In New Report, ACLU of Kansas Urges Election Officials to Step Up and Combat Attacks

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 1, 2026

CONTACT
Esmie Tseng, [email protected]

KANSAS – The American Civil Liberties Unions of Kansas (ACLU of Kansas) released a new report today about how varied policies in election administration across the state’s 105 counties result in disparate access to vote for Kansans. The report surveys data from the 2024 General Election to interrogate the positive or negative impacts of election administration on voter turnout and makes recommendations for local election officials to improve voters’ ability to participate in the democratic process amidst unprecedented attacks on the right to vote at the state and federal level. Kansas voters especially face obstacles in crowded polls and in their reliance on mail-in voting, the access of which has been narrowed by state lawmakers eliminating the elimination of the three-day mail processing period.

“The reality is that the right to vote doesn’t look the same for all Kansans,” said Logan DeMond, Director of Policy and Research of the ACLU of Kansas. “Our research shows that for many Kansans, access to the polls is dependent on which county they’re in, the language they speak, or their job or age. The ease that Kansas voters have getting to the polls is dependent on a wide range of factors outside of their control, from the hours their polling place is open to how long the lines are when they get there. These are factors largely determined by their local election officials. Whether someone can cast a ballot shouldn’t be a crap shoot—and Kansas voters can and should expect better from their local election officials.”

The report finds that crowded polls, a gap in translated voting materials, underuse of early voting, and lack of access to accessible voting policies are significant obstacles for Kansas voters. Some factors have a clear impact on voter turnout; for example, every additional 1,000 voters assigned to a polling place was associated with a 1.3% decrease in voter turnout for the county, even when accounting for community level factors like population, rural-urban classification, age distribution of the population, educational attainment, and the proportion of the population living below poverty. As the report details, there are many ways that local election officials and Kansas lawmakers can increase voter turnout and ensure that all eligible citizens can participate in our elections.

The report lays out a number of recommendations that county and state officials could implement to strengthen democracy: opening more polling places on Election Day with an increased focus on geographic diversity; providing voting materials, including ballots, translated into languages other than English; expanding early voting opportunities, and reinstating the three-day mail processing window that the legislature eliminated in 2025.

The report, All Democracy is Local 2026, can be found here: https://www.aclukansas.org/publications/all-democracy-is-local-2026/

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About the ACLU of Kansas: The ACLU of Kansas is the statewide affiliate of the national American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU of Kansas is dedicated to preserving and advancing the civil rights and legal freedoms guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights. For more information, visit our website at www.aclukansas.org.