The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday made the right call to restore a constitutionality challenge to a state law that purports to prohibit impersonation of election officials.
The lawsuit followed the passage of House Bill 2183 into law in 2021, overriding a veto by Gov. Laura Kelly. The bill was a grab-bag of mostly unnecessary provisions to placate those who believed the “stop the steal” nonsense peddled by ex-President Donald Trump and his acolytes after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
As predicted, the poorly thought-out measure has thrown voter registration into chaos.
Nonprofit groups that routinely ran registration drives without incident for decades shelved the practice, because HB 2183 was so broadly drawn that it could easily criminalize innocent people for exercising their right to set up a card table and help fellow citizens get signed up to exercise their right to vote.
The suit challenging the constitutionality of HB 2183 was brought by four nonprofits that used to do registration drives: the League of Women Voters, the Kansas Appleseed Center for Law and Justice, the Topeka Independent Living Resource Center and Loud Light, which encourages civic participation among young people.
Bear in mind, it’s always been against the law to impersonate a government official of any sort. But the previous law made it a misdemeanor and required showing that a defendant intended to deceive.
HB 2183 went way beyond.
The 2021 law makes it a felony to do one of three things:
(1) Representing oneself as an election official;
(2) engaging in conduct that gives the appearance of being an election official; or
(3) engaging in conduct that would cause another person to believe a person engaging in such conduct is an election official.
There’s nothing wrong with the first point.
We certainly agree people shouldn’t be walking around misrepresenting themselves as election officials. And felony prosecution should be an option, depending on how egregious the conduct is.
BUT THE PROBLEM with HB 2183 lies in its second and third points.
Regarding point two, running a registration drive requires volunteers (or in some cases, persons paid by a party or campaign) to possess copies of, distribute and if necessary, answer questions about a government registration form. Is that “giving the appearance of being an election official?” Who can say?
