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TOPEKA Libertarian Party political director Matt Clark offered an undiplomatic assessment of a Kansas House bill requiring independent candidates for statewide office to qualify for the ballot by securing 25,000 signatures of registered voters abandoning the current threshold of 5,000 and reinforcing a ban on unaffiliated candidates gaining ballot access by paying a fee.

Clark, representing one of the four official political parties in Kansas, said the attempt to raise the barrier on independent candidates for governor and other statewide offices was an attack on electoral freedom. It illustrated lingering bitterness among Republicans with Democratic Gov. Laura Kellys back-to-back victories against prominent GOP gubernatorial nominees Kris Kobach and Derek Schmidt, he said.

Allow us to be blunt, Clark said. This bill exists because Republicans believe their candidate would have won the gubernatorial race in 2018 and 2022 if it werent for an independent candidate running in each of those elections.

In 2018, Kelly ran against Kobach, Libertarian Jeff Caldwell, independent Rick Kloos and independent Greg Orman, who had built name recognition by conducting a previous independent campaign for U.S. Senate. Kelly prevailed with 48% of the vote, while Kobach scored 42.9%, Orman secured 6.5%, Caldwell had 1.9% and Kloos finished with 0.6%. Overall, candidates not representing one of the states two major parties combined for 9%.

Four years later, Kelly won reelection in a four-person general election. She improved to 49.5% to narrowly surpass the 47.3% earned by Schmidt. Libertarian nominee Seth Cordell had 1.1%, while independent Dennis Pyle, a state senator with a conservative track record, drew 2%. Candidates outside the GOP and Democratic parties attracted support from 3.1% of Kansans voting in the election.

Clark said increasing the petition requirement from 5,000 signatures to 25,000 signatures was a big government solution, and an ugly one.

The House Elections Committee gathered testimony Thursday primarily from critics of House Bill 2516. They pointed to fairness issues of raising the bar on independent candidates and reminded lawmakers the state currently forbid independent candidates for statewide office from gaining access to the ballot by writing a big check to the state. Nominees from the states political parties have the option of paying the filing fee.

Rep. Les Mason, a Republican from McPherson, said he introduced a comparable bill in 2023 and was supportive of the more elegant and simple solution proposed this year by Rep. Paul Waggoner, a Hutchinson Republican.

Mason said the change in election law would compel independent candidates to secure valid signatures from 1.3% of the states registered voters rather than a mere one-fourth of 1%. The objective was to deal with candidates playing a spoiler role in recent Kansas gubernatorial races, he said.

This is not an attempt to prevent third-party candidates from running, Mason said. In reality, it is an attempt to assure that those running are serious and credible candidates.

In 2022, supporters of Kellys reelection helped collect petition signatures for Pyles independent candidacy in anticipation Pyle and Schmidt would split conservative Republican votes sufficiently to benefit Kelly. If every Pyle vote had gone to Schmidt, he would have still lost to Kelly.

Clay Barker, general counsel and deputy secretary of state for Kansas, said the House bill unnecessarily included a provision prohibiting independent candidates from filing by fee. Under current statute, he said, independent candidates for statewide office must file by petition.

Barker said the bill would establish an impractical timeline for the office of Secretary of State Scott Schwab and the states 105 county election officials to sort and verify signatures on independent candidate petitions. The secretary of state was responsible for organizing petitions by county before forwarding petitions to individual county offices where staff confirmed which signers were eligible voters and which were invalid signatures.

He noted the last independent gubernatorial candidate to contend in Kansas was John Brinkley, the populist politician and diploma-mill physician who was a leading proponent of transplanting goat testicles into humans to cure male impotence and an assortment of other ailments.

When Brinkley lost his medical license in Kansas due to confirmed quackery, he launched a write-in candidacy for governor in 1930 and seized 29.5% of the vote. He might have prevailed if the states attorney general hadnt disqualified an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 votes because Brinkleys name wasnt written on ballots by voters in a specific way. In 1932, the medical charlatan took another shot at the governorship in Kansas and pulled in 244,000 or 30.6% of the vote in a loss to Republican Alf Landon.

Brett Anderson, a Sedgwick County Republican precinct committeeman, told the House committee that he was opposed to the petition bill because the threshold was too steep and was crafted to undermine candidates not in step with the Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or No Labels parties in Kansas.

I understand people did not like the situation that presented itself when Senator Pyle ran for governor, Anderson said. Whether you like it or not, he still followed the rules and was able to be placed on the ballot. This bill is meant to disenfranchise and discourage any candidate who does not agree with the political parties who are in Topeka. Ballot access should be open to all candidates of the state regardless of party affiliation.

The rest is here:
Libertarian view of bill aimed at independent Kansas candidates: It's about GOP election losses - Kansas Reflector