Kobach’s Last Ploy To Thwart Dems In Kansas Senate Race Dealt Big Setback

In this Friday, Sept. 12, 2014 photo, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach discusses his office's legal research for an elections case before the state Supreme Court during an interview in his office in Topeka, Kan. Democrat Chad Taylor has petitioned the Supreme Court to remove his name from the ballot for the U.S. Senate after Kobach refused to do it. (AP Photo/John Hanna)
In this Friday, Sept. 12, 2014 photo, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach discusses his office's legal research for an elections case before the state Supreme Court during an interview in his office in Topeka, Kan.... In this Friday, Sept. 12, 2014 photo, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach discusses his office's legal research for an elections case before the state Supreme Court during an interview in his office in Topeka, Kan. Democrat Chad Taylor has petitioned the Supreme Court to remove his name from the ballot for the U.S. Senate after Kobach refused to do it. (AP Photo/John Hanna) MORE LESS
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In what is likely a big win for Kansas Democrats, the Kansas Supreme Court declined Tuesday to hear the lawsuit being brought by a Democratic voter suing to force the state Democratic Party to name a new candidate in the Senate race. Instead, the state’s high court referred the case to a lower court for a fuller hearing.

David Orel, a registered Democratic voter in Kansas City, Kan., who is refusing to speak to the press, filed the lawsuit after the state Supreme Court ruled that former Democratic nominee Chad Taylor should be taken off the ballot. In it, he argues that the Democratic Party is required by state law to replace Taylor.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has asserted the same position. But election law expert and University of California-Irvine law professor Rick Hasen said that the state supreme court’s new order would likely help Democrats in their effort to leave the Democratic spot open and drive voters to independent candidate Greg Orman in his bid to unseat incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS).

“The effect of this order is to delay things beyond the point at which it would make sense for Democrats to put a name on the ballot,” Hasen wrote on his personal blog. “That is, by the time the issue would get back to the Supreme Court, ballots may have been printed.”

“Democrats had been hoping to run out the clock in this case, and this is a big order helping that cause,” he concluded.

Kobach has already ordered for overseas military ballots to be sent without a Democratic candidate printed. He did, however, state that revised ballots could be resent if the state supreme court ordered the Democratic Party to pick a new ballot because of the Orel case. But Tuesday’s order puts any such ruling off for even longer, as Hasen wrote.

Kansas Supreme Court Order, Orel Case

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