01-03-2025
GOP strategist credits mail ballots in USD 259 vote. Is KS poised to stop grace period?
Nearly one in four voters in Tuesday's $450 million Wichita school bond election voted by mail after an opposing PAC ran an advance ballot program encouraging that.
That's a nearly 10 percentage point increase from the 2024 general election.
And the Vote No campaign — run by Republican strategist Ben Davis of Cato Consulting Group — appears to have won. Its lead increased with each round of additional mail ballots that arrived during a three-day grace period in Kansas that allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted. The ballots won't be certified until after March 6.
'The reason we won this election is because of my advance mail ballot program,' Davis said. 'And, frankly, that was the core of the campaign the entire time. Because who the hell goes out and votes at the end of February?'
But the Republican-dominated Kansas Legislature has passed a bill that would limit the number of mail ballots that get counted in the future. The bill would prohibit counting any ballots that arrive after 7 p.m. on Election Day, eliminating the three-day grace period that allows more votes to be collected and counted before the election is certified. It passed the Senate earlier and cleared the House on Thursday. The measure is heading to conference committee.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, vetoed a similar bill in 2023 and would likely do so again. But a Republican supermajority could override her veto. It passed by more than two-thirds in the Senate but not in the House, where it fell four votes short of the number needed to override a veto.
'I mean, I can see how it would have been beneficial to be able to calculate every vote on Election Day in a close election, so you're not leaving people in limbo,' Davis said. 'But, at the same time, as long as everything is postmarked by Election Day, I don't see the problem. By not giving some time for the mail to be there, it seems like we're cutting ourselves short, we're cutting votes short.'
Under current law, ballots count if they arrive up to three days after the election and were postmarked on or before Election Day. The 'grace period' provision has been in place since 2017, when lawmakers added it in response to lagging mail delivery times.
President Trump helped fuel a backlash against mail-in voting in 2020. Even as Trump later came to embrace mailed ballots in his most recent campaign, suspicion of mail voting has lingered among many Republicans, who increasingly want to redirect voting to Election Day.
The top House Republican on election issues, Rep. Pat Proctor of Leavenworth, has said that 'if it was up to me, Election Day would be Election Day,' according to a video of remarks he made on a conference call last year. The civic advocacy organization Loud Light, which supports early and mail-in voting, provided the video to the Kansas City Star and other news organizations.
Proctor also said on the call that he wants to eliminate early voting and that mail-in ballots should be restricted to military members and those with severe disabilities. He tempered his comments by adding that 'I've got to bring 84 people with me so I'm trying to chip away at it' – a reference to the number of representatives needed in the House to override a veto by the governor.
Nationwide, Republicans and people who lean Republican are less likely to favor no-excuse early and absentee voting than Democrats, who largely support the practice, according to the Pew Research Center. Republican support for no-excuse early and absentee voting has also fallen sharply since 2018, from 57% in favor in 2018 to 37% in 2024.
Proctor's idea to dramatically curtail early and mail-in voting isn't going anywhere soon. No bill taking such a severe approach has advanced and it would likely take years of effort to pass a proposal – Kansas has a legacy of support for mail-in voting that extends back into the 1990s.
But taken together, the looming end to the grace period and the future prospect of limiting early and mail-in voting has alarmed some Kansas residents and lawmakers, who see popular forms of voting potentially at risk. As mail delivery comes under strain, it's more important than ever to allow plenty of time for ballots to arrive, they say.
'I think we just need to make it as easy as possible,' Erin Dahl, a Roeland Park resident who has become a frequent poll worker, said about voting.
Dahl last mailed in her ballot in 2021 and said she won't do it again. She dropped her ballot into a mailbox but became concerned as days ticked by without the Johnson County Election Office reporting its arrival. She now votes early in person, which she calls 'so important.'
Given the area's proximity to Missouri, she's also watched as voters there struggled with more limited access to early and mail-in voting. While Missouri permits absentee voting by mail, ballots must be notarized, a step that often effectively defeats the convenience of voting by mail.
'Especially because we're so close to Missouri, we hear about the very long lines and difficulty getting in,' Dahl said. 'In Kansas, I have never personally experienced that.'
Davis, who acknowledges he's an odd man out in Republican political circles when it comes to advance vote by mail, said he thinks his fellow Republicans would benefit from embracing it in the same way Democratic operatives have.
On the national level, Republicans made huge strides in mail voting in 2024, and Davis thinks that trend could continue.
'For a lot of people, it's just a really convenient way to do it, especially seniors, with concerns about weather and stuff like that,' Davis said. 'I've never understood why Republicans poo poo it. I think we've lost a lot of elections in the past that we could have won had we just run even a basic advanced-ballot program.'
Republicans who champion eliminating the grace period say the current law effectively stretches elections past Election Day. While they acknowledge that mail delivery has suffered, they say the onus is on voters to ensure their ballots arrive on time.
Sen. Mike Thompson, a Shawnee Republican who chairs the Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee and introduced the bill that would end the grace period, said the current three days provides voters with 'extraordinary relief.'
'Just because the mail is a problem doesn't mean that they're being denied the access to vote,' Thompson said. 'You have a responsibility if you want to vote to vote however it's going to happen. Considering the post office problems that they have right now getting the mail delivered, I would have a lot of hesitancy.'
Melissa Campbell said in written testimony to Thompson's Senate committee that she firmly believed 'Election Day should remain Election Day' and that all ballots should be returned by 7 p.m.
'If it's a priority to adults to vote, they can make arrangements to make it happen as election dates are published FAR in advance,' wrote Campbell, who identified herself as a resident of Senate District 9, which includes parts of Johnson, Wyandotte, Douglas and Leavenworth counties.
Proctor, who chairs the House Elections Committee, said in an interview that if he was 'king for a day,' everyone would vote on Election Day.
'I stand by that,' said Proctor, who indicated the comments he made on video likely occurred last spring.
He said that as the committee chair for the past three years, he's been attempting to address problems with voter confidence. He said the issue has probably been exacerbated by mail-in and early voting, as well as taking ballots for several days after Election Day.
'But I live in the real world and I understand that people like the convenience of mail-in balloting and I know that people like the convenience of early voting,' Proctor said.
While GOP lawmakers have attempted to end the grace period for the past few years, voting rights advocates are especially alarmed this time. Last year a proposal to end the grace period also included provisions to move the voter registration deadline back three days while allowing three extra days of early voting. The additional early days aren't in this year's bill.
Relatively few ballots are affected by the grace period. Statewide, 2,110 ballots were received after Election Day on Nov. 5 and counted, according to statistics from the Kansas Secretary of State's Office. That's 1.4% of all mail-in ballots that voters sent back to election officials.
An additional 603 ballots were received after the grace period and didn't count; 104 ballots arrived after Election Day without a postmark, so they also didn't count.
Still, even a few votes can sway an election. And each ballot that doesn't count represents a real voter whose voice wasn't heard.
Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, a Lenexa Democrat who voted against the bill, said that if the grace period is eliminated, applications for mail ballots should be made available earlier.
Sykes' two children both attend college out of state and vote by mail. Last November her youngest son, who attends school in California, requested a mail ballot the first day they were available. It took the ballot two weeks to arrive on campus; he returned it the same day.
The ballot arrived the day after Election Day. The grace period meant it was counted.
'I think they're trying to chip away, and I think it will be ballot boxes, all those things, because they want people to have to just go and vote in person on Election Day and not have flexibility,' Sykes said.
For his part, Thompson said he has no interest in curtailing mail-in and advance voting and said he would be fine with offering 'a little more time' to vote on the front end, though he cautioned against going too far.
'They have a lot of options,' Thompson said. 'You'd have to be completely isolated and cut off from society not to be able to get your vote in.'
