Top elections job to be open due to Scott Schwab’s plan to run for governor
By TIM CARPENTER
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Rep. Pat Proctor, a retired U.S. Army officer who entered the Kansas Legislature in 2020, launched a campaign for the Republican nomination for secretary of state.
Proctor, of Leavenworth, serves as chairman of the Kansas House elections committee. If elected in November 2026, he would become the state’s top election administrator. The position would be open assuming Secretary of State Scott Schwab continued with a plan to seek the GOP nomination for governor.
Proctor has been among the Legislature’s advocates for election reform bills associated with President Donald Trump’s unproven assertion his 2020 loss to Democrat Joe Biden was fraudulent. Schwab has generally welcomed modernization of state election law, but maintained Kansas elections were fair and secure.
Proctor, 53, announced his candidacy Thursday during an event at a restaurant in Leavenworth.
“Voter confidence that the results of our elections reflect their will is at the core of our form of government and our way of life,” Proctor said. “The best way to restore that confidence is to increase transparency and ensure that only citizens vote in Kansas’ elections.”
Proctor said he played a role in the process of making Kansas “the gold standard for safe and secure elections,” and would continue that work as secretary of state.
During the 2025 legislation session, he supported a bill eliminating the state’s three-day grace period for advance mail-in ballots. Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the bill, because she felt it was important to count ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrived up to three days late through the U.S. Postal Service. Proctor was part of the House supermajority that voted to override the Democratic governor.
The voting rights organization Loud Light Civic Action recently released video of a private Zoom meeting last year in which Proctor vowed to push through a bill dropping the three-day grace period.
On the same call organized by House Majority Leader Chris Croft with Johnson County Republicans and invite-only guests, Proctor said he would prefer Kansas ended the practice of advance voting.
Proctor has taken a central role among Republicans as the Legislature worked to limit authority of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission to engage in inquiries of campaign finance violations and election misconduct. That legislative push coincided with the commission’s complex investigation of Republican legislators and campaign workers.
He endorsed Senate Bill 105, which became law without the Kelly’s signature, requiring a Kansas governor to appoint a person to fill vacancies in the offices of U.S. senator, state treasurer and commissioner of insurance from a list of names recommended by the Legislature. The power grab by the Legislature was crafted to prevent Kelly from appointing a Democrat to a vacancy after resignation of a Republican.
Proctor said Kelly unexpectedly signed Senate Bill 6 to forbid the state to take part in ranked-choice voting, which would allow voters to list their candidate preferences in order on the ballot. The process involved tabulating votes in multiple rounds with the elimination of the lowest vote-receiving candidate after each round until a candidate received a majority.
“I am pleasantly surprised that the governor signed SB6, a bill I carried to passage on the House floor to ban ranked-choice voting, into law,” Proctor said. “Nothing is more corrosive to voter confidence than a voting method that requires a two-page explainer to explain to voters.”
In 2023, Proctor was criticized by a Leavenworth family for publishing without permission in his political newsletter a photograph of an elementary school student’s drawing of a rainbow flag. Proctor alleged the drawing was evidence educators in schools were indoctrinating children on LGBTQ politics. Proctor asserted the artwork was part of a “radical, woke agenda.”
Proctor retired from the U.S. Army as a colonel following 25 years of military service that coincided with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In Afghanistan, he was a planning chief for the transition of that war to security forces ahead of the withdrawal of most American forces. During 2009, he deployed to Iraq as an operations officer for an infantry battalion. He worked in Iraq in 2007 on a strategic communication plan for a U.S. troop surge.
He wrote the 2020 book “Lessons Unlearned: The U.S. Army’s Role in Creating the Forever Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
While serving in the Legislature, Proctor has taught at Wichita State University. He received a doctorate in history from Kansas State University.