Kansas House endorses bill allowing new information source for culling voter-registration lists

TOPEKA — The Kansas House granted first-round approval Tuesday to a bill requiring county election officers to rely on online obituaries as well as other sources when determining whether an individual should be deleted from voter registration records.

Existing Kansas law directed officials in the state’s 105 counties to reference obituary notices printed by a local newspaper, the state’s weekly list of death certificates and the Social Security Administration’s annual death index when scrubbing registration lists. Consideration of the bill didn’t inspire rigorous debate among representatives on the House floor, and was advanced to final action on a voice vote.

“Really all we’re doing is modernizing the statute to allow county elections officers to remove somebody from the voter roll if they appear in an online obituary,” said Rep. Brian Bergkamp, R-Wichita.

The bill was introduced on behalf of Secretary of State Scott Schwab, whose office said the change would recognize fewer obituaries were published in newspapers and were increasingly likely to be posted online by funeral homes. Schwab is among Republicans considering a run for governor in 2026.

“Only county election officers have the authority to remove voters from county rolls,” said Clay Barker, general counsel and deputy secretary of state for Kansas. “They must exercise prudence to ensure a complete and accurate match before removing any individual from the voter rolls.”

Rashane Hamby, director of policy and research with the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, said reliance on online obituary notices was an unreliable method of confirming who belonged on voter rolls. There are questions about whether an obit would lead to confusion when people had the same name, she said.

“Obituary notices do not contain key information about a voter, like their Social Security number,” Hamby said. “The current system for removing deceased people from the rolls is sufficient.”

House Bill 2016 elicited support from the Kansas County Clerks and Election Officials Association as well as Patricia DeDamos of Kansas.

“There is no good reason to keep dead persons on the voter roll, unless we are planning a zombie apocalypse,” DeDamos said. “If the report of a death is in error, the person could reregister. Too easy to vote leaves the door open to cheaters.”

The bill was among three dozen the House GOP leadership included on Tuesday’s debate calendar.

Child support for fetus

Rep. Susan Humphries, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, fended off Democratic critics of House Bill 2062 that would place in statute that a pregnant woman could receive court-ordered child support on behalf of a fetus from the moment of conception.

Kansas judges possessed authority to order payments for health and pregnancy-related expenditures, but Humphries said the judicial branch was inconsistent when handling requests for financial support.

Rep. Dan Osman, a Democrat from Overland Park, proposed an amendment that would have retained portions of the bill clarifying legitimacy of child-support orders related on expenses prior to birth of a child and would have deleted text that went beyond settling the judicial question. His amendment was rejected by the House Republican-majority by more than 50 votes.

“It guts almost all of the bill,” Humphries said. “It really takes away from the heart of the bill.”

She also said the legislation would be helpful to pregnant women who were able to “choose life” for a fetus instead of an abortion.

During House floor debate, Rep. John Carmichael, D-Wichita, said there was no reason to add a new layer to statute that echoed the opportunity for a woman to seek child support while pregnant. He said language in the bill was designed to bolster arguments for fetal personhood status and against abortion rights affirmed by the Kansas Supreme Court and subsequently by Kansas voters in 2022.

“This is a stealth bill,” Carmichael said. “This is an attempt to sneak something through in contravention of the right of bodily autonomy, which citizens of this state overwhelmingly approved.”

On the contrary, GOP Rep. Bob Lewis of Garden City argued Osman’s amendment was neither “innocent or benign.”

Energy storage tax

Rep. Shannon Francis, the Liberal Republican, convinced colleagues in the House to provide preliminary approval of House Bill 2083 so developers of massive battery storage facilities would qualify for a 10-year property tax abatement. Enactment of the legislation would clarify these utility-grade storage complexes wouldn’t be eligible for a 100% permanent exemption from property taxes under a law related to commercial machinery and equipment.

“These are big boxes that are going to sit on concrete pads next to power-generation sources,” Francis said. “This if a very new technology. The industry wants it (the bill) so they know what the rules are. If we don’t define these rules, the courts will define it for us.”

Under the bill, a property tax abatement would go to electrochemical, mechanical, electrostatic or gravitational devices that charged or collected energy from the electrical grid or a generation facility, stored or used that energy or discharged stored energy at a later time to provide electricity to consumers.

The abatement would begin in tax year 2026, but wouldn’t apply to a storage facility receiving county approval prior to Jan. 1, 2026. The Kansas Department of Revenue reported none of the energy storage systems were in operation in Kansas.

Dave Trabert, a lobbyist and chief executive officer of Kansas Policy Institute, said Kansas generated about 50% more electricity than it consumed and the surplus power was sent to other states over transmission lines. Exempting new energy storage systems from property tax would mean that Kansas consumers had to subsidize the export of electricity, he said.

“Instead of collecting property tax on new energy storage facilities, the steadily rising costs of local government are further shifted to everyone else,” Trabert said.

Polly Shaw, a representative of the Houston-based battery storage facility developer Plus Power, said the storage facilities could range from 10 acres to 30 acres. Storage systems built by Plus Power could require investments of $200 million to $300 million each, Shaw said. The company has proposed facilities in Labette and Saline counties.

“Kansas is well-placed to become a regional center for battery storage systems from manufacturing, to projects like ours to a skilled workforce in America’s newest economic engine.”