Kansas elections official tells Johnson County to stop auto-sending ballot applications

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Johnson County voters will no longer receive pre-filled out advance ballot applications from the county election office for future elections after this fall.

The county first sent pre-filled out applications in 2020 when COVID-19 resulted in a higher number of voters casting their ballot by mail. The election office did not send out applications in 2021 and 2022 but resumed the practice this year.

Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab, a Republican, told Johnson County Election Commissioner Fred Sherman in September that he should not continue the practice. Applications sent or returned this year, however, are still valid.

“We have expressed strongly that this will not happen in 2024. He is an appointee of our office so I think that’s as good of an assurance as I can make is that that won’t happen in 2024,” Brian Caskey, Kansas’ elections director, told lawmakers last week.

In an email Whitney Tempel, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state, said the office reached out to Sherman last month after the county already sent the applications out. The state office, she said, was concerned that the practice could result in voter confusion or a sense of violated privacy.

The applications are not ballots. Instead, the office sent every registered voter a form to apply for an advanced ballot that was pre-populated with their name, address, and other personal information. Voters just needed to fill out the rest of the form and mail it back to be able to get a mail-in ballot.

Sherman declined to comment, referring The Star to the Secretary of State’s Office. In an email exchange with a local blogger in early September, however, he said he had sent out applications this year because he anticipated record-breaking turnout in 2024 and needed to ensure enough voters would vote by mail to keep Election Day lines manageable.

Sherman said in the email that he had notified the Secretary of State’s Office of his plan.

“My informing both the CMO staff and the SOS staff was only an FYI – as I did anticipate negative feedback from some voters on this matter,” the email said.

At the time of the email to the blogger, Sherman said he’d received more than 1,000 completed applications and replied to about six calls from concerned voters.

Speaking to lawmakers last week, Caskey said that while sending out pre-filled out ballots is legal, the Secretary of State’s Office advises against it.

“We believe that voters should make the request and election offices should not provide that (without a request),” Caskey said.

Caskey said Sherman was seeking to get more voters to vote in advance in preparation for high turnout next year but said he took the wrong approach.

“I believe that there are better ways of addressing that than providing a pre-printed advanced ballot application.”

An ongoing battle over ballot access

Though pre-filled out ballot applications are not new to Johnson County, Sherman has faced backlash this year.

Johnson County Commissioner Charlotte O’Hara, a hard-right member of the commission who often clashes with county leadership, said last week that she was unhappy to receive a pre-filled out application in her mailbox. O’Hara said voters are perfectly capable of requesting an application themselves.

“All of this conflict of people over whether our elections are safe and secure. You do things like this and it just puts more doubt in people’s minds,” O’Hara said during the commission’s regular meeting on Thursday. There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud or election irregularities in Kansas. As of March, Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden’s investigation into voter fraud had resulted in just one case. The case focused on election intimidation, not fraud, and Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe declined to prosecute citing a lack of evidence.

State Sen. Mike Thompson, a Shawnee Republican, called the move a “frivolous expense” during last week’s committee meeting. In his email to the blogger Sherman said the mailers cost just over $65,600.

The direction from the Secretary of State comes during an ongoing battle over ballot access in Kansas. The state and Johnson County have become a hotbed of election conspiracy in the wake of the 2020 election and former President Donald J. Trump’s lies of voter fraud. The hearing where lawmakers asked about the ballots also highlighted unfounded claims of election fraud and irregularities.

In 2021 lawmakers passed a law that barred out-of-state groups from sending advance ballot applications and blocked in-state groups from pre-filling out those applications. Both provisions were rejected as unconstitutional in federal court.

While Republican lawmakers that crafted and voted for the laws argued they were necessary to prevent voting fraud, voting rights advocates said they would simply make it harder for Kansans to access the ballot.