TOPEKA — Bucking national trends, the Democratic candidate running for Kansas secretary of state said election deniers need to be listened to while the Republican incumbent candidate quashed theories of voter fraud in the Kansas electoral system.
Democratic candidate Jeanna Repass, an Overland Park resident, is running against incumbent Secretary of State Scott Schwab. Repass said her goal is to restore public confidence in the state’s electoral process and increase voting accessibility for Kansans.
During a debate sponsored by Washburn University and broadcast by KTWU on Tuesday in Topeka, Repass said Kansans who doubted the electoral system need to have their concerns heard.
“There are people who don’t believe in our process, whether they saw a YouTube video or whether they read something online,” Repass said. “It is our responsibility to re-instill that in them. And dismissing them, being flippant about them, that is not going to get us where we need to go.”
Schwab said people who still believe in widespread Kansas election fraud need to be ignored.
“There’s a handful of people who still think the world’s flat too,” Schwab said. “You have to move on to the people who want the truth and not the people who, you solve their one lie, look to the next lie because they care more about believing a lie than learning the truth.”
Election security
The Secretary of State is the state’s top elections officer and has a lot of influence over voting access. Schwab has repeatedly declared Kansas elections safe and secure, bucking national and local trends of Republicans casting doubt over ballot accuracy.
Schwab has stayed strong on this stance, including in 2020, when several high-ranking Kansas Republicans supported former President Donald Trump’s claims of election fraud.
“At the end of the day, it’s easy to vote in Kansas and it’s hard to cheat,” Schwab said.
Repass said she believed Kansas elections were secure but that many Kansans didn’t share her belief.
“If you look at those processes, there were several protocols where we missed a step,” Repass said. “I don’t believe it changed the outcome of a single election, and that’s why the elections were certified and that’s why we stand by those. The fact of the matter is, until we get more of our electorate who believe our elections are free and safe and fair, we’ve got a problem.”
When asked which protocols she thinks were skipped, Repass said the chain of custody protocol wasn’t followed in some places, with ballots being moved improperly.
“I am saying, let’s take the oxygen out of those arguments. Let’s follow the protocols we have in place, and let’s listen to people,” Repass said.
Both candidates said they were against voter intimidation and believed drop boxes were a safe form of ballot delivery.
