More than 300 people who have registered to vote in Barton County are on hold, according to Darin DeWitt, voter registration clerk in the Barton County Clerk’s Office.
The total number of so-called “suspense voters” as of Jan. 9 was 315. Two hundred of those registrations are pending because proof of citizenship has not been submitted. Of the remainder, 12 are not yet 18 years old, and 103 submitted incomplete applications.
Statewide, there were 24.035 suspense voters, DeWitt said. Of those, 1,245 were under age, 19,732 had not submitted proof of citizenship, and 2,589 submitted incomplete applications.
DeWitt and County Clerk Donna Zimmerman spoke to the Barton County League of Women Voters on Tuesday, to answer questions about voter registration in Kansas.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993, commonly called the Motor Voter Act, made voter registration easier – it could be done while applying for a driver’s license, with a form recognized nationwide. But the Secure and Fair Elections (SAFE) Act, passed by the Kansas Legislature in 2011, makes registering to vote more difficult, Zimmerman said.
Under SAFE, starting on Jan. 1, 2012, voters were required to show photo IDs at the polls, and there were more identification and security requirements for advance ballots sent by mail. The following year, new Kansas applicants for voter registration were required to provide proof of U.S. citizenship.
Zimmerman said Barton County voters easily adjusted to the requirement of providing photo identification. “It wasn’t a problem,” she said. At the first election in 2012, perhaps “half a dozen” people showed up without their driver’s licenses and had to come back later to vote. Persons age 65 or older are allowed use expired photo ID documents, and there are a few other exemptions from the requirement.
As for the 200 Barton County suspense voters who haven’t provided proof of citizenship, DeWitt said 80 percent of them filed through the Department of Motor Vehicles while getting their driver’s licenses. There’s no way of knowing how many of those people don’t have the required proof of citizenship and how many simply haven’t bothered to return to the courthouse with the documents, he added.
League of Women Voters members said the SAFE Act has made it more difficult for civic organizations to assist Kansans to register to vote. Barton County League President Rose Kelly said that until 2012, the group used to set up a table in the high school cafeteria in the spring, so students turning 18 could register to vote. The last time they did, 81 students, teachers and teacher aides registered.
League member Sally O’Connor said the voter registration at the high school was a great way to encourage students to get involved in the community, but the group found the new rules too cumbersome to work with.
Groups can still go to schools or door-to-door to encourage voter registration, but the application won’t be complete until a proof of citizenship document – usually a birth certificate or passport – is submitted at the county election office.
League members also wonder if the SAFE Act was necessary. Its stated intent is “to ensure that all voters are qualified to vote and make it more difficult to cast an illegal vote.” At Tuesday’s meeting, they asked Zimmerman how many instances of voter fraud have occurred during her time in office.
“To my knowledge, we have never had voter fraud,” Zimmerman said, since she first went to work in the County Clerk’s Office in 1983.
The national League of Women Voters organization and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed a law suit against the states of Kansas and Arizona, because while both states now require some voters to provide proof of citizenship, the Motor Voter Act only requires them to affirm their citizenship. This reportedly set the stage for a two-tier voting system, where some people in Kansas and Arizona are registered to vote in all elections, while others are only registered to vote in federal elections.  In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled states can’t require people using the federal form to provide additional proof. In Kansas, Attorney General Kris Kobach said he’s trying to avoid a two-track voting policy by forcing the changes to the federal form.