Kansas makes it a crime, punishable by jail time, to send voters partially pre-filled applications for an early ballot. That law applies even if a voter requests the application, even if the application is populated with information the voter provides, and even if the information is accurate. That’s a restriction on speech, association, and the right to petition, and yet Kansas has not shown any need for its ban. VoteAmerica and Voter Participation Center, two organizations that promote early voting, challenged the law under the First Amendment and the district court ruled in their favor. On appeal in the Tenth Circuit, Cato filed a brief co-authored by attorneys at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr urging the court to affirm.

The Supreme Court has long recognized that citizens in a free society must be able to know what the law says and therefore the government cannot restrict the distribution of things like statutes, regulations, and judicial opinions. Government forms are no different, since they are vehicles through which citizens can understand and exercise their legal rights. But the public not only enjoys the right to use and distribute government documents, it also has the right to create partially filled applications and to distribute them. That activity bolsters the right of association and to petition, and in the case of pre-filled early ballot applications, it’s inherently expressive, since it communicates the message that participating in the democratic process is important and that mail-in voting is legitimate. The government therefore cannot restrict it without showing a compelling reason for doing so .

Supporters of Kansas’s ban argue that the law helps to safeguard the electoral process, but as we point out in our brief, they lack any evidence that pre-filled applications have led to voter fraud. Moreover, Kansas law contains several protections against voter confusion or fraud, as well as numerous safeguards that ensure election integrity. But the ban prohibits pre-filling applications at all, even with perfectly truthful information or without any intent to commit a crime. At bottom, the law is premised on baseless and disproven theories, and needlessly deprives people of their First Amendment rights.