THE BIGGEST HURDLE to voting in Kansas has just been knocked down.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh announced that a quietly developed online system for voter registration is now in operation. Any Kansan may now register to vote or change registration online in just a few minutes.
Past efforts to make voter registration easier have been patchy, at best. In Lyon County, registration sessions were sometimes offered outside the courthouse — usually at nursing homes and senior centers. But for most people, the only way to register was to go to the courthouse during working hours, empty their pockets to get through security and register at a counter in the county clerk’s office.
Now Kansans can register from home or work at any time.
How easy is the new system? A test visit Wednesday morning showed that registering to vote is now easier than ordering a book from Amazon. Answer a few questions with clicks, enter a driver’s license or ID card number and fill in name, address and choice of party affiliation and the process is over.
The registration pages can be reached through the secretary of state’s Web site, www.kssos.org/, or by going directly to www.kdor.org/voterregistration/Default.aspx.
Thornburgh and his office and the other state employees who developed the registration system (all of the work was done in-house) deserve praise for their work. Few state projects in the past decade have benefited so many Kansans to such a degree.
It’s enough to make one think that Thornburgh was being too hasty when he decided to drop out of the 2010 governor’s race. Kansas can always use officials who know how to do a job right.
Patrick S. Kelley
Editorial Page Editor