WASHINGTON, DC – On Monday, RITE filed an amicus brief in the Kansas Supreme Court supporting the state in League of Women Voters v. Schwab. RITE’s brief counters the Court of Appeals’ decision in favor of activist plaintiffs, which prohibits the Kansas legislature from requiring signature matching for mail-in ballots and limiting ballot harvesting to 10 ballots per harvester.
The state court of appeals said Kansas’s modest regulations on the take-home test of elections violated the Kansas Constitution because they infringed on the right to vote, and the state could not point to a compelling enough reason for the laws.
RITE’s amicus brief explains that the court of appeals wrong on the law – absentee voting must be regulated for the system to work – and that its heavy-handed approach amounts to a judicial takeover of Kansas’s election law.
“We are urging the Kansas Supreme Court to correct a dangerously misguided lower court ruling. The democratically elected representatives of the people have not only the right but the responsibility to regulate and manage the ‘take-home test’ portion of Kansas elections. The activists pursuing this case not only want to harvest ballots by the bushel, but want to do so without proper identification checks like signature matching. Any responsible reading of the Kansas Constitution shows that the legislature can and must regulate the process, to protect the honesty of Kansas elections.”
– Derek Lyons, President and CEO of RITE.
In its brief, RITE argues:
- The court of appeals’ approach “is antithetical to Kansas history and the Kansas Constitution. Moreover, it would produce absurd results and arrogate to the judiciary powers constitutionally assigned to the Legislature.”
- “Every state supreme court to have weighed in on the issue has rejected the rigid strict-scrutiny approach advanced by the court of appeals.” “In other words, the court of appeal’s decision in this case is a national aberration.”
- “The need for robust regulation is especially acute when mail-in voting is at issue, for, as this Court has said, ‘it must be conceded that voting by mail increases the . . . opportunity for fraud.’”
Read the full brief at RITEUSA.org.