The Kansas legislature overrode Governor Laura Kelly’s veto of HB 2437, the SAVE Kansas Act. The law creates new mechanisms for removing voters from the rolls before the August 4 primary and the November general election.
The Secretary of State can now cross-reference driver’s license records against the federal SAVE database twice per year. County officials can remove voters based on obituary data. Voter registration websites are restricted to .gov domains, eliminating nonprofit registration tools that processed thousands of registrations in 2024.
How the Purge Works
The SAVE database was built to verify immigration status for federal benefits, not to determine voter eligibility. The ACLU of Kansas warned that the database contains outdated records, mismatched names, and does not account for naturalized citizens whose status changed after their last driver’s license renewal.
A Kansas resident who became a citizen in 2023 but renewed their license in 2021 could show up as a noncitizen in the cross-reference. Under HB 2437, that voter could be flagged for removal without knowing it until they show up to vote.
The obituary provision is similarly unreliable. Common names, data entry errors, and delays in death records have caused wrongful purges in other states. Georgia removed over 300,000 voters in a single purge cycle in 2019 using comparable methods.
The Timeline Problem
Kansas holds its primary on August 4. The general election is November 3. The Secretary of State plans to begin the first SAVE database cross-reference before the primary. Voters removed from the rolls may not discover the error until they arrive at their polling place.
Kansas does not have same-day voter registration. A purged voter who discovers the error on election day cannot cast a regular ballot. They can file a provisional ballot, but provisional ballots in Kansas are rejected at higher rates than the national average.
What You Can Do
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Verify your voter registration at VoteKansas.gov. Do this now, before the August 4 primary. If your registration shows inactive or missing, re-register immediately.
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Contact Secretary of State Scott Schwab. Demand public notice before any voter is removed from the rolls and a meaningful cure period for wrongly flagged registrations. Phone: (785) 296-4564.
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Contact your state legislators. The June interim committee meetings (June 8-26) are the next opportunity to demand accountability measures and error-rate reporting before the first purge cycle runs.