The Kansas Supreme Court held Friday that there is no fundamental right to vote in the state’s constitution in a complex ruling related three 2021 election laws concerning false representation of election officials, verification of advance ballots and limitations on their collection.

The court made three major rulings in the decision: (1) saying the right to vote is not an “enumerated political right” under Section 2 of the state’s Bill of Rights, (2) upholding the restriction on the number of advance ballots that can be delivered by one person and (3) reversing a lower court decision that dismissed the false representation claim that the measure was unconstitutional for being overly broad.

The measures in question were passed in 2021 over the governor’s veto and were challenged in June of the same year, in League of Woman Voters vs. Schwab.  The law contained three major provisions relevant to the case making it a crime to give the appearance that one was an election official, limiting the amount of advance ballots that could be collected and delivered by one person to 1o and requiring verification of each advanced ballot signature by cross referencing it with signatures on file.

The law sparked outcry from voter rights groups who feared the broad language in the law would subject volunteers to criminal penalties for engaging in voter registration drives and assisting with collection of advance mail ballots. The court ultimately sided with the groups on the false representation of an election official issue, remanding this issue back to the lower court for reconsideration.

The court held that the restriction on the number of advanced ballots that could be delivered was not unconstitutional since the delivery of ballots was “not political or expressive conduct.”

The court’s holding that the right to vote was not an unenumerated right under Section 2 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights was in response to the plaintiffs argument that signature corroboration provision violated fundamental voting rights.

Justice Rosen wrote in his dissent that “the court’s majority strips Kansans of our founders’ ultimate promise that the majority will rule and that the government it empowers will answer to its calls.” He continued writing, “It staggers my imagination to conclude that Kansas citizens have no fundamental right to vote under the state constitution.”