Charley Crabtree was looking to help voters in nursing homes get absentee ballots delivered on time last year, so he picked up about 75 from at least 10 locations in his hometown of Lawrence. Republicans who control the Kansas Legislature want to make what he did a crime punishable by up to six months in jail. . . The bill also could help Republicans with a key policy goal: saving state abortion restrictions endangered by a Kansas Supreme Court decision in 2019 protecting abortion rights. GOP lawmakers were joined in efforts to revise election laws by abortion opponents who fear that abortion-rights canvassers could collect thousands of ballots to defeat a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the state constitution on the August 2022 ballot. The Kansas fight illustrates how proposals billed as election reform might help a specific party or policy priority. The GOP’s bill is headed to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who hasn't said whether she’ll sign or veto it. Crabtree said he was thinking last year about how people living in nursing homes would be able to vote because of the coronavirus pandemic. He pitched an idea to his local League of Women Voters chapter to deliver their ballots, which were sealed in envelopes so that “you would have to just completely tear up the envelope to get in them.”
>Charley Crabtree was looking to help voters in nursing homes get absentee ballots delivered on time last year, so he picked up about 75 from at least 10 locations in his hometown of Lawrence. Republicans who control the Kansas Legislature want to make what he did a crime punishable by up to six months in jail. . . The bill also could help Republicans with a key policy goal: saving state abortion restrictions endangered by a Kansas Supreme Court decision in 2019 protecting abortion rights. GOP lawmakers were joined in efforts to revise election laws by abortion opponents who fear that abortion-rights canvassers could collect thousands of ballots to defeat a proposed anti-abortion amendment to the state constitution on the August 2022 ballot. The Kansas fight illustrates how proposals billed as election reform might help a specific party or policy priority. The GOP’s bill is headed to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly, who hasn't said whether she’ll sign or veto it. Crabtree said he was thinking last year about how people living in nursing homes would be able to vote because of the coronavirus pandemic. He pitched an idea to his local League of Women Voters chapter to deliver their ballots, which were sealed in envelopes so that “you would have to just completely tear up the envelope to get in them.”
https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2021-04-14/kansas-fight-shows-how-election-reforms-may-favor-one-side
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