Federal judge rejects attempt to ban electronic voting machines in KS ahead of 2022 election

A federal judge issued an order Wednesday rejecting efforts from election deniers to bar electronic voting machines and ballot drop boxes in the midterm elections and signaled that the overarching lawsuit, which requests an unprecedented re-vote of the 2020 election, will fail.

Six Kansas residents filed a conspiracy-fueled lawsuit in federal court in Kansas last month seeking to invalidate the 2020 election and demand a full hand recount of Kansas’ August primary. Last week, after an executive of a company that manages election worker software in Johnson County was accused of stealing private information in Los Angeles, the plaintiffs asked for an emergency order barring the use of all electronic voting machines and drop boxes in Johnson County.

Judge Daniel Crabtree, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, rejected the request stating that the plaintiffs didn’t reach the requirements necessary for such an order to succeed - that the overall case is likely to succeed, that plaintiffs will be permanently harmed without the order, that the question of fairness is in their favor, and that the order will serve the public interest.

Crabtree called the plaintiffs’ “long on suspicion, contingency, and hypothesis, but short on facts and identifiable harm.”

There were six plaintiffs including Thad Snider, who has pushed unfounded claims of election fraud in Johnson County, and Missy Leavitt, who spearheaded the effort to recount the landslide defeat of an anti-abortion amendment to the state constitution in August. They represented themselves and did not hire an attorney.

They argued that because LA prosecutors had found the company, Konnech, was storing information on China servers that the Chinese government could have infiltrated Kansas’ elections.

“We cannot allow an election to take place knowing full well the Chinese Communist Party has had access to our voting system,” Snider said in a court hearing last week.

There is no evidence of breaches in Kansas or that the Chinese Communist Party accessed any election information in the U.S.

Bradley Schlozman, an attorney representing the state argued in court that the plaintiffs lacked standing, and that ditching election machines this close to elections day would cause “mass confusion and likely significant disenfranchisement.”

Snider did not respond to The Star’s request for comment.

In a statement Whitney Tempel, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State’s office, said the ruling affirmed that Kansas’ elections are secure.

“In denying plaintiff’s demand to ban election equipment in the 2022 general election, the court reaffirmed that there is no evidence to support allegations that there were problems with the 2020 and 2022 elections in Kansas,” Tempel said.