Bills pending in Kansas Legislature would suppress votes and threaten democracy itself
Policy differences are the point in politics. Politics helps us sort out policy differences.
Honest arbiters can disagree on subjects like funding public schools. Protecting consumers from fraud. Tax reform. Government transparency. Infrastructure. How high should we set the minimum wage?
Recent efforts here and nationwide to suppress the vote of political opponents, however, don’t fall under the benign category of policy difference. These efforts pose mortal risks to our belief systems, to our fundamental values, to democracy itself.
We have had disagreements as a nation, but in that past, we could at least assume that we were collectively invested in the idea of democracy. No longer.
Consider this slate of bills recently introduced in the Kansas Legislature.
• SB 445 seeks to limit voting access by banning drop boxes, which are safe, accessible ways for citizens to cast votes.
• SB 394 and HB 2585 would require all advanced ballots be turned in by 7 p.m. on Election Day. The current three-day grace period is necessary to allow election clerks the time to receive and count lawfully cast, Election Day ballots.
• HB 2555, provides for the purging of registered voters because of inactivity. When did voting become a “use-it-or-lose-it” right? This measure would punish people for not voting every time.
• SB 388 requires only USPS for voter ballot mailing, even for rural communities lacking a post office. In 2020’s general election, 459,229 Kansans voted early by mail out of the 1,375,125 participating voters. That’s 33%. This legislation would outlaw half a million eligible voters.
• SB 355, proposes a redistricting map that drowns Black and brown progressive voting blocs in Wyandotte County and Lawrence, in a vast sea of white, conservative, rural voters.
Former State Senate President Susan Wagle announced this redistricting scheme back in 2020, and the current legislature turned her into Nostradamus. The ACLU of Kansas and the Campaign Legal Center have sued the Kansas secretary of state over the map.
Are you noticing a theme here? You should. It’s unfolding nationwide. In 2021, 19 states enacted 34 laws that created voting obstacles, the most of any year in the past decade.
These changes seem unassuming, but taken together, they erect significant barriers to voting particularly in communities of color.
These efforts need only have middling success to prove devastating. Our electorate remains so evenly divided that if these voter suppression efforts shave as little as three percentage points from turnout, that’s more than enough to swing an election.
Winning elections nowadays means the winner has no responsibilities to the 49% of the electorate who didn’t vote for them.
But the worst part isn’t the effect these measures may have on a specific election outcome, or on the fate of specific politicians. The worst part is what this means for the idea and the practice of democracy.
It says that the people who don’t look like us, talk like us or believe like us, not only deserve ostracism, but perhaps, prosecution.
Our democracy has never been perfect, and it may not be as old as many people claim. It wasn’t until 1965 — following the passage of the Voting Rights Act — that every eligible voter could participate. We once agreed to this soaring idea as aspirational.
The current raft of legislation signals that some Americans have abandoned this idea and are willing to trade it for power and for a safe place in our racial caste system. We’re seeing a multifront assault on democracy itself.
Overcoming this existential challenge is everything because democracy means we are all included, we’re all a part of it, everyone gets to participate.
Micah Kubic is the executive director of the ACLU of Kansas.