Kansas Supreme Court says residents don’t have a fundamental right to vote
Last Friday, the Kansas Supreme Court issued a decision maintaining that residents do not have the fundamental right to vote under the state’s Bill of Rights.
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Kansas Supreme Court says residents don’t have a fundamental right to vote By Richard Eberwein – 6/03/24
Last Friday, the Kansas Supreme Court issued a decision maintaining that residents do not have the fundamental right to vote under the state’s Bill of Rights.
Four of the court’s seven members made up the majority opinion in the case, League of Women Voters of Kansas v. Schwab. “One gets the impression reading the dissents that they think of the ‘right to vote’ in talismanic terms, as though it were a kind of superpower of citizenship, to be wielded in times of trouble whenever and wherever desired,” Justice Caleb Stegall wrote in the majority opinion. “Our view is both more realistic and practical as well as more legally and constitutionally precise.” The ruling reportedly makes it more difficult for future cases to prove that the right to vote is being infringed upon. While the majority opinion agreed that the Kansas Bill of Rights does not give the natural right to vote, the court ruled that other parts of the state Constitution give the “political right” to vote. Justice Melissa Taylor Standridge, who was appointed to the court by Gov. Laura Kelly (D) in 2020, argued in her opinion that the right to vote should be protected by the Bill of Rights. “By its very nature, the right to vote is an essential feature of democracy because it allows the people to influence government decisions and actions by electing (and removing) their representatives and expressing preferences on public policy matters put before the electorate,” Stanbridge said in her dissenting opinion. The ruling comes as Republican-controlled legislatures across the nation attempt to circumvent and gut existing voting laws.