ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The 2026 election season will be here before everyone knows it, and there will be many candidates for many offices on the ballot.
One of the candidates for Kansas Secretary of State is Pat Proctor, who has been serving in the Kansas Legislature for multiple years.
“I currently serve the people of Ft. Leavenworth in the Kansas House, and I'm the chairman of the House Elections Committee and Kansas Security Committee. Politics was not my life plan – I spent 25 years in the U.S. Army and retired in 2019 and during that time, I went to Iraq twice and Afghanistan once,” Proctor said. “My life plan was to teach – and I do, I'm a professor at Wichita State University in the Homeland Security program. And I figured my wife would fill in the rest because we have two restaurants in Ft. Leavenworth and Manhattan, so I figured I would spend time working for her. But as the old saying goes, 'If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans,' and here I am serving in the Kansas Legislature and running for Kansas Secretary of State because I think our chief election officer needs to know something about elections.”
Proctor said his initial call to run for office came from a sense of duty.
“What initially got me into running for office and the Kansas Legislature is being at Fort Leavenworth. When I was overseas and away from my family, they were taking care of my wife and children, so I felt like I owed them something back. Our town, like many other rural towns in Kansas, is on a rather slow decline because we're losing population and amenities, so I went to the Legislature to try and turn some of that around,” Proctor said. “When you get in the Legislature, they ask you what committees you want to be on, and I ended up joining the Military and Veterans Committee and the Corrections Committee, and they also put me on the Elections Committee. After that, I decided if I was going to be on that committee, I'd better know how things work with all of that.”
Proctor made an appointment with the Secretary of State's office and said he spent the entire day going over everything necessary.
“That day, the entire time I was with those people, my phone was going crazy and blowing up with calls and texts, but I had to ignore them since I was with that team. After I was done, I was on the steps of the Kansas Capitol Building and all of the craziness on my phone was because of what was happening in Washington DC because it happened to be Jan. 6, 2021,” Proctor revealed. “After getting an idea of what had happened with all of that, it hit me like a ton of bricks because I had all these ideas of what I wanted to accomplish while in the Kansas Legislature – and I've accomplished some of those goals – but the most important thing for me to work on was election law because there's a lack of voter confidence and if we don't bring people back into that process, we won't be a country anymore. Elections are what hold the U.S. together, so that motivated me to ask to be the chair of the Elections Committee. Then, when Scott Schwab decided to run for governor, that's what started me thinking about running for Secretary of State, because we need someone in that role who can help restore that voter confidence.”
Some of his previous work, Proctor said, sparked the final catalyst for officially running for the Secretary of State office.
“There are people throughout the state and throughout the U.S. who are not interested in restoring confidence in elections, and they're actually profiting either politically or financially from sowing suspicion in our elections,” Proctor said. “They want to keep that suspicion high because they're getting blog subscribers or podcast subscribers or political mileage out of stoking fear and suspicion about our elections. A couple of those people were talking about running for Secretary of State, and I couldn't watch that happen. I've been focused for the past five years on helping restore confidence in our elections, and I couldn't watch someone go on a statewide election denial tour trying to burn down all of the work that's happened, so I felt it was my duty to run. When you serve in the military, you take an oath to support and defend the U.S. Constitution, and that's an oath to help defend our way of life and our form of government, and that oath doesn't stop just because you take off the uniform. I've served in a lot of places where people have lost faith in the ballot box and civil processes, and there have been tragic consequences because of that, and I can't watch that happen in the U.S. If I have the opportunity to be even a small part of helping restore that confidence and bring people back into the electoral process, I have to do so.”
Proctor said there are many things he would like to do should he be elected to the position.
“If I end up with the honor of serving as the Kansas Secretary of State, I'm going to do what I've already been doing as the Elections Committee Chair. I'm going to be focused on increasing confidence by increasing transparency, combating non-citizen voting and ballot harvesting, and cleaning up voter rolls, and I've passed some legislation to help in all of those areas. In terms of increasing transparency, we did away with the three-day grace period so Election Day is now Election Day, and we banned ranked choice voting because if you need a multi-page explanation of how those votes are counted, it's not transparent,” Proctor said. “Something else I've done in regard to increased transparency is creating a platform in my committee room where people can come in and tell us what their concerns are – I might not entirely agree with your concerns, and I'll push back somewhat if I disagree, but I promise we'll at least listen and have that conversation. The past few years, we haven't really been having conversations in regard to politics, we've been having a shouting match, and that's just absolutely not productive.”
Proctor said another part of the job will include sharing information to quell people’s concerns.
“We have heard multiple concerns in regard to non-citizen voting, and as I dug into that, I discovered there is nowhere in our statutes or the U.S. Constitution that explicitly says you have to be a citizen to vote because it was one of those things that seemed so obvious, no one wrote it down,” Proctor said. “I said 'That's low-hanging fruit,' so this past year, I sponsored a constitutional amendment that says very simply only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote in the state of Kansas, and it passed the House and Senate. After that comes enforcement, and a lot of people don't know this, but in order to get a Real ID in Kansas, you don't have to be a citizen, you just have to prove you are who you say you are and are in the U.S. legally with a green card or other documentation. However, in Kansas, there's a motor voter law because of the National Voter Registration Act, and the person issuing your Real ID has to ask if you want to register to vote. And it sometimes happens, because that clerk has asked that question many, many times already that day, and if English isn't that client's first language, they might not fully understand what they're being asked, and they get put on the voter rolls. Six times in the past 15 years, when that particular Secretary of State has been able to get the DMV to get them a list of non-citizens with driver's licenses ... the last time was last November, and they found 80 non-citizens on the voter rolls, with around 20 of them having actually voted. This year, I sponsored and passed a bill that is going to require those records to be given to the Secretary of State's office every quarter. And there's no nefarious scheme or anything like that, it's truly a matter of that rare human error since those employees are doing that work day after day after day. With ballot harvesting, we have done a lot of good work there – we require signature verification for mail-in ballots now and we limited the number of ballots someone can turn in that aren't their own. We also passed a law that outlaws pre-filled ballot requests because what was happening was there were out-of-state non-profits that were bombarding voters they thought might vote their way with pre-filled ballot requests until they'd send one in, but that got adjoined in court and we're working on that.”
Foreign money in U.S. politics continues to be an issue, and Proctor said he has also been working on that.
“We also passed a law that bans foreign money in Kansas elections, even constitutional amendment campaigns. We're doing a lot of work to try and restore people's confidence in our elections,” Proctor said. “Then, in terms of cleaning up voter rolls, we passed a law that gives county clerks additional tools so they can, if someone hasn't voted for four years, send them a notice, and if that notice doesn't come back, it starts the process to get them off the voter rolls. This year we passed a law that allows county clerks to use online obituaries to help in taking deceased people off the voter rolls. There's a lot of work that's already been done, but there's more work we can do and more resources we could potentially use. And again, there's not some vast, nefarious conspiracy, it's about addressing people's concerns so we can bring them back into the electoral process and restore that confidence.”
Overall, Proctor said, he is looking forward to continuing on the campaign trail.
“I'm working to get to every corner of the state because I want people to know even though I'm from Eastern Kansas, I want to be in this role for ALL Kansans. I've been to multiple events in multiple communities all throughout the state already, and I'm doing that so people know I won't be Secretary of State just for Eastern Kansas, I'm running to serve all Kansans,” Proctor said. “This also gives me a chance to keep doing what I've been doing since I became the Elections Committee Chair, which is meeting with county clerks and election officers because every county is different, and it's important for me to understand what all 105 Kansas counties' election systems look like. First of all, it's a blast visiting all of these different places and meeting Kansans. Every community has its own character and personality, and it's a joy to meet people wherever I go. I've been really excited by the feedback we've been getting in terms of how excited people are, and if I end up being elected, I want to take that statewide and host town hall meetings and other gatherings and let people talk to me and share their concerns. And if anyone has any questions or concerns, they are more than welcome to get in touch with me through my Web site, PatProctor4KS.com, by phone at (913) 250-5553 or by email at
