Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has been officially dismissed from a lawsuit filed by Wichita Statistician Elizabeth Clarkson who was requesting access to ballots in order to audit election results. Secretary Kobach, a staunch advocate for election security, was pleased but not surprised with the dismissal and believes if the courts interpret the ballot custody statutes correctly, access to the ballots as proposed by Clarkson will fail just as it did in her earlier lawsuit. Secretary Kobach pointed out from the onset of the suit that the Secretary of State’s Office did not have custody of the ballots and didn’t have the authority to direct others to allow Clarkson to inspect the ballots which would be in direct violation of Kansas law. Furthermore, Clarkson’s requests regarding access to the ballots wouldn’t be permitted without a court order. Secretary Kobach summed up the dismissal stating “the letter of the law is clear regarding the auditing procedures of election ballots; we were dismissed as a party to this lawsuit because we should have never been a party in the first place.”
