UPDATED 10/16/26 to include wording as it will appear on the ballot.
Kansas voters looking at the Nov. 3 constitutional amendment will first encounter a simple explanation:
“This amendment would clarify that only a person who is a citizen of the United States is eligible to vote in this state.”
The ballot then tells voters that a yes vote would clarify that only a U.S. citizen is eligible to vote, while a no vote would make no change to the Kansas Constitution.
That sounds straightforward.
But U.S. citizenship is already a qualification for voting in Kansas.
And that short explanation is not the actual constitutional language voters are being asked to approve.
Farther down the ballot is the full amendment, shown as a marked-up version of the existing Constitution, with words crossed out and replacement language inserted. To see what Article 5 would actually say if the amendment passes, voters have to piece those changes together.
The resulting change is significant.
Currently, Article 5 begins affirmatively: “Every citizen of the United States” who is at least 18 and meets residency requirements shall be deemed a qualified elector.
If the amendment passes, that would become:
“No person shall be deemed a qualified elector unless”
followed by three requirements: that the person is a U.S. citizen, has reached age 18 and meets the applicable residency requirement.
So Kansans are being asked to change an affirmative declaration of who is a qualified elector — “Every citizen of the United States” who meets the requirements — to a negative formulation: “No person shall be deemed a qualified elector unless” those requirements are met.
It is that switch — from “Every citizen” to “No person … unless” — that concerns voting-rights advocates.
They argue that wording built around an “unless” could provide a stronger foundation for lawmakers later to require people to prove they meet those qualifications before they can register. In the case of citizenship, that could mean producing documents such as a birth certificate or passport.
The amendment itself does not require documentary proof of citizenship. But opponents, including the ACLU of Kansas and League of Women Voters of Kansas, have warned that the rewritten language could pave the way for additional voting restrictions in the future.
And Kansas has been down the documentary-proof road before.
Beginning in 2013, new voter-registration applicants were required to provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, before their registration could be completed.
The result was significant. Federal courts found that 31,089 applicants had their registrations suspended or canceled for failing to provide the documents — 12.4% of new voter registrations during the period studied. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately upheld an injunction blocking the requirement, finding that it violated the Equal Protection Clause and conflicted with the federal National Voter Registration Act.
Members of Civil Rights organizations see this “No person shall be deemed a qualified elector unless” change of language pushed in this constitutional amendment may provide what’s needed to get around that Equal Protection Clause.
Why Change It?
Rep. Pat Proctor, the amendment’s lead sponsor, argues the existing constitutional wording leaves a loophole because it says every citizen who meets the qualifications can vote without expressly saying that only citizens can vote.
In testimony supporting HCR 5004, Proctor said the amendment would make explicit that only U.S. citizens may vote in Kansas elections and would prevent a municipality or future Kansas Supreme Court from allowing noncitizens to vote in state or local elections.
Supporters say that clarification is necessary even though citizenship is already treated as a voting qualification under current Kansas law and constitutional interpretation.
Opponents say the existing language is already clear.
The League of Women Voters of Kansas told lawmakers that changing Article 5 from “Every citizen” to “No person” shifts the provision away from language centered on citizens’ voting rights and toward exclusionary wording.
The ACLU of Kansas raised a broader concern. In written testimony, policy director Rashane Hamby said the amendment was redundant because citizenship is already required and warned that changing the language could pave the way for more restrictive voting laws in the future.
The disagreement, then, is not really over whether noncitizens should vote. Both current law and the proposed amendment treat U.S. citizenship as a qualification.
The dispute is over whether the Constitution needs to be rewritten — and what the new “No person … unless” language could mean later.
Look Beyond “Yes” and “No”
Kansas voters faced another constitutional amendment this year in which understanding what yes and no actually accomplished required looking beyond the shorthand.
In August, voters considered an amendment that would have replaced Kansas’ system for selecting Supreme Court justices with direct elections.
The ballot told voters that a yes vote would give Kansas citizens the right to elect Supreme Court justices. A no vote meant keeping the existing system, in which a nominating commission submits finalists to the governor and voters later decide in retention elections whether justices should remain on the court.
Read quickly, a no vote could have sounded like opposition to allowing citizens a say in choosing justices.
But a no vote actually meant keeping the existing system.
That campaign received enormous attention. Groups supporting and opposing the amendment spent at least $12.8 million before the Aug. 4 election, and Kansas voters ultimately rejected the proposed change by about 61% to 39%.
The November citizenship amendment has received far less attention.
Yet here again, the wording of the choice matters.
A voter first sees a simple proposition: yes, only U.S. citizens should be eligible to vote.
That can make a no vote sound as though it means disagreement with that principle.
It does not.
A no vote leaves the existing Kansas Constitution unchanged, including its current citizenship qualification.
A yes vote approves the rewritten language beginning, “No person shall be deemed a qualified elector unless …”
Whether that new wording would ultimately make it easier for a future Legislature to enact and defend additional proof requirements has not been decided by a Kansas court.
But that possibility is one reason opponents are focused less on the citizenship requirement itself and more on the change from “Every citizen” to “No person … unless.”
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 — and whether they are comfortable with the way the replacement language defines who qualifies to vote.