By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab spoke to the Kansas House Elections committee about his concerns regarding a bill that would let people vote in any precinct in their county on election day.
"He talked to us, it was literally the day after the Iowa Caucuses," said committee member 104th District Representative Paul Waggoner. "Things can go wrong with phone-based, internet-based applications. It's kind of on hold. The Sedgwick County people have come back for them to have an exception to go ahead and run it like they have. Schwab was not too favorable to that. Election security is a very important issue. Anytime you go to something that's based on the web, rather than just paper ballots, you always have to be totally sure that there's no chance of it getting hacked."
This is still going to be a county by county decision, even when it is fully implemented in future elections after 2020.
"It will be up to a local county to think if it's worth investing in the infrastructure, if it would be, to make this happen," Waggoner said. "We do have advance voting already. We have advance polling stations. There's a lot of different ways to vote, rather than just on election day."
All but the state's four largest counties have the County Clerk as the top elections official. In Johnson, Sedgwick, Wyandotte and Shawnee counties, there is an election commissioner, appointed by the Secretary of State.