The Kansas Supreme Court's majority has held that there is no state constitutional right to vote in the state.

The Kansas Supreme Court offered a mixed bag in a ruling Friday that combined several challenges to a 2021 election law, siding with state officials on one provision, reviving challenges to others and offering the possibility that at least one will be halted before this year’s general election.

But it was the ballot signature verification measure’s majority opinion — which stated there is no right to vote enshrined in the Kansas Constitution’s Bill of Rights — that drew fiery dissent from three of the court’s seven justices.

  • BeautifulMind ♾️@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11·
    7 months ago

    For your consideration, here is the text of section 2 of the 14th amendment:

    Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

    A literal reading of this text, apart from the anachronism by which voters must be male and 21 (which should be overridden by the 19th amendment, which enfranchises women’s vote, and the fact that voting age today is 18) says that if your state doesn’t let its citizens vote and abide by the result, its electoral college votes won’t count either, and neither will its congressional delegation be seated.