As of last week, 26 bills related to elections had been introduced in the Legislature this session. Four of these bills have passed one of the houses — two in the Senate and two in the House.

Three of these bills are functionally redundant as they do not change the state’s status quo and instead seem to be driven mostly by political posturing. However, SB 4 would drastically change the state’s current approach to mail ballots.

SB 4 would require that voters return mail ballots by 7 p.m. on Election Day. Under current Kansas law, mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day and received within three days are allowed to be counted. Should this bill pass, the three-day grace period would be eliminated.

The grace period was added in 2017 by near unanimous vote at the urging of then Secretary of State Kris Kobach, stating that mail service was delaying ballots from arriving by Election Day, and thus those votes were not being counted.

Supporters of SB 4 claim allowing a grace period provides ample opportunities for voter fraud. However, the Kansas Secretary of State’s website highlights the numerous safety measures used to verify the legitimacy of mail ballots; and according to the Heritage Foundation’s election fraud database, there have been no cases of voter fraud in Kansas since 2021 — the infamous case of voter fraud committed by former Republican Congressman Steve Watkins.

Despite advocates’ claims that this bill does not make it harder to vote, it does, in fact, do just that. Mail takes time to be processed, especially for the most rural areas of our state and for voters living out-of-state, who are usually young and either in the military or college. Not to mention the disabled and elderly Kansans who rely on mail ballots and will be systematically disenfranchised by eliminating the grace period.

Some opponents of the bill claim partisan motivation in the elimination of the grace period, arguing that it disproportionately affects Democrats, who in recent years have been more likely to vote by mail than Republicans..

According to early voting data collected by IKE Lab during the 2024 general election, 42.6% of mail-in votes in Kansas were cast by Democrats, 39.3% by Republicans and 17.4% by unaffiliated voters.

Looking only at ballots recorded after Election Day, Democrats likely would be at even more of a disadvantage should the law be changed.

Of mail ballots that were received during the grace period (see data note below), 56.8% of them belonged to registered Democrats, 24.1% to Republicans and 19.1% to unaffiliated voters.

These numbers make it clear that eliminating the grace period would have a measurable impact on whose votes are counted.

Passing SB 4 would not only eliminate a safeguard that has ensured thousands of legitimate votes are counted, but it would also disproportionately impact specific groups of voters, particularly those in rural areas, the military, and the elderly.

While concerns about election security should always be taken seriously, the safeguards in place already ensure the integrity of mail-in ballots. Rather than solving a real problem, this bill risks disenfranchising Kansans for the sake of political maneuvering.

Lawmakers should prioritize making voting more accessible, not less.

Data Note: This data is taken from voting reports purchased from the Kansas Secretary of State on Nov. 6, 2024 and Nov. 12, 2024. A total of 9,399 ballots were included in the final vote report on Nov. 12 that had not been included in the Nov. 6 report. It is possible that some of these ballots had not been included in the first report due to delays in reporting by counties, however, it is likely that most, if not all, were ballots received during the grace period. 9,399 total ballots received during this period; 2,268 Republican, 5,334 Democratic and 1,797 unaffiliated.

— Alexandra Middlewood is an associate professor and chair of the Political Science Department at Wichita State University.