TOPEKA, Kan. — Republican lawmakers moved ahead Thursday with trying to end a three-day grace period for Kansas voters to mail in their ballots, advancing a measure that one voting-rights activist called "madness."
A GOP-dominated state Senate committee approved a bill that would require all mail-in ballots to arrive by 7 p.m. on Election Day, limit the use of ballot drop boxes and give people three fewer days before an election to register to vote. The measure goes next to the full Senate.
The push for tighter election laws in the Republican-controlled Kansas Legislature is part of a nationwide effort by GOP state legislators. Much of it is tied to former President Donald Trump's false claims that fraud cost him the 2020 election, but many Republicans for years before that had questioned election security, despite lacking evidence of widespread problems with fraud.
The Kansas Senate committee's action was significant because Republicans had struggled to persuade even some GOP lawmakers that giving voters three extra days to mail in ballots was a problem. A House committee last month killed a proposal to end the grace period.
"It's madness, right?" said Davis Hammet, president of the voting-rights group Loud Light. "This is an attack on democracy."
Trump's false claims - including attacks on mail-in ballots and drop boxes - have taken deep root within the GOP. A July 2021 poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed that roughly two-thirds...
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