The Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), which administers the state‘s Medicaid program as well as other public health initiatives, sent nearly three-quarters-of-a-million unsolicited voter registration packets to program recipients from 2022 to 2025, State Inspector General Steven Anderson, with the office of Attorney General Kris Kobach, told a recent hearing before the House Select Committee on Government Oversight.
A 1993 federal law, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), requires all state agencies providing public assistance, such as food stamps, cash assistance, and Medicaid, to mail voter registration forms to applicants, if requested, and at the time of re-certification, renewal, and at the time of an address change. However, in his report, Anderson revealed that the NVRA does not require a packet to be sent to applicants or recipients who leave the “Yes/No” question blank about whether they want to register to vote. Anderson reported that the more than 743,000 unsolicited packets sent cost Kansas taxpayers nearly $450,000. The IG Report indicated one Medicaid beneficiary received nine voter registration packets over a 29-month period, and the same person received five additional packets from the Department for Children and Families (DCF), which also provided services to that individual, totaling 14 packets received from state agencies within 2-and-a-half years.
The IG Report found nothing in Kansas law, federal law, or the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that agencies tasked to offer voter registration to public assistance clients should act beyond what is required by the NVRA, but that KDHE is doing just that:
In 2020, KDHE issued Policy Directive 2020-09-01, which states, “If a consumer checks yes or fails to indicate that they want to register to vote, KanCare will now assume the answer is ‘Yes’ and provide the voter registration form to the consumer in person or have the form mailed.”
IG recommendations on mailing voter registration packets
Anderson says his recommendation is for KDHE to follow the NVRA guidelines on sending voter registration packets:
“We want them to reverse that policy directive, 2020-09-01, that tells their employees to treat a blank (response) as a ‘Yes,’ and then update the KEES (Kansas Eligibility Enforcement System, the automated system used to determine eligibility for public assistance) to protect applicants and clients from receiving unsolicited voted registration packets. And we’d also like for KDHE to take steps to ensure that non-citizens do not receive voter registration packets.”
House Elections Committee Chairman Pat Proctor echoed that concern in his testimony, about the effect multiple unsolicited voter registrations could have on election integrity:
“I think we’ve identified that the NVRA has a lot of problems. I would just note as a sidebar that the NVRA is also why we can’t ask for documentary proof of citizenship before we register people to vote, because a federal court said we can’t do that. But I was pretty shocked when I found out that it’s not just a motor voter law. It’s also a Medicaid voter law, and a SNAP (food stamps) voter law, and a TANF (cash assistance) voter law. And I haven’t been in this building long enough that I don’t think a million dollars is a big deal. It is a big deal that we’re spending a million dollars, give or take, to send out these unsolicited voter registration forms.”
