Kansas judge to decide whether secretary of state can hide public records by altering software

TOPEKA — An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas says the state’s open records law might as well not exist if Secretary of State Scott Schwab is allowed to keep public information hidden by reconfiguring software.

Attorney Josh Pierson argued Wednesday in Shawnee County District Court for the release of provisional ballot data requested by Davis Hammet, a voter rights advocate who hoped to educate voters about why their ballots weren’t being counted.

Hammet won a lawsuit last year over whether details about provisional ballots are a public record, and District Judge Teresa Watson ordered Schwab to turn the information over. The secretary of state, whose agency oversees elections and manages a statewide voter database, instead ordered software engineers to remove the database function that allows the agency to produce the records.

The secretary then denied Hammet’s request on the grounds that the records no longer exist.

Schwab’s office told Hammet he could still get access to the data, but only if he paid $522 for the database vendor, Election Systems & Software, to retrieve it. Hammet sued again, with support from the ACLU.

Read more: https://kansasreflector.com/2021/07/14/kansas-judge-to-decide-whether-secretary-of-state-can-hide-public-records-by-altering-software/

In this instance, the secretary of state is not acting within the spirit of the law by dismantling software necessary to compile the information. The judge should rule that the secretary of state has acted in contempt with his previous ruling and fees should be charged on a daily basis until the office is compliance with the request.