Primary Election Day is Next Tuesday in Nine Kansas Counties
July 29, 2025
Local elections in Kansas in odd-numbered years often see very low voter turnout.
In 2016 a progressive Kansas nonprofit decided it wanted to improve turnout in Kansas elections, especially primary elections. Mainstream Coalition’s “The Voter Network” evolved from a “Be a Voter” project to a new independent nonprofit today.
Perhaps you’ve seen The Voter Network’s online summary of the 2025 primary races, which will be decided next Tuesday?
Kansas Local Primary Elections
The Voter Network’s Facebook page shows the nine Kansas counties with primary races on Tuesday, Aug. 5.
The Voter Network’s Facebook page summarizes the primary elections held by local governments next Tuesday Aug. 5 in nine Kansas counties.
This Facebook page invites potential voters to their KSBallot.org page.
We’ll get back to the KSBallot.org page soon, but let’s review what else The Voter Network does.
The Voter Network
Progressive nonprofits in Kansas have spent millions promoting “Integrated Voter Engagement” since about 2016.
A focus of Integrated Voter Engagement is “capacity building,” which adds permanent progressive resources for election organizing by individuals and left-leaning nonprofits.
Two progressive “capacities” lacking in 2016 were online voter registration (now KSVotes.org) and online get-out-the-vote relational organizing tools (now The Voter Network).
The Voter Network focused on relational organizing through its Voter to Voter project using hundreds, now thousands, of “ambassadors” each of which will try to shepherd ten or more friends to the polls.
“Voter to Voter” relational organizing starts by joining an online team to contact with 10 close friends and then talking to them about voting.
The online Voter-to-Voter portal keeps track of your voting friends. The portal uses voter history from public data to promote more efficient and effective voter engagement. The portal suggests actions to take to help your friends to vote.
Voter to Voter ambassador portal shows public information about voting patterns of friends, and suggests tasks to complete for their voting process.
Of course, ambassadors can make personal suggestions to their friends about voting preferences. If most of the ambassadors are progressive, most of the personal endorsements are likely to favor progressives!
A progressive organization building a relational organizing tool for its progressive followers is quite likely to deliver voting results quite favorable to progressive candidates and causes.
The Voter Network’s impact is affecting more than the “blueing” of Johnson County.
So, a “nonpartisan” and “nonprofit” progressive organization can be a huge get-out-the-vote asset for progressive candidates and causes.
Voter to Voter’s impact has already been felt in the “blueing of Johnson County.” Other mostly urban areas of Kansas are starting to see similar changes. The Topeka and Salina Community Foundations have made financial contributions to The Voter Network for work in their cities.
Progressive Shepherding 101. Voter to Voter is a “multi-level marketing for good” relational organizing scheme to promote progressive causes in a “nonpartisan” way. Graphic from Team Leader Manual.
The Voter Network provides a number of Election Resources for the 2025 election in its “Volunteer Toolkit.” One of those tools assists in voter registration, while another helps in finding information about what’s on the ballot.
The Voter Network 2025 Election Resources include QR codes to access KSVote.org and KSBallot.org web sites.
KSVotes.org
The online voter registration system provided by the Kansas Secretary of State and Kansas Department of Revenue was not “good enough” for Kansas progressives.
So, a progressive nonprofit, Blueprint Kansas, doing business as KSVote.org spent over $700,000 from 2017-2022 to provide an online voter registration portal that uses the federal voter registration form. The federal form is more lenient in its requirements than the Kansas form. Many progressive organizations in Kansas link to KSVotes.orgfor voter registration instead of the official Kansas government site.
KSBallot.org
Topeka in Shawnee County is having a primary election for mayor on Tuesday.
If you live in Topeka, go to KSBallot.org to see the list of mayoral candidates:
KSBallot.org through BallotReady shows the primary candidates for Topeka Mayor.
You can then use KSBallot.org to create your planned ballot. Once you’ve made all the selections for your planned ballot, you can email yourself a copy or print it.
Privacy Concerns
Is your online KSBallot.org ballot private? Who can see the ballot you emailed yourself?
The KSBallot.org page offers links to BallotReady’s privacy policy updated Jan. 2025, but the lengthy page does not seem to say they protect the privacy of your online personal ballot:
BallotReady may collect personal information you voluntarily share with us when using our Services …
Any personal information or other content that you voluntarily disclose in public areas of the Website becomes available to the public …
At the time you email or print your ballot, the link to Terms of Use is stale, and there is a separate BallotReady Privacy Policy link from 2016 last updated in 2020. That policy does not appear to protect ballot privacy either.
Watchdog Lab never received answers to questions to The Voter Network sent via email and published in a Sept. 2023 article, including:
When a voter completes an online ballot at Ballot.org who else ever has access to that data? How long is that ballot data retained?
Even the Kansas Reflector had security concerns about personal information given to the KSVotes.org voter registration site.
National Connections
State Voices is an affiliated network of 24 “state tables, 7 “emerging tables” (including Kansas), and 1200 progressive partners across the county.
State Voices announced in their 2024 End-of-Year Report that The Voter Network – Kansas was an “emerging state” in their network.
Influence Watch says “State Voices has received substantial funding from left-of-center foundations.” State Voices has received nearly $5 million from George Soros’ nonprofits from 2016 – 2023.
In 2024 State Voices claims they “made over 179.3 million contacts and over 208.8 million contact attempts to over 66 million voters” nationally.
State Voices claims 262,297 voter contacts in Kansas in 2024 through The Voter Network and other Kansas partners.
State Voices reported 262,297 voter contacts in Kansas in 2024 through The Voter Network and other Kansas partners.
State Voices reported 1.75 million Kansas voter contacts in 2022 of which 1.5 million were through mass mailings by the Voter Participation Center and Center for Voter Information. Excluding the VPC/CVI mailings there were over 213,000 other Kansas voter contacts in 2022.
Finances and Funding
Mainstream Coalition raised and spent about $3 million on its The Voter Network project from 2016 to 2023 according to IRS 990 tax filings.
Summary of The Voter Network project starting with the Mainstream Education Foundation and now an independent nonprofit.
Nonprofit IRS 990s are often filed a year or more after an election.
Known donors of $10,000 or more to The Voter Network from IRS 990s filings and press releases:
- Health Forward Foundation (aka Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City), 2020-2025, $790,000 (including $300,000 grant from July 10, 2025).
- Kansas Health Foundation, Wichita, 2018-2022, $275,000.
- Reach Healthcare Foundation, Overland Park, 2019-2022, $220,000.
- Tides Foundation (“dark money”), San Francisco, 2021-2024, $143,000.
- New Venture Fund (“dark money”), Washington, DC, 2023-2024, $126,000.
- Kansas Values Institute, Lawrence, 2023, $50,000
- Gould Charitable Foundation, Boston, MA, 2021, $50,000.
- Gill Foundation, Denver, 2024, $35,000.
- NEO Philanthropy (“dark money”), New York, 2023, $35,000.
- Topeka Community Foundation, 2023, $27,000.
- All Hands on Deck Network, Northampton, MA, 2020, $25,000. [All Hands on Deck received $437,400 in 2019-2020 from George Soros’ nonprofit Open Society Policy Center.]
- Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, 2019, $20,550.
- Kansas Action for Children, Topeka, 2022, $22,500.
- Greater Salina Community Foundation, 2022, $10,000.
- G Kenneth and Ann Baum Philanthropic, Stilwell, 2019-2020, $10,000.
Unknown: United Methodist Health Ministry Fund as a religious organization does not disclose its contributors but promotes The Voter Network as part of its Faith in Democracy movement.
History
In 2016 the IRS 990 for the Mainstream Education Foundation said it purpose was to promote separation of church and state with emphasis placed on public education and religious freedom.
In 2016 Mainstream initiated a “Be a Voter” project to “increase voter turnout, especially in the primary elections where turnout is lower, educate voters about the importance of completing the full ballot.”
Mainstream expanded its efforts with the addition of a “Voter to Voter” relational organizing approach in 2018 with a pilot program of volunteer ambassadors connected with 5000 voters.
A year later it renamed itself to be The Voter Network while introducing KSBallot.org in cooperation with another nonprofit, BallotReady, in 2019.
In 2023 The Voter Network was spawned off as a new independent nonprofit, while the old nonprofit was renamed (again) to Mainstream Civic Engagement.
The Voter Network was spawned by the Mainstream Coalition 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
Related
Health Forward gifts $300,000 to support 11 Kansas voter engagement organizations for the Nov. 2024 general election.
Non-stop, well-funded, nonprofit progressive activism is the “new normal” in Kansas elections
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SEPTEMBER 18, 2023Read full story