On Friday, the Kansas Secretary of State’s office is set to initiate a new policy that will toss out any Kansas voter registration that hasn’t been completed within 90 days.

That will allow county election officials to discontinue their efforts to contact the people who started but didn’t complete the process of registering to vote. The large majority of those registrations are being held up because they don’t include proof of citizenship documents.

The list of incomplete Kansas registrations has risen above 36,000 voters and increased by nearly 10,000 in just the last year, according to news reports. Since the state’s proof-of-citizenship law went into effect in 2013, more than 16 percent of voter registrations have landed on the “in suspense” list.

The intent of the law was to make sure only U.S. citizens voted in Kansas elections. Voters already were required to sign a statement confirming their citizenship, but now the state requires additional documentation like a birth certificate or passport. The added step of obtaining and submitting those documents appears to be a significant factor in the incomplete registrations — especially for younger voters.

An analysis conducted by a Wichita newspaper, determined that 40 percent of the people with incomplete registrations were under the age of 30. The large number of young people on the list isn’t surprising, but it is disappointing. People under 30 are more likely to be registering in Kansas for the first time, which activates the proof-of-citizen requirement. They also may be changing addresses more often, which requires them to update their registrations.

Secretary of State Kris Kobach noted that first-time voters who move would have to restart the registration process anyway, and that isn’t a problem because all a potential voter has to do is take a photo of his or her birth certificate or passport with a smartphone and either text it or email it to election officials. That sounds easy enough, but how many young people carry copies of their birth certificates in their pockets? It’s not impossible for them to get those documents, but it’s an extra step that many qualified voters of any age may not get around to.

Some would say that anyone who doesn’t care enough to prove his or her citizenship doesn’t deserve to vote, but that seems a bit harsh, especially for young people who should be encouraged to participate in the democratic process, not deterred by additional obstacles that most older Kansas voters didn’t face.

Only citizens should be allowed to vote in Kansas elections, but that already was the law. Comparing the confirmed incidence of non-citizens trying to vote in Kansas with the number of voter registrations being tossed out because they are incomplete, some may wonder if the state’s solution for non-citizen voting is worse than the problem.