A Kansas law that makes it a felony to impersonate an elections official is vague enough that voting rights advocates can pursue a legal challenge, the state’s highest court ruled Friday, reviving a lawsuit that a lower court dismissed.
The Kansas Supreme Court’s decision came in a challenge to a 2021 law that critics say hinders voter registration drives. Four groups argued in the lawsuit that their members could be prosecuted even if they were clear that they were not election officials but others still mistakenly believed they were. Backers of the law have scoffed at that argument.
The groups are pursuing another lawsuit against other elections restrictions that the Republican-led Legislature passed in 2021 over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto amid false claims by some in the GOP that the 2020 presidential election wasn’t valid. One of the groups, Loud Light, said the law at issue in Friday’s ruling led it to stop registering voters even though it registered 10,000 in 2020.
Anything to stop Kansas from becoming a swing state, so gotta stop those voter registration drives!
The only reason why we’re in contention for a swing state is because the local Dems campaigns aren’t actually stupid.
Our Dems are far far right from where they ideally would be, but they aren’t obtusely insane. They know that this state got rocked when Brownback and Republicans had complete control of the state and they try to keep us reminded.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Justice Caleb Stegall expressed skepticism in the court’s opinion that the voting rights groups’ members would be prosecuted for impersonating elections officials.
“The statute simply does not provide clarity that truthful speech which generates an innocent or unreasonable listener mistake is outside of its scope,” wrote Stegall, who is seen as the seven-member court’s most conservative member.
A three-judge Kansas Court of Appeals panel last year ruled that the groups didn’t have the legal right to challenge the anti-impersonation law because their members had not been prosecuted under it.
Although people and groups generally must show they have been injured to pursue a lawsuit, the state Supreme Court said that when a law is challenged as too vague, it is enough that it could cause someone to avoid constitutionally protected speech.
In November, Elizabeth Frost, an attorney for the four groups, told the state Supreme Court that most Kansas election laws still would pass a strict test “just fine.”
But the justices appeared to struggle to balance their concerns about legal votes not being counted with potentially jeopardizing long-standing rules, including limits on when polls are open.
The original article contains 771 words, the summary contains 187 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Anytime anyone scoffs at the idea Republicans will take the extreme right view of a vague law needs to just point at Roe and the states will 6weeks abortion bans.
