Kansas will count advance ballots postmarked by Tuesday and received through Friday, August 7. The state's chief election officer spent the last two weeks trying to stop that, and he is also on Tuesday's ballot. [1][2]
The Kansas Supreme Court denied both of Secretary of State Scott Schwab's emergency motions at the end of last week: one to pull the case out of the Court of Appeals for immediate Supreme Court review, and one seeking emergency review of the Court of Appeals ruling on his motion to stay [1][2]. The order's own language, as Democracy Docket reports it: "This court denies both Secretary Schwab's emergency motion to transfer this appeal from the Court of Appeals and his emergency petition for review of the Court of Appeals' ruling on his motion to stay." [2]
From the majority, led by Chief Justice Eric Rosen: "The Secretary has failed to credibly convince a majority of this court that this case, in its current posture, should bypass the regular appellate review process established by our Legislature." [1] The court denied the motions "expressly without comment on the merits of the appeal" [1][2], and characterized the injunction it was leaving alone this way: "The temporary injunction may not ultimately survive appellate scrutiny, but it is not plainly erroneous." [2]
Justices Caleb Stegall and K.J. Wall dissented, writing that the case involved matters of "maximal importance" that warranted immediate review [1]. Neither report gives a vote count, so this piece does not assign one. Two justices dissented; the size of the majority is not in the record we could verify.
The two accounts also differ on the day. Democracy Docket dates its report July 30; KCTV5 published the morning of July 31. Neither states the order's own file date, so the order landed at the end of last week and the exact day is unresolved here.
The underlying fight is over Senate Bill 4, enacted in 2025, which eliminated the three-day grace period and required every advance ballot to arrive by 7 p.m. on Election Day. Governor Laura Kelly vetoed it. The Legislature overrode the veto. [1]
Douglas County District Judge Carl Folsom III blocked the law on July 16 with a temporary injunction, finding constitutional violations [1]. The Court of Appeals ruled against Schwab's stay request. Schwab went to the Supreme Court on an emergency basis. The Supreme Court declined. [1][2]
The practical effect for Tuesday is the older rule, the one Kansas used for nearly a decade: a ballot postmarked on or before Election Day counts if the county receives it within three days [1]. Postmarked Tuesday, August 4. Received by Friday, August 7.
Here is the part that will actually cost votes. More than 44,000 advance ballots have already gone out to Kansas voters carrying printed instructions that state the 7 p.m. Election Day deadline [1]. The injunction supersedes those instructions. The paper in the envelope does not know that. A voter who checks the packet on Monday night, reads that it must arrive by 7 p.m. Tuesday, and concludes it is too late to mail is being misinformed by an official document produced by the office of a candidate in the race.
That is the shape of the conflict. Schwab is the Secretary of State who administers Kansas elections and the Republican candidate for governor in the primary he is administering. In the final two weeks before that election, he asked two appellate courts to reinstate a deadline that would have discarded ballots arriving after 7 p.m. Tuesday.
The strongest case for what he did is not weak, and it deserves stating. SB 4 is a statute the Legislature enacted over a governor's veto, and defending enacted law in court is a normal duty of the office; a secretary of state does not get to choose which statutes to litigate for. A single settled, appellate-tested deadline in place before counting begins is a real administrative interest, especially with 44,000 ballots already printed with the old text and county clerks needing one answer to give voters. Two justices agreed the question was important enough to take up immediately. What the majority declined to do was resolve it on an emergency footing days before an election, and it said nothing about who ultimately wins.
Nothing here settles SB 4. The Supreme Court denied review without comment on the merits [1][2], and the injunction is temporary, which the court underlined by saying it may not survive appellate scrutiny [2]. The law's constitutionality is still live, the appeal continues on the regular track, and the grace period could be gone by November.
For Tuesday, the operative rule is the one in place since before SB 4: postmark by Election Day, received by Friday. The instruction sheet sitting in more than 44,000 Kansas mailboxes says something else, and correcting it falls to the official who went to court to make it true.
