Kansas University professor Randal Jelks talks about the history of voter suppression laws in the U.S. during a panel discussion sponsored by the Douglas County Democratic Party.

Topeka ? Douglas County Democrats heard from a panel of experts Saturday about how a pending U.S. Supreme Court case could affect voting rights in Kansas.

The case, Evenwel vs. Abbott, challenges how Texas divides up its state senate districts, using census numbers to count all people living in an area.

A conservative political group called the Project on Fair Representation argues that the state should instead only count the number of eligible U.S. voters because the total census count includes both legal and illegal immigrants.

Kansas University professor Randal Jelks talks about the history of voter suppression laws in the U.S. during a panel discussion sponsored by the Douglas County Democratic Party.

“And if that doesn’t chill you, I don’t know what will,” said Margie Wakefield, a Lawrence attorney and unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress last year, “because of this atmosphere that we have, especially as we’ve seen in Kansas, the sort of efforts — innumerable, apparently unending efforts — to chill voter registration by the likes of (Kansas Secretary of State) Kris Kobach.”

Wakefield, who moderated a panel discussion Saturday during the Douglas County Democratic Party’s regular monthly gathering, used the Evenwel case to open up a wide-ranging discussion about voting rights in Kansas.

Much of that discussion focused on Kansas’ voter ID laws, which Kobach advocated for in 2011, that require voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship in order to register, and photo ID to cast a ballot.

Randal Jelks, a Kansas University professor of African and African-American studies, said those laws are part of a long history in the U.S. of states manipulating voter registration laws, such as literacy tests and “grandfather clauses,” in order to control who could and couldn’t vote.

“What Kobach is doing is not anything new, but it is in a long history of trying to keep — and I’ll say this, and some of you may take offense to it — of trying to keep the United States as white as possible, and as male as possible,” Jelks said. “Because these rules were used not only against black people, but also men and women alike.”

For his part, Kobach has denied there is any racial motivation behind the voter ID laws he campaigned for. He says they are intended to make sure that only Kansas residents who are U.S. citizens vote in Kansas elections, and that voters do not cast multiple ballots at different polling locations.

Jean Schodorf, the former Republican state senator who ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat against Kobach last year, said Kansas will feel the impact if the U.S. Supreme Court rules that states may apportion districts on the basis of eligible voters, rather than total population.

“And so what we have to do is ask ourselves, who do representatives actually represent?” Schodorf asked. “Do they represent voters only, the registered voters, or do they represent all of us citizens? If it changes, it will change how districts are drawn.”

Schodorf called for taking the job of drawing legislative districts out of the hands of the Legislature itself and turning it over to a nonpartisan commission, as has been done in a few other states, a process that was challenged earlier this year in a case from Arizona, but which the Supreme Court upheld on a 5-4 vote.

Cheyenne Davis, the Kansas Democratic Party’s field and political director, said if the Supreme Court allows states to draw district lines based on voter registration rather than total population, it would have a tremendous negative impact on urban communities and college towns such as Lawrence.

“It shifts the power from urban areas, with large populations that may be more transient, to rural areas with more steady voter rolls,” she said. “Students and the military, who move in and out of base areas, they’re not certain how long they’re going to live in that area. That’s another reason why they wouldn’t register to vote right away.”

But KU political science professor Burdett Loomis said turning over the redistricting process to a nonpartisan commission would probably have little impact in Kansas. He noted that in 2012, the Kansas Legislature was unable to come up with new maps, and the question was turned over to a panel of three federal judges who ended up drawing congressional, legislative and State Board of Education maps.

“We had the equivalent of a redistricting commission last time,” Loomis said. “And what happened? Here’s what drives me crazy with Republicans. They won everything anyway. The composition of the state legislature did not change. We have a very Republican state right now.”

Loomis argued that if Democrats want to have an impact in future Kansas elections, they should work toward three goals: registering as many voters as possible; enacting a law to conduct all elections by mail-in ballots, which have been shown to produce higher voter turnout; and eliminating partisan primaries in favor of a unified primary in which the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election.

“The major argument for that system is that it will produce more moderate-leaning candidates who will better represent the preferences of a broad electorate,” he said. “In practice, Kansas voters might well choose two Republicans as the top two candidates. But in a general election, those GOP candidates would have to compete for some Democratic and independent votes, thus producing somewhat more moderate results.”

During a question-and-answer session, one member of the audience challenged the idea that changing voting laws would change election results. She said the bigger problem, evidenced by the roughly 50-percent voter turnout in the 2014 elections, is voter apathy.

Jelks, the KU African-American studies professor, agreed, and laid much of the blame on Democrats themselves.

“You have parties that want to be neutral in a fight,” he said. “I don’t want you to be neutral in a fight. I want a party that will stand up for what’s going on in these communities.”

“I’m not a Kansas Democrat,” he continued. “And I ain’t gonna be a Kansas Democrat because that’s some weak stuff.”

Schodorf, the former Republican state lawmaker who is now a Democrat, also said Democrats in the Legislature need to be more aggressive about putting forth their own proposals instead of only criticizing those of Republicans.

“I believe that the Democratic Party, individuals, must take initiative to provide proposals, and not just react to the principles that have been made by the governor,” she said.

The U.S. Supreme Court will begin hearing cases for its 2015 term starting Monday, Oct. 5. The court has not yet announced when the Evenwel vs. Abbott case will be heard.