnee County District Court.
HB 2437, which creates new mechanisms for purging voters from the voter rolls, includes the contents of HB 2438, which would prohibit Kansans from registering to vote online through websites without a government domain or websites without approval from the Secretary of State. Currently, Kansans are free to register through community organizations or platforms that are better suited for accessibility, allowing nonprofits, civic groups, student organizations, faith-based groups, and community coalitions to be part of a healthy civic ecosystem and help reach young or first-time voters, rural voters, voters with limited internet access, or voters who have been historically underrepresented. The proposed change would go far beyond regulating technology and raise significant concerns under both the First Amendment and the National Voter Registration Act by potentially instructing county clerks to ignore electronically submitted but valid federal registration forms and by restricting how organizations communicate with voters. Courts have long held that voter registration activity is protected speech.
Additionally, HB 2437 now includes the contents of HB 2491, which jeopardizes the sensitive information of thousands of Kansas residents by requiring quarterly reports of noncitizens receiving public benefits to the Secretary of State. Compiling such a list presents clear dangers to this already vulnerable community and repeats the past errors of Moore v. Kobach, a2018 lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Kansas challenging the use of the Crosscheck system that compromised the sensitive data of nearly 1,000 Kansas voters.
Each of these shell bills passed without veto-proof majorities in the Kansas House of Representatives. The bills now go to Governor Kelly’s desk for signature or veto.
https://www.aclukansas.org/press-releases/aclu-of-kansas-warns-against-kansas-lawmakers-multitudinal-attacks-on-elections-and-voters-rights/