News & Commentary

Despite some local leaders sharing concerns about voters losing early voting access, the Johnson County Election Office is moving forward with changes to advance voting locations, including several closures, for the August primary election. In May, Election Commissioner Connie Schmidt notified the Johnson County Board of Commissioners that the Election Office plans to close eight advance voting locations throughout the county, but will add two new locations in rapidly growing Spring Hill and De Soto.

ACLU of Kansas director Micah Kubic said: “This is a blatant attack by the legislators on our justices, and it’s part of a decades-long pattern of politicians attempting to punish the judicial branch for issuing decisions on education and reproductive freedom that they disagree with.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas is calling on Johnson County’s Interim Election Commissioner Connie Schmidt to reverse a decision to eliminate eight advance voting sites ahead of the Aug. 4 primary.

A Kansas coalition made up of about 70 organizations launched a grassroots canvassing campaign against a constitutional amendment. Kansas United for Impartial Courts rounded up volunteer door-knockers in Lenexa and Wichita to encourage people to vote Aug. 5 against selecting Kansas Supreme Court justices by general election.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Sunday released a statement condemning Kansas lawmakers for overriding gubernatorial vetoes last week, arguing the measures represent a sweeping attack on the rights of Kansans.

The ACLU of Kansas testified in January that such methods could lead to the disenfranchisement of people who are otherwise eligible to vote. In his testimony before the Kansas legislature, ACLU of Kansas director of policy and research Logan DeMond said that “voter inactivity must never be treated as evidence of ineligibility.” He warned that people facing housing instability, who live in rural areas with limited mail access and those who simply choose not to vote could get “swept into purge processes, especially when combined with unreliable address or database matching.” “These bills are part and parcel of the illegal and dangerous attempts nationally to subvert our democracy and to dismantle our fundamental constitutional protections against government overreach and state violence,” said ACLU of Kansas Executive Director Micah Kubic about the laws’s enactment.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas last month warned that the state’s legislature is attacking elections and voter rights “from a multitude of directions.” The group called HB 2587 a “shell bill,” noting that it was originally drafted for an unrelated purpose. And in fact, the bill’s title is: “Authorizing a licensed private psychiatric hospital to maintain a stock supply of emergency medication kits for pharmaceutical emergencies.” Micah Kubic, the ACLU of Kansas’s executive director, claimed in a press release last month that the state’s politicians were eroding “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 ACLU of Kansas sharply criticized the measures, calling them an attack on voters’ rights ahead of the critical 2026 primary and general elections.

“This is an effort at death by a thousand cuts to Kansans' right to vote in one fell swoop. 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.” — Micah Kubic, Executive Director, ACLU of Kansas