Kansas is Bleeding But Not Broken: Disintegrating Democracy in the Free State

Kansas has followed national trends of democratic backsliding. In particular, the disintegration of home rule, a partisan supermajority in the state legislature, lack of competitive electoral districts, and challenges to ballot accessibility are of greatest concern to democracy in the Free State. 

Though, these are not necessarily new challenges for Kansas. The fight for statehood was a period known as Bleeding Kansas. It was characterized by ideological conflict over slavery, violence, and electoral fraud. This past is why Kansas takes such pride in being the Free State. 

In some ways, though to a much lesser degree, the current period of Kansas politics resembles that inflamed period of our past — ideological fighting and distrust of electoral results.

Kansas’ democracy may once again be bleeding, but it’s not broken.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about many challenges to governing. Perhaps none so apparent as the state legislature’s repeated imposition on local governments in a way that rejects home rule.

In 1960, Kansans passed a constitutional amendment establishing home rule. They preferred their local governments to make decisions for their communities, rather than the state. However, over the past two years the state legislature has passed several bills aimed at disintegrating the power of local governments. 

In 2021, lawmakers rewrote the state’s emergency management law to allow aggrieved citizens to go to court if they feel they are overly burdened by government regulations. This rewrite was in retaliation to counties, cities, and school districts that wanted to continue to implement mask mandates to control the spread of COVID-19 after the state mandate had expired. The following year lawmakers followed up this law with a bill barring any government or public official in Kansas from ordering mask mandates, including local governments. The governor vetoed this bill and there was no attempt to override.

However, the state legislature’s imposition on local governments has extended beyond pandemic measures. In 2022, lawmakers cracked down on local governments that tried to pass “progressive” policies. They passed a bill banning so called “sanctuary cities” in direct response to the Unified Government of Kansas City and Wyandotte County (NE Kansas) declaring that local law enforcement agencies would not participate in federal immigration cases and that the city and county would issue identification cards to undocumented immigrants. Marked by controversy, Governor Kelly signed the bill. The legislature also passed a bill banning local restrictions and taxes on single use items such as bags, cups, containers, and other packaging made of plastic, cardboard, glass, and aluminum, among other materials. Following the governor’s veto, the Senate overrode but the House failed to reconsider the bill.

The Kansas Republican Party touts itself as the party of “small” government, but their efforts to disintegrate home rule using their legislative supermajority paint a different picture. Both political parties support government regulations of specific issue areas and disagree with their opposition on what those prioritized issues should be. Regardless of “small” government rhetoric, Republican lawmakers pursue policies that both limit and expand government power when it is convenient and beneficial for them to do so. They have few checks on their ability to pursue these goals because of the party’s legislative supermajority.

One of democracy’s foundations is the idea that shared power is always better than concentrated power vested in one person or group. As such, legislative supermajorities are concerning for democracy. Supermajorities are challenging for the minority rights principle, where minority rights are protected and there is equality under the law. Legislative supermajorities can allow for tyrannical majority rule to run rampant.

The Kansas Republican Party maintains a supermajority in both chambers of the legislature. They have certainly used this power to introduce and pass bills that are oppressive to minority rights — especially members of the LGBTQIA+ community. But in what seems to be the norm for the state’s politics these days, there is some division between moderate and conservative members of the party that has staved off some of the more oppressive bills from becoming law. This division appears most often during the legislature’s “veto session”. 

In 2018, Kansans elected a moderate Democrat to the governor’s office. Despite the legislative supermajority, Governor Laura Kelly has been increasingly willing to use the executive veto. In the past two years she used the veto three times as often as her first two years in office. During the four legislative sessions 2019-2022, Kelly vetoed 28 bills sent to her desk from the legislature. Yet only 9 of these vetoes were overridden by the Republican-led House and Senate.

Democrats and moderate Republicans have often maintained vetoes on culture war issues that would have been oppressive to minorities. For example, in 2022 there were failed override votes on bills like the Parents’ Bill of Rights — where most concerns about teaching practices involved topics like race, sexual orientation, and gender identity — and a bill that would have prohibited transgender girls and women from participating in women’s sports — the year before, a similar bill was vetoed and the veto maintained. Moderate Republicans were the deciding votes on both failed overrides.

So while Kansas may not have the strong inter-party competition that is healthy for democracy, it does have a limited coalition-style opposition that allows for dialogue and some protection of minority rights, despite the legislative supermajority maintained by the Republican Party.

One-party domination of the Kansas legislature seems unlikely to change in the near future. Many of the state legislative districts do not have partisan competition. Of the 125 House districts, 12 are considered competitive, and only 4 of the 40 Senate districts. 

Like most states, Kansans are divided geographically. Rural areas of Kansas strongly favor Republicans. While urban and suburban areas — especially in the northeast, the suburbs of Kansas City — are more favorable to Democrats. Electoral districts are drawn with this partisanship in mind. The goal is to maximize the number of districts winnable by the majority party, which can only be done by giving up a few districts to the minority party. A vast majority of Kansas legislative districts are drawn to be strong Republican or strong Democrat, with very few deemed competitive. 

As a result, many candidates run without partisan opposition. In 2022, 44% of Kansas House districts will elect representatives that did not face a single opposition candidate. Another handful of districts will be decided in the primaries. The consequence is that there are fewer citizen voices, and therefore less diversity, in the political process.

Citizen voices are further obstructed by election laws that restrict ballot access. In 2018, only 56.4% of the state’s registered voters cast a ballot. Unlike some states, Kansas makes it relatively easy for an individual to register to vote. Registration is available online and is a fairly simple process. However, in 2021 the state legislature passed a law that effectively ended voter registration drives that may assist people with registering. It has hindered efforts to register new voters, especially young people. Many county election officials have historically relied on volunteer groups to register newly eligible high school and college students. The 2021 law has made this process a lot more difficult because it criminalized engaging in any conduct that might seem like something an election official would do, including holding voter registration drives.

Restricting registration was not a new endeavor in 2021. The year before, the federal court system struck down a Kansas law that required proof of citizenship for voter registration as unconstitutional. During the three years the law was in effect, approximately 30,000 eligible citizens were prevented from registering.

Additionally, the state requires voters to provide a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot. This can make it difficult for some voters, especially new voters who may not know the requirements, to participate in elections. The state does try to offset the financial difficulty that voter ID laws can cause by providing free photo IDs, but not all citizens are aware of this option.

Like other conservative-led states across the country, several bills were introduced following the 2020 election for the purpose of combating election fraud. However, election fraud is virtually nonexistent in Kansas. In fact, only a single case of voter fraud was found during the 2020 election. The state charged then-Congressman from Kansas’ Second Congressional District, Steve Watkins, with voter fraud and election perjury. He lost the Republican primary weeks after the allegations surfaced. 

Despite the widespread lack of evidence, state lawmakers introduced several bills targeting the nonexistent fraud during both the 2021 and 2022 legislative sessions. 

During the 2021 session, lawmakers introduced a bill to shorten the mail ballot deadline. Since 2017 Kansas has allowed a three-day grace period for receiving mail ballots postmarked by Election Day. The bill would have shortened the deadline to 7pm on Election Day. It died in the Senate.

Lawmakers introduced more unsuccessful voter suppression bills during the 2022 legislative session. In addition to a second failed attempt at shortening the mail ballot deadline, the legislature considered other notable bills that would have restricted voter access. The Senate voted to approve a bill that would have limited the number of ballot drop boxes to 1 box for every 30,000 voters. This would have effectively eliminated 80 out of 191 boxes statewide, and most rural areas would have lost all of their ballot drop boxes. The House ran out of time to address the bill before the session ended for the year, but it is likely to be reintroduced in 2023.

Republican Secretary of State Scott Schwab is credited with lobbying members of his own party to oppose the deadline and ballot box bills, which largely contributed to their failure. On multiple occasions he spoke out against both bills, and another that would have purged voter rolls, and reaffirmed that the 2020 election in Kansas was free and fair so these bills were unnecessary.

However, there were two election-related bills where the legislative supermajority allowed lawmakers to override the governor’s veto. In 2021, the legislature overrode the veto of a law limiting the delivery of ballots to election offices on behalf of someone else, or so called “ballot harvesting”. 

The legislature also overrode the governor’s veto of a 2022 bill limiting the ability of the governor to enter into agreements for enforcement of election law. Introduction of the bill followed shortly after Governor Kelly announced an agreement with a coalition of civic groups to comply with the federal voting rights law and expand voter registration opportunities for Kansans. Going forward, any such agreements will need legislative approval. Once again, the state legislature acted to restrict voter registration efforts that would benefit citizens.

The laws pursued following these false allegations of fraudulent voting have made it harder for eligible Kansans to participate in elections and have undermined free and fair access to the ballot box.

These strict voting rules make voting disproportionately difficult for communities of color and other marginalized groups —the poor, the less educated, those who have criminal records, and those who are new to the voting process like young people and new immigrants. Furthermore, it is usually elderly voters and rural residents who benefit the most from having others deliver their ballots to the election office. Following the passage of these laws restricting ballot access, these marginalized populations have incurred increased costs to voting.

In general, changing electoral rules makes it more difficult for all citizens to participate. Learning the rules of the electoral system once is difficult enough, having to learn them over and over again as lawmakers change the goalpost is an undue burden on Kansas voters.

One pillar of democracy is the holding of free and fair elections that allow voters to choose their representatives. But voter suppression laws shift that power and allow for representatives to choose their voters by creating more barriers to the ballot box, especially among underrepresented groups.

Like many states, Kansas has dealt with democratic challenges over the past few years. Kansas’ democracy has become bruised and battered, but for the time being it’s still standing. And if history tells us anything, Kansans aren’t going to let democracy disintegrate without a fight.