This is testimony we are providing to oppose HB 2319, a bill designed to cut the period of time during which a mail-in ballot, postmarked on or before election day, can arrive at the election office to be counted. Currently, ballots have three days to arrive in the mail. This bill would cut that to less than 24 hours after election day.

This content is from our weekly update email that will be sent to Members only beginning net week. It will continue to bring insights into Kansas politics, advocacy, and the actions we can take to affect both, as a benefit for the dedicated Members who make our work possible. If you'd like to keep receiving this content, you can join Mainstream (or check on your membership status) here. Thank you for your support of the Mainstream Coalition.

SB 61 (the identical companion to HB 2068) is a bill to further expand the Tax Credit Scholarship program that sends tax money to private schools in Kansas. It will be voted on in the Kansas Senate today!

Contact your KS Senator and ask them to vote no on this bill.

This is written testimony we provided to the House K-12 Education Budget Committee opposing HB 2119, a bill that would put public money into private education accounts for schools that do not serve all Kansas students.

The Kansas Legislature has just voted on and passed HCR 5003, a resolution that places an amendment on the August, 2022 primary ballot in Kansas. If more than half of the people who vote in that election vote in favor, it will explicitly remove from the Kansas Constitution the right of all Kansans to makes their own reproductive health choices.

This is the testimony Mainstream is presenting to the Kansas House Elections Committee on January 28, 2021, opposing HB 2054, a bill that would put new limits on how Kansans can return their mail-in ballots, making voting more difficult despite our KS Secretary of State saying there was no fraud in our elections, and no major changes to election law were needed.

This is the testimony we are presenting to the House K-12 Budget Committee and the Senate Education Committee in opposing to HB 2068/SB 61 which would further expand the Tax Credit for Low Income Students Scholarship Program, a thinly veiled school voucher program.

The Kansas Legislature is rapidly pushing through bills Leadership has prioritized for the Session, in the hopes of getting them completed before COVID-19 shortens or interrupts their work. The irony of course, is that even with this pressure, Leadership also refuses to require mask wearing by legislators, or mandate infection disclosures.

This is a copy of the testimony presented by the Mainstream Coalition opposing HCR 5003/SCR 1602 to the House Federal and State Affairs Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee on January 15, 2021. These resolutions would place on a ballot an amendment to the Kansas Constitution explicitly stripping the right of reproductive choice from Kansas women, instead giving that choice to legislators.

It took just a few days for the Kansas Legislative Leadership to reintroduce their resolution to strip reproductive rights for Kansas women from the Kansas Constitution. They tried last year, and were rebuffed by the Kansas House and Jan Kessinger, a centrist Republican, who voted to keep a woman's medical affairs between her and her doctor and family.