On August 2 me and 59% of my fellow Kansas voters rejected a Constitutional Amendment that supermajorities (⅔+) in the Kansas House and in the Kansas Senate had presented to us to ratify. No Democratic Member of the House or the Senate had voted for the measure. The Constitutional Amendment would have erased the right of reproductive choice that Kansas women enjoy as a function of their personal autonomy under the Kansas Constitution.
Two further partisan Republican Constitutional Amendments will be on the November 8 ballot.
The first is a straightforward attempt to destroy in Kansas the separation of powers as between an Executive, a Legislative, and a Judicial Branch that was first engineered into the United States Constitution when it was drafted. Call it the nothing is sacred Amendment. Almost certainly this Amendment comes before the voters only because Kansans stubbornly keep electing Democratic Governors (and Koch Industries wants to regulate itself).
The second has bubbled up from that mutant cabal that calls itself “the Constitutional Sheriffs.” Johnson County is Kansas’ most populous. Johnson County Sheriff Calvin Hayden styles himself a Constitutional Sheriff. Hayden has proposed that ballots deposited in Johnson County drop boxes be secretively whisked away by armed men in unmarked vehicles before they are presumably delivered to the Election Office and tallied. Needless to say Hayden’s proposed procedure is proscribed by law. The forgoing seems to be a lot of explanation, but it may be necessary to explain why —according to insiders— this Amendment made it to the ballot. Like Johnson County, 103 other Kansas Counties each elect a Sheriff to serve as their respective chief law enforcement officers. But one —Riley County— has long since adopted a qualifications-based, civil service administrative structure. Johnson County is trending heavily Democratic. Republican Attorney General and gubernatorial nominee is said to have pushed the Constitutional Sheriff Amendment to keep Calvin Hayden Sheriff.
The sole-same Wichita-basedKoch Industries that backed the nothing is sacred Amendment to end the separation of powers (and regulate itself) clearly has no respect for American institutions. But they aim higher as they aim to undermine the Republic. Article V of the United States Constitution provides that the legislatures of ⅔ of the states can call a convention to re-write the United States Constitution. There is no end to the evil and the mischief that would ensue.
An Article V Convention is very, very nearly in Koch Industries’ grasp now.