Opinion ID: 4529763
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Kansas’s DPOC Requirement

Text: Both suits on appeal challenge Kansas’s DPOC requirement, and so we start by recounting Fish I’s summary of the statute and regulations that constitute Kansas’s DPOC requirement: Kansas adopted its DPOC requirement for voter registration on April 18, 2011. Secure and Fair Elections (“SAFE”) Act, ch. 56, § 8(l), 2011 Kan. Sess. Laws 795, 806, 809S11 (codified at Kan. Stat. Ann. § 25S2309(l)). The requirement took effect January 1, 2013. Id. at § 8(u), 2011 Kan. Sess. Laws at 812. The SAFE Act requires that (l) The county election officer or secretary of state’s office shall accept any completed application for registration, but an applicant shall not be registered until the applicant has provided satisfactory evidence of United States citizenship. Evidence of United States citizenship as required in this section will be satisfied by presenting one of the documents listed . . . in person at the time of filing the application for registration or by including a photocopy of one of the following documents with a mailed registration application. After a person has submitted satisfactory evidence of citizenship, the county election officer shall indicate this information in the person’s permanent voter file. Kan. Stat. Ann. § 25S2309(l). The statute then lists thirteen forms of documentation acceptable to prove U.S. citizenship, including a birth certificate or passport. See § 25S2309(l)(1)S(13). For citizens unable to present 7 DPOC, subsection (m) provides an alternate means to prove citizenship by the submission of evidence to the state election board followed by a hearing. See § 25S2309(m). The state election board is composed of “the lieutenant governor, the secretary of state and the attorney general.” § 25S2203(a). [Then-serving Kansas] Secretary [of State Kris W.] Kobach promulgated regulations for the DPOC requirement on October 2, 2015. Kan. Admin. Regs. § 7S23S15 (the “90-day regulation”). Those regulations provide that applications unaccompanied by DPOC are deemed to be “incomplete.” § 7S23S15(a). Once an application is designated as incomplete, a voter has ninety days to provide DPOC or else the application is canceled and a new voter-registration application is required to register. See § 7S23S15(b)S(c). 840 F.3d at 717.