The Center for Election Confidence (CEC) has filed an amicus brief in United Kansas v. Schwab, urging the Kansas Court of Appeals to affirm the 28th Judicial District (Saline County) district court and uphold the state’s longstanding anti-fusion voting law, K.S.A. § 25-213. CEC argues that fusion voting, which permits a candidate for an office to appear on the ballot as the nominee of multiple parties, enhances the risk of voter confusion and errors in the ballot creation and tabulation processes. United Kansas is the latest in a string of efforts by the Left to attack long-standing state ballot access laws.
CEC emphasizes that the Kansas Constitution’s free speech and association protections are coextensive with the U.S. Constitution, and the U.S. Supreme Court has already upheld a nearly identical ban in Timmons v. Twin Cities Area New Party (1997). As the brief explains, “Appellants cannot escape Timmons … which indisputably decides this lawsuit in the State’s favor.”
The brief rejects claims that minor parties have a right to “piggyback” on major party candidates and notes that Kansas already provides relatively easy ballot access for minor parties. CEC warns that Appellants’ strategy would “permit some parties to use the state ballot to thrust their political endorsements upon other parties and candidates, even against their consent.” Quoting Timmons, the brief stressed that “ballots serve primarily to elect candidates, not as forums for political expression.”
CEC also argues that recognizing a constitutional right to fusion voting would create a conflict between minor parties’ asserted right to associate with a candidate and major parties’ right to refuse that association. As the brief states, “freedom of association … plainly presupposes a freedom not to associate.” In such disputes, CEC asks how a court might decide “whose right wins? And is the state helpless to regulate the use of its ballot [not] to interfere with consensual party associations?”
These are “nonjusticiable political questions” that belong to the Kansas Legislature, not the courts.
The brief further notes that nearly every state has upheld similar anti-fusion laws for over a century, citing decisions from jurisdictions including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Kentucky. It concludes that Kansas’ law is firmly supported by both history and precedent: “Fusion voting bans today exist in almost every state across the country and have existed in many states like Kansas for over a hundred years.”
CEC urges the Court to affirm, declaring that “Appellants’ remedy is not in the courts. They must do the hard work of convincing Kansans to adopt fusion voting, something few voters anywhere in our nation’s history have endorsed. Courts are not a shortcut to achieving political goals.”
The Center for Election Confidence thanks Edward D. Greim, Matthew Mueller, and Michael Scott of Graves Garrett Greim LLC for their representation in this matter.