
Kansas mail-in voting faces a historic crossroads
For more than 160 years, mail-in voting has been a fixture of American democracy—especially in Kansas. During the Civil War, Union soldiers stationed far from home were granted the right to vote by mail, a practice that laid the foundation for absentee voting as we know it. Kansas, in fact, was among the earliest adopters of mail-in voting for non-military, allowing railroad workers to vote absentee as early as 1901.