The Kansas Legislature voted to override Democratic Governor Laura Kelly’s veto of a couple of election reform bills Monday.
Inspired by controversies from the 2020 election, the bills aimed to prevent similar fights from taking place in future elections. Kelly vetoed the bills last month claiming that the legislation was “designed to disenfranchise Kansans,” according to the Kansas City Star.
Republican state Sen. Caryn Tyson rejected the governor’s characterization of the bills and said the new legislation would secure “voter accuracy” in later elections: “Every single vote matters and the accuracy matters. This bill is not about voter suppression it is about voter accuracy and making sure every legal vote counts.”
The Star described each bill:
House Bill 2332 prohibits the executive and judicial branches of government from altering election laws. It also prevents the Secretary of State from entering into consent decrees with a court without legislative approval. …
House Bill 2183 focuses largely on mail-in voting. It limits who is permitted to return a mail-in ballot for another person and makes it a misdemeanor for one person to return more than 10 mail-in ballots. The measure also requires the signature on a mail ballot to match the signature election officials have on file, creating a potential for votes to be discarded, and bans the Secretary of State from extending mail-in vote deadlines.
The bill also makes it illegal to backdate a postmark on a ballot and bars election offices from accepting money from any entity other than the state for administering elections.
Republicans in many states have pushed new election integrity measures since the 2020 election to restore trust in elections and prevent a number of issues that came up amid the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, executives and courts made changes to state election laws while bypassing the legislature.
Republican Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed legislation in March reforming Georgia’s election laws after his state received national scrutiny during the 2020 election. As The Daily Wire reported at the time:
The legislation seeks to tighten up elections and reduce fraud by enforcing conformity across the state, amping up voter ID, restricting drop boxes, and expanding in-person voting, among additional election-related overhauls.
“With Senate Bill 202, Georgia will take another step toward ensuring our elections are secure, accessible and fair,” Kemp said Thursday. “Ensuring the integrity of the ballot box isn’t partisan, it’s about protecting the very foundation of who we are as Georgians and Americans.”
Democrats and large corporations have ripped the new Georgia laws. Major League Baseball (MLB) went as far as pulling its 2021 all-star game and draft out of the state in protest of the election integrity measures, drawing backlash from Georgians, including local Democrats.
Kemp later ripped Democrats and the MLB for caving to “cancel culture” while lying about what the election reforms actually do.
“It’s unfortunate that Major League Baseball has caved to the cancel culture, and quite honestly, President Biden and Stacey Abrams and a lot of other people are simply lying about this bill to pressure these organizations,” Kemp said in an April appearance on Fox News. “This is just a cancel culture, and I’ll tell you, the people at home should be scared because their ballgame is next, their business will be next, their way of life will be next. It is time to stand up and fight this and say, ‘look, we’re not going to take this anymore.’ It’s ridiculous.”