In 2016, the Kansas Secretary of State was found to be distributing voting rights guides that disenfranchised voters by giving out bogus information. That report resulted in promises by the department to remedy the situation and make it better — after all, the Kansas Secretary of State was working to help the situation and wanted to make sure all voters could participate. When asked who had translated the guide, the Secretary of State refused to say, and provided a notice to myself, the KC Star and The Pitch, asking for a $2,500 deposit to find out who did the translation.
This year, the Secretary of State continued the problem of competency by again issuing voter guides with incorrect information or no information at all — literally.
Users who click on the Spanish voter guide — which is mirrored into many counties in Kansas, receive this document:
That’s right. The Kansas Secretary of State has muffed it, again, providing Spanish language voters a guide which is incorrect- providing the wrong dates; and when they ask for information about the SAFE act, also highlighted on the page, they receive this:
A PDF that says: “Not available” — which is super helpful.
While this problem seems to mirror, almost in exactly the same way, the problems that impacted the 2016 election, there is one twist — this time, Secretary of State Kobach also forgot to update voter guides for English speakers as well, also providing them with the out of date 2016 guide, which includes incorrect dates and information.
Voting guides and providing information about how to vote in Kansas are key components in running a competent Secretary of State’s office. In 2016, Secretary of State Kris Kobach screwed it up — and hey, you’d figure in two years, he would learn from his mistake and make sure it didn’t happen again.
Instead, tied up in court cases he loses, Secretary of State Kobach not only repeated the exact same mistake, he made it worse.