Kansas Attorney General, Derek Schmidt, says election legislation passed by the U.S. House violates the U.S. Constitution and steps on state’s rights.
Schmidt has joined with at least 20 other sate’s attorneys general, objecting to the new proposals.
“As introduced, the Act betrays several Constitutional deficiencies and alarming mandates that, if passed, would federalize state elections and impose burdensome costs and regulations on state and local officials,” the attorneys general wrote, noting that the U.S. Constitution places with the state legislatures, not with Congress, primary authority for safeguarding the manner of conducting elections. “The Act would invert that constitutional structure, commandeer state resources, confuse and muddle elections procedures, and erode faith in our elections and systems of governance.”
A statement from Schmidt’s office highlighted the following changes that this federal election bill calls for:
- Mandating nationwide mail-in voting
- Requiring states to accept late ballots
- Overriding state voter identification laws like the law in Kansas
- Mandating that states conduct redistricting through unelected commissions
- Mandating nationwide automatic voter registration and Election Day registration
- Restricting the ability of states to remove illegitimate voters from registration rolls
- Requiring certain political organizations to disclose their donor lists thereby creating an ability to censor groups with whom the bill’s authors disagree
If this bill were to become law, the attorneys general joined against the changes say they would fight it on constitutional grounds.
You can find separate letters from Derek Schmidt to Kansas’s senators, and the full text of messages sent to Congress by following the link below.
