A federal judge was also assigned to the case Thursday involving a lawsuit filed by two Douglas County voters over the state’s voter roll case, records show.
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“The law does not allow for a purging of voters like what Secretary Kobach is plotting to accomplish”, Davis said in a news release.
Kobach’s office had yet to review it.
Election officials are expected to begin removing the names of more than 31,000 prospective voters from their records Friday in line with Kansas’ tough voter identification law, which requires applicants to prove their citizenship before casting a ballot.
Kobach’s office issued a statement Thursday morning about the lawsuit.
“We have to send a message that look, we encourage everybody to vote, but by all means follow the rules and now that we have the authority to go after those who break our rules and effectively disenfranchise their fellow citizens by canceling out their votes, we’re going to do something about it”, Kobach said.
Since the requirement took effect, the number of people with incomplete registrations has ballooned, reaching almost 36,700 earlier this week, with about 32,000 of them failing to comply with the proof-of-citizenship rule.
More than half of the incomplete registration forms were from applicants listing no political affiliation.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Alder Cromwell and Cody Keener.
That will allow county election officials to discontinue their efforts to contact the people who started but didn’t complete the process of registering to vote. The lawsuit says Cromwell first sought to register in March and Keener, in December 2014.
The only other states with proof-of-citizenship laws are Arizona, Alabama and Georgia, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, though the last two haven’t fully put them into effect.
Joining Davis in representing them is Will Lawrence, formerly a staffer for Kansas Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat. Voters must complete the registration process in order to be added to the voting rolls, he said.
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Kobach said those charges will be filled by the end of October.
