Gov. Kelly's office reveals letter triggering meetings about "Compliance with Federal Voting Laws"
Loud Light, Demos, ACLU sent letter to "Concerned Kansas Officials" in 2019
On Tuesday Gov. Laura Kelly’s office sent additional information related to Monday’s article, Gov. Laura Kelly Prefers Darkness in Open Records about 277,000 Voter Registrations in 2020. This new information answered two key questions:
Who and what triggered the meetings starting in 2019 to enable these registrations?
What were the problems with existing voter registration laws?
Letter of Concern
PDF of complete 13-page “Letter of Concern” received Tuesday from Ashley Stites-Hubbard, Deputy Counsel for the Governor:
Key information in letter
The “letter of concern” dated Nov. 13, 2019 was sent by representatives of Loud Light (Topeka), ACLU (Washington, DC and Overland Park), and Demos (Washington, DC and New York) to “Concerned Kansas Officials.”
The letter claimed “Kansas has reported extremely low numbers of voter registration applications generated through public assistance agencies” compared with Nevada as evidence of lack of “compliance with Section 7 of the NVRA.”
Loud Light, ACLU, and Demos conducted on-the-ground investigations of “Kansas practices, procedures, and policies for providing voter registration services required by the National Voter Registration Act of 1993” in “more than 20 motor vehicle and public assistance agency offices across the state.”
Nine specific counties were mentioned as part of the ground investigations: Douglas, Finney, Ford, Geary, Haskell, Johnson, Sedgwick, Shawnee, Wyandotte.
Nine sections of the letter gave details about specific “Recommended Improvements,” which ranged from creating new policies and updating old policies to requesting actions by the Secretary of State.
Six of the nine “Recommended Improvements” involved the Secretary of State’s office.
One recommendation was for the Secretary of State to “ensure that paper voter registration forms … are properly coded to be able to determine origination” but then hide that information from the public: “any codes must not be decipherable by the public” supposedly to be in compliance with NVRA.
Some items from the Memorandum of Understanding Gov. Kelly signed can be traced to the letter. For example, sending registration forms when a box was not checked requesting one: “NVRA … requires that agencies provide voter registration forms to clients who leave the declination form blank.”
The letter was an invitation to “work together to bring Kansas into compliance with federal voting law.”
Information missing
Which “Concerned Kansas Officials” received a copy of the letter?
With so many improvements recommended for the Kansas Secretary of State, why do none of the emails obtained via KORA show any Secretary of State participants in the working group?
With a number of legal citations and legal precedents mentioned in the letter, why do none of the emails show participation by the Kansas Attorney General’s Office?
Were any members of the House Committee on Elections or the Senate Committee on Federal and State Affairs included in the working group?
The letter has no mention that Loud Light would consider legal action if concerns were not addressed. The Memorandum of Understanding signed in late Sept. 2021 by Gov. Kelly and Loud Light said the agreement was necessary “in consideration of Loud Light’s agreement not to sue.”
Politics or settled law?
Gov. Kelly expanded voter registration using the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) and the Department for Children and Families (DCF) without transparency or “checks and balances” from the legislature, the Secretary of State, or the Attorney General’s office.
How did Gov. Kathleen Sebelius fail to take these actions when she was in office?
In June Stewart Whitson, the legal director for the Foundation for Government Accountability, published challenges to Kelly’s actions as part of a video, which is partially transcribed below:
“This scheme is using the resources and power of the executive branch to engage in election law making.”
“This is a get-out-the-vote effort designed by the left, to benefit the left, paid for on the backs of all taxpayers.”
They are “targeting those efforts to only a subgroup of voters, those voters that are more likely to vote Democrat.”
“They’re claiming they’re doing this in accordance with federal law, but that’s simply untrue.”
“The federal law they cite actually only requires the voter registration applications be made available at state welfare agency offices, and be distributed only by certain agencies and at certain specific times.”
“The Governor ordered her welfare agencies to mail voter registration forms to all welfare recipients outside the scope of what is required under the law. … She strategically timed the mailings so they were sent, not when the law requires, but rather strategically in the final months leading up to the 2020 election.”
“The only thing that’s been disclosed by the Governor has been disclosed in the wake of a press release given by Demos … Then the Governor rushed and released a press release to let the voters know.”
“Fast forward ... Demos lets the world know that there’s an agreement … a day later she releases a press release … that is a copy and paste essentially of the Demos press release.”
“This is about more than just election integrity. It’s about separation of powers, checks and balances, and each branch of government staying in its lane.”
Funding
Demos
Demos received $3.3 million in support from George Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society in the years 2018-2020, some of which was “to remove barriers to voting and expand the electorate.”
Demos received $925K in 2017 and $125K in 2020 from Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund for “cutting-edge policy research” and “to continue its work enforcing the requirements of the National Voter Registration Act."
Loud Light
Both Loud Light and Loud Light Civic Action are incorporated in the State of Florida but operate exclusively in Kansas.
In 2020 Loud Light Civic Action, a 501(c)(4), received $75,000 from Arabella Advisors “dark money” New Venture Fund and $46,000 from SwingLeft via Tides Advocacy.
In 2020 and 2021 Loud Light and Neighboring Movement received a total of $300,000 from the Rural Democracy Initiative through their Heartland Fund.
The Heartland Fund received funding from the Arabella Advisors’ Windward Fund.
In this case some of that funding can be traced to other organizations such as Democracy Alliance, Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund.
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