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As far as I know the Secretary of State's office was excluded from any discussions about the consent decree. KDHE/DCF mailed out voter registration forms that were returned to the 105 clounty clerks/election offices.

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The timeline is very messy.

A Nov. 13, 2019 email to “Concerned Kansas Officials” from Loud Light, Demos, ACLU Kansas, ACLU national, was revealed in an open records request in 2022. https://watchdoglab.substack.com/p/gov-kellys-office-reveals-letter The list of “Concerned Kansas Officials” has never been revealed.

An open records request to find out what happened after that 2019 email and before the mailing of voter registration forms in 2020 resulted in heavily-redacted emails. The open records reply revealed no one from the Secretary of State’s office was known to have been included in any of the meetings with the Governor’s office, Loud Light, and Demos. https://watchdoglab.substack.com/p/gov-laura-kelly-prefers-darkness A source says the Secretary of State’s office was never included in the discussions.

My current KORA request is an attempt to shed some light on what happened in 2020 when the Department of Children and Families (DCF) mailed voter registrations to 150,512 “applicants and clients” and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) mailed an additional 127,255 registration applications to “unduplicated applicants and clients.” This was all mentioned in the “Memorandum of Understand” (MOU) signed by Gov. Kelly, Lee Norman (KDHE) and Davis Hammet (Loud Light) from 9/29 through 10/1/2021. https://watchdoglab.substack.com/p/president-biden-and-kansas-gov-kelly

The information about the 277,000 voter registration forms was only known in 2020 because the nonprofit Demos bragged about what they had done in Kansas in a Sept. 23, 2020 online press release:

https://www.demos.org/press-release/new-voter-registration-opportunity-fills-gap-pandemic

Voter registration forms are usually returned to one of the 105 Kansas county clerks or election commissioners – so it’s likely the Secretary of State’s office knew very little about the huge mailing in 2020 by DCF/KDHE with the push from Gov. Kelly.

After Biden was elected in 2020, but before he took office, Demos published a “blueprint” in Dec. 2020 for what became Biden’s Executive Order, Promoting Access to Voting, on March 7, 2021. https://watchdoglab.substack.com/p/president-biden-is-pushing-to-federalize

This MOU was signed in 2021 after the 2020 mailing in Kansas, and after the 2021 presidential executive order. There is still a huge void in what happened in 2020 before the 277,000 voter registration forms were mailed.

Perhaps KDHE and DCF will eventually respond to KORA requests about what they did in 2020.

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So, the Governor signed a consent decree in early-’20 with these Democratic-aligned groups that then effected voter registrations prior to the 2020 elections. And none of this is acknowledged by the Sec. of State. Right?

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