TOPEKA, Kan. — Republican legislators in Kansas on Tuesday shrunk what already was among the nation’s shortest windows for voting by mail, arguing that problems with the U.S. Postal Service’s handling of ballots required the move. Critics called it voter suppression.
The GOP-supermajority Legislature overrode Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of eliminating an extra three days after Election Day for voters to return mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day. The change will take effect in 2026.
It is not clear how much the change will affect election outcomes. About 11% of registered Democrats cast mail ballots in Kansas in November, compared with 6% for Republicans. But the Kansas secretary of state’s office said only 2,110 of the more than 1.3 million ballots counted arrived during the grace period.
“I think Kansas voters are smart,” said House Elections Committee Chair Pat Proctor, a Republican from the Kansas City area’s outskirts, who backed the bill. “If we tell them what the rules are, they will adjust their behavior to get their ballots in on time.”
Kansas election officials in Kansas must wait until 20 days before the election to send mail ballots to voters, and even with the extra three days after Election Day to return them, only Colorado and Iowa have shorter mail-voting windows, according to National Conference of State Legislatures data. Washington state says mail ballots can’t go to voters until 18 days before an election, but it sets no deadline for their return.
As of 2026, only Iowa and Kansas will allow only 20 days for mail ballots to go to voters and back to election officials. In at least half of the states, the period is at least double that time frame.
The change in Kansas comes after Republican lawmakers across the U.S. tightened voting laws, often arguing that they are fighting potential election fraud, though there has been no evidence of a significant problem. President Donald Trump on elections Tuesday demanding that all ballots arrive by Election Day.
“This is a project, an ongoing project of voter suppression and making early voting harder,” said Rabbi Moti Rieber, whose Kansas InterFaith Action is part of a coalition opposing the measure. “Eventually they will attempt to make sure you can only vote in person and on Election Day.”
During the Senate’s debate Tuesday, conservative Kansas City-area Republican Mike Thompson compared the grace period to giving a football team extra chances to score after the game clock runs out.
Democratic Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau responded, “I don’t want to compare voting to a football game,” adding, “People died for the right to vote.”
The votes to override Kelly’s veto were in the Senate and in the House, where supporters had exactly the two-thirds majority needed.
Before 2017, Kansas was like most states in setting an Election Day deadline for returning mail ballots. But three years before the COVID-19 pandemic, lawmakers created a three-day grace period over concerns that the Postal Service’s mail delivery had slowed. Other states loosened election laws because of the pandemic, though 32 still require mail ballots to arrive by Election Day.
The U.S. Postal Service said in postelection that it took a day on average for one of the 99 million-plus November ballots it handled to arrive, and nearly 98% arrived within three days. Yet state and local officials reported instances of ballots or without postmarks.
“In no, way, shape or form has the Post Office improved,” said state Rep. Alexis Simmons, a Topeka Democrat.
Yet supporters of the bill argued that issues with the Postal Service justified eliminating the grace period. They pointed to ballots arriving without postmarks during the three extra days — and noted that a postmark won’t be required when all ballots must arrive on Election Day.
The secretary of state’s office said Tuesday that roughly 100 ballots from the November election arrived after Election Day without a postmark.
Some Republicans appeared to be responding to doubts about elections sowed by promoters of after the 2020 election. Republican Sen. Bill Clifford, from Western Kansas, said he once supported the three-day grace period but changed his mind because constituents still think it enables voter fraud.
“Frankly, I’m sick of hearing that,” he said.
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