By NICK GOSNELL, Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON — Kansas voters still do not need documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote. The claims of the ACLU were once again found to be valid by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals last week.
"In the prior 10 years, only 39 non-citizens had ever successfully registered to vote, none of them actually, in fact, voted," said KU Law Professor Lumen "Lou" Mulligan. "That represented .002% of Kansas voters. These are all the facts as found by the federal courts. After then Secretary of State Kobach enacted these new regulations 31,000 people were found to be ineligible to vote. The trial court found that well over 99% of those 31,000 people were indeed citizens. The courts found that the number would have been higher, but for the fact that the trial court issued preliminary injunctions early in the case and that this 31,000 number represented 12.4% of all newly registered voters."
The court affirmed that the policy was a violation of the federal motor voter act and a violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.
"The test is one of balancing," Mulligan said. "You need to balance the injury to citizens on their right to vote versus the legitimate state interest in protecting the integrity of the vote. The court said, on these facts, not a hard call."
The decision is binding to the states under the 10th Circuit, including Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming.