Topeka — The Kansas Senate on Wednesday gave preliminary approval to a bill that would make it a crime to try to mislead voters and keep them from the polls.
The measure was prompted by an incident in Lawrence during the November election.
At that time, several Democrats complained they were called and told to be sure to take their voter registration cards to the polls. In Kansas, voters are not required to show their registration cards.
An FBI investigation found that Peter Hunter, an ultimately unsuccessful Republican candidate for the Kansas House, was responsible for the calls.
Kansas Atty. Gen. Carla Stovall said she couldn't prosecute Hunter because state law failed to specifically prohibit this kind of misinformation designed to mislead voters.
Under the bill approved by the Senate, the crime of voter intimidation would be expanded to include the transmission of false information intended to keep someone from casting a ballot.
It would be a low-level felony. Anyone convicted of it would lose the right to vote.
The Senate OK'd the measure on a voice vote. Another vote is needed before it can be sent to the House. The Senate deleted a major portion of the bill before approving it.
That portion would have prohibited vote trading, which became an issue during the last presidential race. Backers of Green Party candidate Ralph Nader in toss-up states said they would vote for Democrat Al Gore in a trade for a vote for Nader in a state that was expected to go for Republican George W. Bush.
The logic behind the strategy was that Gore wouldn't be harmed by Nader voters in close states, and Nader would pick up votes in states that he needed for the Green Party to get federal funding in the next election cycle.
As it turned out, Gore lost and Nader didn't get the required votes for federal campaign funding. Kansas Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh expressed shock over the possibility of vote trading and pushed to make the practice illegal.
But on Wednesday, Senate Democratic Leader Anthony Hensley of Topeka called the vote-trading provision "a solution in search of a problem."
He said there were no reports in Kansas that people were trading votes.
Sen. Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, said she thought the proposal intruded on people's right to do what they wanted with their vote.
"This is a very dangerous thing. Someone could be convicted of a felony because of who they voted for," Wagle said.
She proposed an amendment to delete the vote-trading part of the bill, and it was approved.
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