And we’re really excited
that the state elections director, Bryan Caskey,
has been able to join us here today. When we think about the funding of elections, you know, there there are obviously we've heard
all about all the different players in conducting the election, but it's not just about voting equipment. It's about voter registration. It's about voter education. Voter outreach. And some of those things are in statute
in some states, and some things are not. Some of them are cultural. And wh
ether or not a place
sends out a sample ballot or whether or not there is a voter guide
or a publicity pamphlet. So there are all of these complexities,
as we've seen this morning, around what are the costs,
Where the where does the money come from? So this afternoon we're going to pivot
a little bit and we're first going to talk about what what's it like here in Kansas
from the state's perspective? What sort of activities do they have? Where is the funding come from? You know what exactly the m
odel is here
in Kansas from the state. And then we're going to hear
from local election officials on their perspective of the Kansas model. And then we're going to bring it all home with some conversations around
where do we go from here? So with that, thank you, Bryan. And if you want to go ahead and start
your opening remarks, I would be lovely. I would love to. My name is Bryan Koski and the director
of elections for the state of Kansas. As of last week, I have been a
director for over nine y
ears. Thankfully, I still have my hair. And look, my boss was here last night. I've been in the election industry since January of 1998, so I have seen an election or two and I would like to say
that I'm very excited to be here. I love talking about elections. It's what I do
all day, every day, literally. So it's it's nice to talk to people
who know stuff and are not antagonistic about what I have to say. So this is exciting. So I'm very thankful to the Dole Institute
for having us here. I've se
en. I know most of the faces in the crowd. And for those of you,
I don't please say hi afterwards, but I'm here to give a little bit
about the states, the state perspective. But it will be quick because Kansas, like many states,
we are a bottom up state. And the state does not fund elections
except for one noticeable 2024 only exception. So my colleagues from the counties that speak after me
will correct me on everything I say wrong. But in Kansas counties
pay for the election. They run the elec
tion, they pay for it. And basically the state just provides
guidance. There is no state funding of elections,
with one exception, which is the presidential preference
primary that Kansas is having. This year is the first primary
we've had since 1992. Unfortunately, I was here then, but that is the last time
that the state has provided any funding. I'm in the state is reimbursing
the counties for the funding this year. That is the only state
funds that go to elections. What the state does provid
e is they normally provide
the matching funds for half dollars. And when Don Palmer said he was thinking
about a 5050 split, I almost vomited. We'll talk later on. But generally speaking,
that is the only thing that the state provides
from a monetary perspective. We are one of the states
that has half the money in the bank. We still have money in the bank
from the original 20. Gosh,
I've been here dealing 24 appropriation. We still have a little bit of money
left from that and that's on purpose.
As you all know, HAVA requirements are permanent,
funding is not. And so from the very beginning,
I've been involved in making sure that we always have some money in the bank
to address things that we cannot oversee. And no offense to the federal government. The federal government
is not generally trustworthy when it comes to funding what they said that it would in half as a prime example of that,
even though we receive federal funds at the beginning of HAVA, my recollection
is, is that it was
one third shortchanged based on what was originally authorized
but never appropriated. HAVA was never fully appropriated
from the beginning, and we never trusted that they would do so
after that. So we still have money in the bank? Not very much, but we do. And the reason for that
is that we are responsible for the statewide voter
registration system. We have to pay for that. We have to administer that. Now. We work with our counties, and
the counties pay a large portion of that. But that system
has an end of life. And we are coming up on, gosh, version three, version
four of that system. And as you all know,
that takes millions of dollars to procure. We are not likely to get a state
general fund appropriation to do that. So that's one reason why we still have money in the bank, is
we have to get that money from somewhere. And I sure hope that we don't have to beg
the counties to do that. So we have we have less security money in the bank,
mostly because we've done a better job in the
last 2 to 3 years
of providing grants to the counties. We've used a lot of that. Almost all that money has been spent
either on behalf of the counties through our office
or grants to the counties. So we have done a better job of that,
I would say, in the last 2 to 3 years. And that's primarily where our grants go to the counties. They the we just this year we're doing
a physical security grant program. It was not mandatory,
but 84 of our 105 counties did participate in that, which we thought
was
a pretty good turnout. So but essentially that's that's
where we are from a state perspective. Great. Well, I had a couple of questions
I wanted to follow up on. So you mentioned the statewide voter
registration database and you mentioned that the state also does the 5% match,
which I also almost threw up when Don said 50%. I thought that's not that's
going to go over like a little balloon. No one no one on either
side of the aisle is going to like that. That's right. So it's going to make that
5%. It's going to make that 5% sound
really good. It is. I want to make sure you heard
that complaint first. Yes. So. Well, I'm glad it came from
you and not for me. So? So I get all of that. Some of the questions I do have, though. So you you are the state elections
director. There is the secretary's office. And I think that last night,
Secretary Schwab mentioned how your office is funded. And so when we think
about the funding of elections, I wanted to expand
how we're thinking about what the
functionalities are
that are required to conduct the election. So when we think about secretaries of
states offices, state boards of elections, and some of these other places, you know,
what are the funds? Where where are those funds
coming for through and for for the statewide voter registration
system, for some of the security programs? And I think I heard, if
I mentioned correct, if I heard correctly, some of that is coming from
have a dollars and other things in appropriations of that 5% ma
tch. But what are some of the other streams
or how how is your office funded? So I believe that we have a very unique
funding mechanism relative to most other states. We are not state general fund appropriated
like a lot of secretary of states are. We are a fee funded agency only dating back to Ron Thornburg days. I probably don't have the year
exactly correct, but in the early 2000s, the secretary of state's office
went to a fee fund model where we charge fees on all the filings
that come into
our office. Thankfully, we have a thriving business
services division. We get hundreds of thousands of business filings every year
and we have a fee on that. The elections division,
the only fees that we charge, are a very minuscule
feed of people when they file for office. And for people who purchase data from us. So we raise a few thousand dollars a year. But the vast majority of our funding comes
from business customers. So we are a self-funded agency
with no general fund to speak of. And so
the corporate customers of Kansas
are funding the operations of the state election office, which I believe is
is very unique across the country. That's a really interesting point
to raise, and I think it'll be interesting to look at other offices
that do have business filings because I believe most secretary of states
have some sort of filing. So the question will be, you know, maybe they're not charging
enough or maybe they're not charging
anyone for some of these things. So some of these servi
ces. So having, you know, when we talk about
funding and identifying sources of funding
that are already being done. So it's one of the things we've already heard is in elections
we often like to talk about things that have been tried in different places
and learning from those trials, learning
what worked, what didn't work, learning whether or not it might work back home. And so I think that's kind
of what this effort is thinking about, is let's try and identify
where it's already been tried. W
e're not coming up with anything
new and revolutionary here. It's just more coming up with
how is this currently working in some areas and are there other places
that we can maybe gather information from? So this is that
I think that's that's really, really interesting to to know
because I haven't heard of that being the sole funding mechanism
for other states that say there there might be some out there, but I'm not aware of any
that has that exact funding model. Most states
get most of their a
ppropriations through the state budget process. We are an exception to that. I'm there might be one
or two other states, but I think we're pretty unique
when it comes to that. And it's a sorry to like keep diving down
into the weeds here, but you know me. So now that's exactly where
I'm going to follow for just briefly. And you mentioned business services. Is that tied or not? Do you do motor vehicles,
do you tied any of that kind of filing revenue or so in Kansas? Now, the division of our vehic
les
is underneath the governor's office, not the secretary of state. So that's not a funding mechanism
that we can have. We I mean, we have a very strong
relationship with our DMV. We do lots of voter registration
activity back and forth, but they do not. I wish they worked for me, quite frankly,
most days, but they do not. So we primarily do business filings
across the board, corporations elses and then UCC, you know,
from commercial code filings. Those are our primary sources of filings. That'
s fascinating
because there are secretaries that oversee department of Motor Vehicles. And I think I mentioned this morning when I was in Maricopa County,
the county recorder in Arizona, you have a technology fund and a portion
I think it's $1 per filing or a percentage of 10% or whatever
it is, has to go into a technology fund. So I think that there are some models
of where fee based filing can be informative
and can help to fund certain activities when it comes to candidate filing. Do you do y
ou charge much for that? You said
it was a couple of thousand dollars, so it's $20 per candidate per filing. So maybe you're not charging enough. Just saying maybe, maybe. I probably wouldn't disagree with that. But quite frankly, for legislators,
they're only they're only paying $70. So I'm not sure politically
that I can go much more than 20. Okay. But yeah, I mean, yes, that's
we always look at that. But quite frankly, we only get,
you know, 300 candidates every two years. It's not that there
's not much more
you can squeeze out. It's not going to be your sugar daddy.
It is not. Okay. Understood. And the data, it sounds like that's also an area
where some places don't charge for data. They might put it up. Some places it costs more to process getting the data out for people than it is
for the funds that they're getting. So right sizing those kind of services
is certainly, certainly interesting. Yeah. You mentioned also security
and the cost of security and having security funds and g
rants
that have been made. We heard a little bit about that
last night. I'd love to hear more from you
because as you mentioned, you started in 98. I started in the primary
in 98 as a temporary worker, and that was my downfall. I was hired at the phone company,
but they were on strike. And so I was like, well, I can't just
sit around while they're on strike. I'll I'll go work a temporary job. And I was marking Test X for the logic and accuracy tests
in 1998 and I was hooked. So a lot has changed
in that time. And so when we think about security
in the funding that we're receiving now, because now there is a tension about it
and we heard earlier, you know, today around how do we shore up our our systems against foreign nation states. And a lot of that kind of work
is falling on the shoulders of the state. And so when we talk about that funding, has it been contemplated
that the state will appropriate funds to help in that matter? Or are they just saying, you know,
try and get money from
from Washington? That's a great question. And I would say from from my chair,
since the designation of the elections as critical infrastructure,
I think state legislative leaders look to this now
as more of a federal function and not yours,
because we are critical infrastructure and it's the federal government's job
to make sure that we are secure. So that's my sense. I have not heard a legislator
legislative leader tell me that directly, but that's certainly my sense
is that since that designa
tion, it is the federal government job
to make sure that we secure our elections. Now, states run elections, and they are
very adamant that states run elections. But in this, especially with security, with
the critical infrastructure designation, I do believe that they expect
the federal government to to fund a lot of that activity. So in some cases, I was
I was thinking about this with our conversation with the E.C. commissioners. A lot of the conversation around funding and needs come come ful
l circle when we talk about
how we frame these conversations, how we frame what the need is,
how we tell the story of elections. And so when it comes to kind of the underfunding of some of the functions, framing it in a security context in this moment makes an abundance of sense because that's more palatable,
palatable for people. But we have a very fine line. We have to walk right? Because if you talk too much
about the vulnerabilities in a security sense, then we cross over into
we're going to
undermine trust, We're going to potentially undermine
confidence. We're going to give those who want to question
the legitimacy of the election fodder. So this is something I think
all election officials are grappling with. If you have the answer,
will you please share? I do not. If I had
the answer, I would have a different job. It's a great question. And and I know that I today I still struggle
with where we are on on that. I am a big proponent of trying
to be as factual as possible while pro
viding as much coverage
to local election officials and to the state as possible
when it comes to security. I never talk about specific programs, specific initiatives other than, you know, generally speaking,
when I'm required to say in part because I don't want
to give any of our adversaries a inch. I do not want to give an inch.
Is that the right approach? Honestly, I don't know. Like at the same time,
I work for the government and we are designed to be transparent
on all things. And so balanc
ing
transparency with security. There's a lot of tension there. But my my job is to make sure
that we have an election that everyone can count on is accurate,
is secure, and the people can trust. And so I'm always going to air on behalf
of the structure and the process. You are 100% right. So, you know, up until the last few years, it was balancing security and access with transparency overall. And we have just added in a third
balance to the scale. And trying to keep those all level
an equal is
is really a challenge. I think it is. And I'm sensitive that like
I want people to be able to ask questions and we want to be transparent
and we want to assure the public, especially the voting public, that we are doing everything we can
to secure the election. There are lots of things that we do. The county election
officers don't even know all of them. They know most of them. Like,
you know, we've given grants to them. We there's a couple of programs
that we do on their behalf, but not even t
hey know
everything that we're doing because, as you know, security change
every time that we talk about it, we're already behind
because things are already changing. And so I'm sensitive to it. I do not yet
have have all of the right answers. Darn it. Okay. Well,
there are a dozens and dozens of questions that I want to talk about, but I'm trying
to keep us focused on the kind of funding which for me,
I'm always like off on tangents. So I want to pull it back around
to the funding model. And wh
en you talk about the pass through to the counties and the pass thrus
and what the money's being spent on and transparency,
I think how we receive funds, what those moneys are spent on, that is a place
where we can be really transparent. And I feel like that is an area where shedding some light on what the what
people are spending the money on and and where it came from
and how much of it is county driven. You know, from Charles's slide
showing that everybody kind of believes it's coming from th
e state
and from the federal government. I think that's an area
where we can have efforts like this that will really be helpful
in having the American voter understand how their elections are being paid for and what their tax dollars
are going towards. And so I get in this
this conflict with myself, and we talk about the potholes
because that is a visceral thing. If you're someone who drives on the road
and you hit a pothole, it makes you angry. If that pothole is on your way to work every morni
ng, it makes you angry
every day, probably twice a day. If if it's big enough
that goes across both lanes. And so when it comes to elections, what are election potholes? It's having a long line. It's not being able to get,
you know, call in and get your answer, your question answered. It's finding out that your ballot was rejected
or that your registration is incorrect or there are certain things that we can do
to improve the service to the voter. And I feel like there is
those are some of the t
hings that we need to be thinking about when we frame up
this conversation about funding is bring it home to roost, just like that
pothole conversation to explain, you know, it's really helpful. So I was in the Western part
of the country, Arizona. We got sample ballots, we get publicity, got publicity pamphlets
that explained all the propositions. We got candidate brochures,
we got all this information. So I felt really informed as a voter
on judicial retention. We had this judicial productivit
y review. I mean, it was it was awesome. I live in the East now. I get nothing. It kills me because I,
I like to believe I'm an educated voter. I go out, I seek out trying to find
information about candidates. And it's really difficult. So I think some of the way
that we can think about funding is bringing some of those
those tangibles to the voters themselves. So having a piece of equipment
that's calibrated properly, that is it's never going to be
as intuitive as your phone. And I hesitate to
bring pulled mine up
because mine is super old. So it's more like voting equipment,
but even it is advanced compared to voting systems. Well, so Kansas
is kind of all over the place on that. I want to talk about voting machines
since you brought it up and going back, you know, 15 years ago,
20 years ago now to HAVA. So originally right after HAVA,
the first round of voting equipment, the state purchased that with HAVA funds,
we had a formula. Every single county got money. There was a state matc
h
required of every county, but we exhausted two thirds
of all of our HAVA daughter dollars on voting machine contracts
right off the bat. And the state had those contracts. So we negotiated one price for a county maintenance, all of that. But that was only for round one. Round two,
we knew that we didn't have enough money, so we let our contract lapse. And so then the counties moved
into the Wild West, where every county was left to fend for themselves,
both contractual wise and wise. And so to
day in Kansas, counties are the only entity responsible
for everything voting machine related. All we do is certify and quite frankly, we rely on the AEC
for the certification process. So where we used to be heavily involved
15 years ago, we are not involved at all now and I'm not sure
most people understand that. And if you're a county,
I can understand why there would be some calling for words
to say for someone in my position. That's the next panel. I know you're going to stay for that,
right
, Bryan? I may leave for that one. And so I acknowledge
that when it comes to long lines and where you go vote, that's strictly
a county decision. The state has zero involvement. We have counties
that only have one polling place. We have counties that have polling places not on every corner. But you know what? More than some people would advise. But that's a county decision. And we want it to be a kind decision
because they're closest to the voter. But it is not consistent statewide. There is no
standard on
the number of voters per polling place. And so, again, the state
kind of we wash our hands out of that. But when it comes to resources
for the voters, like where do I go vote? Where's my polling place?
Do we have a sample ballot? The state does provide a resource
through our voter registration system that everyone can go to. We have one website that everyone can go regardless of county, to get your,
you know, your polling place, your sample ballot,
track your advance ballot by mail.
So we offer that,
but it's not a requirement. We offer that to every county. Most counties do that. But it's not a it's not a mandate. We don't have a law that does that. And so should we mandate that at some point, that's an open discussion
I'm happy to talk to everyone about. But, you
know, that's kind of where we are. And to emphasize the fact that state that counties really do run elections,
we are not sending out any mailers. The state of Kansas does not do
what Florida and other Californi
a other states do. There's no voter guide. There's no pamphlet coming from the state. You you are left to your own devices. All that we have is a list of
every candidate and have a contact them. Some candidates are better than others
of being reachable, but I'm sympathetic to the voting public
because there's not a resource, there is not a resource, and
that is the policy of the state of Kansas. Like, that's that's not going to change. And and so we do we provide every piece
of contact informati
on that we get. But I'm sympathetic to that. Yeah. And it's one of those situations
where if I didn't know any better or didn't know any differently,
not make a judgment call. And if I didn't know any differently, that would just be
what I was accustomed to. But once you
and I'm sure election officials, you've all gotten the call from somebody
that moved from another state, another jurisdiction,
and they said, where's this? Or how do I get that? Because that's how I did it,
Where I came from, th
at that can be challenging to bridge. So we have a few minutes
and I have a question that was asked last night of the secretary
that I would love to ask you as well, and that is
if you could wave your magic wand around election
funding or the model of election funding or the amount of funding or whatever,
however you want to interpret the question with
this is the magic wand. After all it can do. They can do whatever you want. What would that do and be and why? Thank
you for putting me on the sp
ot on that. I gave him a heads up of like
two and a half minutes before we started, which didn't allow me to ask my boss
what he said. So another reminder, I serve at the pleasure of the Secretary of State, so
hopefully I'm still employed after this. But but honestly, what I would ask is, well, two things. One, I don't think there's a magic bullet.
I don't think there's one answer. I strongly believe the states
run elections and within us it's
the kings that run elections. And I believe that mod
el is good
because the cats are the closest to the voters,
like what works in Wallace County. And there's 700 registered voters will not work in Johnson County
and there are 500,000 registered voters. So I believe firmly that
the county election officers are closest to the people. What I would wish
is that everyone within those councils responsible for appropriating
money would listen to the experts. I'm not I'm not taking shots
at any elected official. But I do believe that
during the budget pr
ocess, we have very knowledgeable,
very hardworking county election officers, and that's who county commissioners
and county administrators and county budget
directors should be listening to you. They know
the most in elections are complicated. They are very complicated, especially now. And although we do a great job
of making it easy, it's like a duck. As I'm
come up here by my feet are going nuts. That's my wish is that the people that are responsible
need to talk to the people that know what'
s going on and listen to them,
because everyone has needs. Everyone has like, you know, I think in a lot of counties
there is no room for initiative there. We're worried about how do I get through
24, I've got to get through 24. And then, there's a week at the end of the year
where I have to think about 25. There's not any time to think about 2628
window replacement equipment. When can I move systems like all that
takes planning, There is precious little A time and B money for
for things like th
at. So that's my wish. You're absolutely right. Looking in that rearview mirror, which has been done a lot,
particularly in the last couple of years, it really doesn't allow for that forward
planning, forward looking and forecasting. Absolutely. So great answer and I think you're fine. I think it'll still be. I think so. I hope that was not made. That was not my intention. So I want to open it up to the room there and any questions, comments. I see a lot of smiles out there, like I've got someth
ing I might say,
but I don't think I'm going to. You can always ask me in the hall,
I'm not going anywhere. But Don's question is for Bryan. Don Plummer. Easy, Bryan. Talk to me a little bit about discussions
with the legislators about appropriating money. You know, one reason I talk about a 5050
split as a possible is because it's difficult at the federal level
to convince folks to appropriate money for elections is just the bottom line and then is as equally or difficult
at the state level. So
it's like trying to find a
solution because I just don't I'm just not sure state legislators
will come around and appropriate what's necessary
to assist local localities. Great question, Commissioner Palmer,
and one for which I do not have an answer. I In the current political environment, I do not have an argument
to convince legislators that funding elections
is not strictly a county problem. Like counties run elections, The state
has no involvement relatively speaking, they do generally will
find the 5% match dollars
they most years. They have done that
not every year or a couple of years. We've had to do it
outside of the legislative process. But they recognize the value of free money when they see it. But over the years, you know, there have been years where budgets
were much tighter than they are now. And it was
you couldn't even have the conversation because their budgets across
the board were tight. Now, where budgets are not as tight, you still can't have the conversation
bec
ause the legislature thinks that it's not their responsibility. It's it's either our office for what we do or counties,
because that's who runs elections. I don't I don't have an
I don't have a hook for them to to get off of where they are
currently 1 to 1 addition to that. And when you were speaking earlier
as well, is that I think the profession, election
officials at all levels, you know, for a period of time
there was a conversation around, I'm not going to go testify,
I'm not going to go to
the the board to do anything, ask for any policy change,
any funding or any of these additional things, because I don't want it to be seen
that I had my finger on the scale. I'm going to take
whatever comes down from on high, and that's the election
I'm going to conduct. I'm not going to
I'm not going to weigh in. And I think what we've seen
is that into that void, there will be all sorts of experts that believe because they've read some things, seen
something, talked to someone who has voted o
nce maybe, or has some self-proclaimed expertise that those individuals are not restraining themselves. I think it's a good way
of putting it in a number of ways. They are going to those meetings,
they are being vocal and they are being numerous. And so I think in to that, we need to lean
into making sure that that we are in fact, staking that expertise as well as what the need is. And I talk to legislators
quite frequently, quite frequently at the National Conference
of State Legislators and Ce
cil and I, I plead with them
to come to your offices, talk to election officials at all levels, find out really what needs to be done to either
tweak that statute so that it's not as onerous
or that it's more modern or that it's more efficient or more effective,
as well as to seeing. And I recall when I was in Arizona,
we would have school bond elections and they hated it. The people were voting by mail
because they wanted them in the schools,
because schools were polling places. Now, like, we w
ant people to come in. We want them to see the paint
peeling literally. But voters like to vote by mail. And so we need to be
telling those stories. And sometimes it's an emotional thing. Sometimes it's visceral when we know that
others will be chiming in, not always with facts. So it's I think it's a real tension
there to both tell the story, speak the truth, lay things out
practically and transparently, and not come across as though you're
trying to advocate for anything that's going to change
the composition
of the electorate, change of the composition of turnout or any of those things,
or change the process, because I was elected
under that process to change it. I think our local election officials do
a great of that when it comes to policy, but when it comes to budget,
there really isn't an avenue. We have, you know,
the secretary of state's office has our budget hearings
and it goes over all of our budget. And so there may be like three questions
about elections out of 15. And so
even in our own budget hearing what the legislators
we don't spend a lot of time on elections. And I don't think that there's any voice
for the local election officials within our budget because I'm the legislatures and telling us
how to spend our HAVA money. And so I just think it's difficult
to have budget discussions with the legislature
from their perspective, other than a continual education
effort on elections aren't free. Like I know that your association talks to legislators
and I, we k
eep having those discussions. I know that funding is lower on the list
than half a dozen things that are floating through the legislature,
and it's not the highest priority. But if it ever dies down enough,
maybe those are discussions that all of us can have. Some of that's,
you know, a theoretical argument, not not maybe a practical one,
but you're the experts. They'll listen to you far more
than they'll listen to me or our office. And so that's the only thing
I think that's kind of looking for
ward. But right now, there's really not a way
to have that discussion because it's to them it's settled
and they're worried about everything else. Everything else. Any closing remarks? Well, I just wanted to say thank you, first of all, and thank you
for the commissioners for being here. I'm very proud of the election system
that we have in Kansas. I am very proud of the work
that we've done. We're not perfect. There's always ways to improve,
but I'm proud of the system that we have. I think it'
s one of the best
in the country. And I will say,
regardless of who's coming up next, that we do have the best local election
officials anywhere in the country. Thanks, Bryan. Thank you, Bryan.
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