Kansans will vote Nov. 3 on another proposed constitutional amendment — this one dealing with who is qualified to vote.
The official ballot explanation says the amendment would clarify that only U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in Kansas. A “yes” vote would approve that clarification. A “no” vote would leave the Constitution unchanged.
But U.S. citizenship is already a qualification for voting in Kansas.
So what exactly are voters being asked to change?
The difference comes down to a seemingly small — but deliberate — shift in how Article 5 of the Kansas Constitution is written.
Currently, Article 5 speaks affirmatively: “Every” U.S. citizen who is at least 18 and meets residency requirements “shall be deemed a qualified elector.”
The proposed amendment reverses that framing. It would say “No person shall be deemed a qualified elector unless” that person is a U.S. citizen, at least 18 and meets residency requirements.
In other words, the Constitution would move from affirmatively declaring who is qualified to vote to stating that no one qualifies unless certain conditions are met.
That distinction is at the center of disagreement over the amendment.
Rep. Pat Proctor, the amendment’s lead sponsor, argues the existing wording creates a loophole because it says every citizen can vote without expressly saying only citizens can vote. In a recent interview, Proctor said he researched what other states had done before having the amendment drafted.
Supporters say the change would prevent a Kansas municipality or future court from interpreting the Constitution to allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.
Opponents say the change is more significant than the ballot explanation makes it sound.
Randi Thimesch, co-president of the League of Women Voters of Wichita Metro, said the current language is inclusionary — everyone who meets the qualifications may vote — while the proposed language starts from the opposite direction.
“They’re changing it to say, ‘no one can vote until they meet these qualifications,’” Thimesch said. She worries the wording could create an opening for lawmakers to change or add requirements in the future.
The ACLU of Kansas raised a similar concern when lawmakers considered the amendment. In written testimony, policy director Rashane Hamby said changing the Constitution from affirmative voter language to restrictive language could pave the way for future voting restrictions, including another attempt at documentary proof of citizenship.
The amendment itself does not require anyone to produce a birth certificate, passport or other documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote.
Kansas has, however, tried that before. Beginning in 2013, new registrants were required to provide citizenship documents in addition to affirming that they were citizens. More than 31,000 applications were affected before federal courts blocked the requirement.
Look Beyond “Yes” and “No”
Kansas voters faced a similar need to look beyond ballot shorthand in August.
The proposed Supreme Court amendment told voters that a “yes” vote would give Kansans the right to elect Supreme Court justices. A no vote could have easily have been interpreted as voter’s not having any say in who serves on the Supreme Court. But instead, a “no” vote meant keeping the existing merit-selection system in which a nominating commission sends finalists to the governor and voters later decide whether justices should be retained.
That amendment generated an intense statewide campaign, with at least $12.8 million spent by groups arguing for and against it. Kansans ultimately rejected the proposed change by a wide margin.
The November amendment presents another deceptively simple choice.
A voter seeing “yes — only citizens should vote” could reasonably assume that a “no” vote means supporting noncitizen voting.
It does not.
A no vote leaves the current Constitution unchanged, including its existing citizenship qualification.
A yes vote changes the constitutional language from an affirmative statement that every citizen meeting the requirements is a qualified elector to a restrictive statement that no person qualifies unless the stated conditions are met.
Whether that new wording would actually make it easier for a future Legislature to defend additional voter-qualification requirements has not been decided by a Kansas court.
But that possibility is among the concerns voting-rights groups raised before the amendment ever reached the ballot.
For voters, that makes the question bigger than whether they agree that only citizens should vote. The question is whether they want to change constitutional language that already makes citizenship a qualification to vote — and whether they are comfortable with the way the replacement language defines who qualifies to vote.