Key Votes

SB 394 creates a "poison pill" that automatically eliminates no-excuse mail voting if any court strikes down the state's signature verification rules. If triggered, only voters who are sick, disabled, or out of the county on Election Day could vote by mail — leaving out shift workers, nurses, and hourly employees who simply can't get to the polls during work hours. The bill also forces all legal challenges to election laws into a single courthouse in Topeka, making it harder and more expensive for voters anywhere else in the state to fight back.

HB 2503 repeals the Kansas Mail Ballot Election Act, eliminating the option for local governments to conduct special elections — like school bonds, annexations, and water district questions — by mail. These are the very elections that determine funding for public services and infrastructure where union members work. Ending mail ballots for these elections creates real barriers for workers on rotating shifts, overnight schedules, or 12-hour days who can't easily get to a polling place on a Tuesday.

This bill makes it a criminal misdemeanor for public employees to use any government resources — including work time — to communicate about constitutional amendments or ballot questions. It removes an existing legal safe harbor that allowed public workers to respond to citizen inquiries and share neutral information, leaving school communications staff, city clerks, and agency employees exposed to prosecution for routine job duties. The bill also imposes new restrictions on how local governments can inform voters about bond issues, making it harder for school districts and cities to explain construction bond proposals — threatening the publicly funded building projects that put trades workers on the job.

HB 2453 cuts off in-person advance voting before election week, moves the voter registration deadline to 25 days before the election, and requires mail ballot applications 14 days earlier. These restrictions hit shift workers, hourly employees, and newly organized members hardest — the very people who rely on weekend voting and late registration because their work schedules don't allow flexibility. The bill also compresses the window unions use for worksite voter registration drives ahead of elections.

This bill requires any website used for voter registration to either have a .gov domain or get pre-approval from the Secretary of State, with violations carrying criminal misdemeanor charges. Unions and community organizations that run voter registration drives could be shut out of online registration if the Secretary of State denies or delays approval — and the bill includes no timeline, appeal process, or objective standards for those decisions. The result is a new layer of government gatekeeping over civic engagement tools that labor and allied organizations rely on to register working people to vote.

Nine senators voted to force SCR 1609 — a proposed constitutional amendment to repeal Kansas\'s right-to-work provision — out of committee and onto the floor. Kansas is one of the few states where right-to-work is enshrined in the constitution itself, requiring a two-thirds supermajority plus a statewide vote to change. Thirty senators voted to prevent the people of Kansas from even having the chance to vote on this question.

This constitutional amendment would abolish Kansas's merit-based system for selecting Supreme Court justices and replace it with partisan elections, while also allowing justices to raise campaign money and participate in party politics. The Kansas Supreme Court is the final word on workers' comp appeals, public employee bargaining rights, and wage enforcement — and partisan elections would open the door for corporate donors to spend unlimited money electing judges friendly to their interests. Labor opposes this measure because the court that decides whether injured workers get compensated and whether public employees can bargain should not be beholden to the biggest campaign contributors.

This constitutional amendment would let the legislature revoke any state regulation — including workplace safety rules, workers' comp standards, and wage enforcement procedures — through a simple concurrent resolution that the governor cannot veto. A catch-all provision allowing revocation whenever the legislature decides a rule is "not beneficial to the public good" gives lawmakers unlimited power to gut protections with no executive branch check. Because it amends the constitution, this change would be permanent and could not be reversed by a future governor or legislature without another statewide vote.