TOPEKA — Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach said Saturday that he has ordered a Democratic-leaning political group to stop offering voters incentives tied to voting, after a voter reported that a canvasser offered her a $5 gift card three days before the general election.
In a press release issued October 31, Kobach’s office said it received evidence that day from a Kansas voter who was offered the gift card. According to the release, the canvasser who made the offer identified himself as working with Bluestem Kansas, the name the attorney general’s office used for the group in its cease-and-desist letter.
The letter demands that the group immediately stop offering voters anything of value tied to voting in the November 3 general election. It also orders the group to preserve all documents and records connected to its canvassing work, including emails, text messages, scripts, training materials, payment records, and communications with vendors and canvassers.
Kobach’s office cited Kansas law, K.S.A. 25-2409, which makes election bribery a severity level 7, nonperson felony. The release also cited federal law, 52 U.S.C. § 10307(c), which makes it a crime to pay or offer to pay anyone for voting in an election that includes federal candidates.
“As attorney general and before that as secretary of state, I have prosecuted many cases of voter fraud in Kansas, including voting by non-citizens and double voting. But I never thought that a group in Kansas would be so brazen as to go door-to-door three days before a general election offering voters monetary incentives,” Kobach said in the release. “This sounds like Chicago in the 1950s, not Kansas in the 2020s. As long as I am attorney general, those who violate our election laws will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
The Associated Press reported that the letter was addressed to the Bluestem Fund, a Democratic political action committee chaired by L.J. Leatherman, a Topeka attorney. Leatherman did not immediately return the AP’s call seeking comment. The group had not commented publicly in any reporting as of Monday morning. Zark News asked Bluestem for comment on Monday, with a deadline of 6 p.m. Eastern, and received no response by that deadline. We will update this story if the group responds.
No charges have been announced in the matter, and no court has ruled on the allegation. The attorney general’s office is asking any Kansan who was offered a gift card, cash, or any other incentive by the group or its canvassers to call 785-296-2215.
Kobach, a Republican, is himself on Tuesday’s ballot. He is running for another term as attorney general against Democrat Chris Mann, in a state where election enforcement has been a central theme of his time in office.
The action is separate from a case earlier this fall in which Kobach’s office wrote to a League of Women Voters chapter about $5 gift cards offered to students who registered to vote. That involved a different group and different conduct — registration, not voting.
