Mike Lindell-style conspiracy theories blow up Kansas GOP's own voter restriction bill

The Kansas Republican Party was set to pass a bill aimed at curbing the amount of time voters have to return mail-in ballots -- but it's being blown up thanks to a widespread belief in Mike Lindell-style conspiracy theories about voting machines.

According to ABC News, the bill in question would have ended the three-day post-election grace period for voters to get their mail-in ballots back to election offices and would have mandated that all ballots be returned by the time polls close on election day.

While this measure in and of itself stood a good chance of passing into law, some hardliner Republicans in the Kansas state senate insisted on including provisions that ban remote drop boxes and that bar election officials from using machines to count votes.

The report notes that false conspiracy theories about vote-counting machines have proliferated among Republicans since the 2020 presidential election, when Trump-loving pillow monger Mike Lindell and attorney Sidney Powell started spreading false claims about Dominion Voting Systems using machines to steal the election from Trump.

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Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson slammed the additions to the bill, as he said they would make it all but doomed to fail.

“This isn’t a vote that’s going to secure our election,” he said. "It’s going to put an anchor around the underlying bill.”

Rep. Pat Proctor, the Republican Elections Committee chair, similarly expressed reservations about the new measures.

“Kansans that are not neck-deep in politics — they see absolutely no issue with voting machines and, frankly, neither do I," he said.