Kansas Reflector staff preview primary election day 2026
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What is the Kansas primary election schedule and which races are on the ballot?
Candidates have made their pitches. Reporters have burned the midnight oil filing copy. TV station managers have raked in advertising dollars, and postal workers have staggered under the weight of stacks of glossy mailers. Finally, on Tuesday, Kansas voters will have the final say in statewide primary elections. Welcome to the Kansas Reflector Podcast. My name's Clay Wirestone. I'm opinion editor at The Reflector, and for our special Special primary edition today. I'm joined by the entire staff. That would be our fearless editor-in-chief, Sherman Smith, our iconic senior reporters Tim Carpenter and Morgan Chilson, our spectacular reporter Anna Kaminsky, and our Crackerjack intern Bea Burgess. Welcome to you all.
Thanks, Claire. That would have been Sherman, and luckily enough. We're starting with Sherman now because we're gonna go through the major races and the major uh questions and choices that voters will be making this year. And the first one that's coming up on the primary ballot, certainly what a lot of people have have seen ads about, has been a constitutional amendment that's gonna be decided uh August 4th. So, Sherman, tell us a little bit about that.
That's right, Clay. This is an amendment about whether people want to elect Supreme Court justices. Uh, for uh a long time now, going back to the 1950s, we've had a what's described as a merit-based system where uh an independent panel vets candidates sends three nominees to the governor, the governor chooses one. This is a simple yes or no question. Uh, a a yes would rewrite the constitution to say we're just going to have elections, open elections for justices, although there's some details that are unresolved about how that would work. A no would say, let's keep the system the way it is. This
amendment is kind of a stalking horse for a lot of other things. So talk about some of the other issues that are kind of implicated when we talk about what it means to elect or not elect judges in Kansas.
Well, I think first we have to start with why this is on the ballot. And it's because there are people who don't like decisions that the Kansas Supreme Court has made. Um, you know, two of the high-profile ones that get a lot of attention were the decision that established a right to terminate a pregnancy in the Kansas Constitution. And then the other is the the long, long series of rulings on school finance, um where they say you have to provide a suitable and an education. That's interpreted as being enough money and fairly distributed money for all the students in Kansas. So there are a lot of Republicans in the state house, some of their backers who say we're tired of spending all this money on schools.
We need to have a different interpretation of the Constitution. And of course, a lot of people who are upset about the right to abortion in Kansas, they want to undo that. You know, it's very similar to the amendment we had four years ago, which was just about Abortion. But the the thing is, this this opens the door to all kinds of changes in in the way law is interpreted in Kansas. And so we, you know, we see big business groups like Americans for Prosperity in the Kansas Chamber also on board with wanting to elect justices. Uh, and there are some concerns that this would just open the floodgates of cash coming into these elections, much as we've seen in other states like Wisconsin.
And I would just make one final point about the amendment. I mean, obviously we have spoken about this, uh, we've written about this at length, but one thing that is important for folks to understand about this amendment and when they go to vote on it, is that a lot of specifics about how this would actually work. The election of justices, Supreme Court justices in Kansas, has not been set yet.
Yeah, the the amendment says this will just be provided by law, meaning the legislature can come back and make these these decisions. For instance, we don't know which justices would be on the ballot first. They they would be terms staggered so that you'd have, you know, maybe two justices, two justices, three justices over a six-year period.
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Chapters
3 chapters
1
What is the Kansas primary election schedule and which races are on the ballot?
0:01–5:51
2
How will the proposed constitutional amendment to elect Supreme Court justices affect Kansas voters?
5:51–26:39
3
Which candidates are running in the U.S. House primaries and what are the key contests?
26:39–29:20
Speakers
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