Sunflower State News

Mike Brown, a conservative challenger for Kansas secretary of state, recently committed to the 2022 Election Integrity Candidate Questionnaire and Pledge.

However, current Secretary of State Scott Schwab has failed to respond to any e-mails inviting him to also pledge his commitment to election integrity.

“It’s worrisome when any candidate seeking re-election declines to explicitly state his position on matters of such importance to voters, especially election integrity," Brown said. "As a candidate running to retain his position as the state’s chief election official responsible for administering fair and secure elections, it should be a red flag for any Republican voter that Schwab isn’t willing to commit himself to a detailed accounting of election integrity issues."

President Joe Biden recently met with leaders from Australia, India, and Japan. | whitehouse.gov

The 2022 Election Integrity Candidate Questionnaire and Pledge is led by the Election Transparency Initiative (ETI) and is backed by a broad coalition of more than a dozen national  conservative organizations. According to the ETI's website, the pledge is the first of its kind and invites candidates to go on the record so voters have the ability to gauge their commitment to election integrity for themselves.

By committing to the 2022 Election Integrity Candidate Questionnaire and Pledge, Brown has vowed "to actively support election administration, legislation, litigation and regulations  (consistent with the law) that will help ensure free and fair Kansas elections voters can trust." A press release on the site says this includes a number of both ballot security and voter integrity measures, while also rejecting unsecure and unverifiable voting practices that ultimately undermine confidence in election outcomes.

Schwab and Brown will face off in the Aug. 2 primary. Schwab has fallen short of responding to any email sent to his official office or campaign inviting him to also pledge his commitment to election integrity, according to ETI.

"Now more than ever, voters should be confident that their vote matters, that it can be counted fairly and openly in elections that are secure and transparent and that they can be comfortable with the outcomes whether their preferred candidate succeeds at the polls or not," Brown said. “While Scott Schwab does want to make it easier to vote in Kansas elections, unfortunately he does not want to make it harder to cheat. He not only won’t stand up to Democrats who want to tear down election safeguards and force unsecure voting practices into law, but his own history of implementing unsecure voting practices and eliminating systems to detect fraud should preclude him from leading Kansas elections.”

Brown completed an additional comprehensive election integrity questionnaire that gauged his stance on a range of critical issues, including voter ID, ballot security, absentee voting, private  financing of local elections, ballot trafficking and more, ETI said.

Brown has pledged to reject the use of non-public monies—commonly referred to as “Zuckerbucks” after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg—donated from ideological groups, corporations and Big Tech companies, according to ETI.

In 2020, then county commissioner Brown accepted funds for Johnson County, a decision he says he now regrets based on a lack of information at the time, the initiative said.

ETI believes Schwab cannot be trusted to protect election integrity. He reportedly eliminated Crosscheck, the system used to catch voter fraud, and failed to replace it, ETI said. Additionally, in 2020, Schwab purchased more than 200 ballot drop boxes and distributed them to all 105 counties. 

He stated “I don’t know what the president’s talking about when he says he is concerned with mail ballots,” while also calling those who lack confidence in the 2020 election results “domestic bad actors,” according to the ETI.

As secretary of state, Schwab spent millions of taxpayer dollars on unsecure electronic voting systems, according to ETI.