Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s office failed to produce records this summer showing it had certified the voting equipment used by hundreds of thousands of Kansans. Kansas statute requires the Secretary of State to certify equipment before counties purchase it and to keep such certification on file. But the office, responding to a Kansas Open Records Act request in June, could provide only two letters of equipment certification that Kobach issued in the past five years. Yet some counties – including Reno and Finney, as well as Sedgwick, Wyandotte, and Shawnee – have purchased systems since October 2013 that were not the systems mentioned in the two certification letters in Topeka. Why were they omitted?
“Quite frankly, just shooting from the hip, I don’t know,” said State Director of Elections Bryan Caskey in the Secretary of State’s office. The request came as efforts were underway to update records, Caskey said, and he gave “everything I had at my fingertips.”
“I’m acknowledging,” he said, “I don’t know the answer, shooting from my hip.”
“Yes, it’s on the list of things to do. No, I haven’t finished it yet,” Caskey said of updating certification records.
“Every piece of voting equipment used in the state has been certified to the state and national level,” he repeatedly emphasized.
Counties individually choose their election machines. The list of what system a county is using was last revised on the Secretary of State’s website in October 2007. A survey is gathering current data from county clerks. The new list, however, may not be available until after the election.
Full Article: Certified voting machines?.