With the 2016 elections looming right around the corner, one local candidate is already looking ahead to the 2017 races, when municipal and school board elections will be moved to the November ballot.

Steven X. Davis, a Lawrence Democrat running for a seat in the Kansas House, said Monday that Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is already behind schedule in adopting rules and regulations to implement that change.

“I don’t know that it’s necessarily an urgent issue,” Davis said. “But he’s supposed to be the ‘rule-of-law’ secretary of state.”

In the 2015 session, Kansas lawmakers passed a bill that requires cities, school boards and other local governments to hold their elections in November of odd-numbered years. They previously were held in the spring of those years.

Supporters of the bill said it’s intended to boost voter turnout in local elections, where often less than 20 percent of registered voters cast ballots. The idea is that if there are elections every November, people will more closely associate that time of year with voting.

The bill also contains provisions requiring the secretary of state to adopt rules and regulations governing such things as the order in which local races will appear on the ballot, and how names of candidates are to be rotated.

The problem, Davis said, is the law calls for those rules and regulations to be adopted by July 1, 2016. But before that can happen, the proposed rules and regulations need to be published at least 60 days in advance, and the Secretary of State needs to conduct a public hearing on them.

Davis is challenging 11-term incumbent Rep. Barbara Ballard in the upcoming Aug. 2 primary.

But as of Monday, Kobach’s office had not published a notice of any such new regulations, and no public hearings have been scheduled.

Bryan Caskey, the deputy secretary of state in charge of elections, said his office is still reviewing the new statute to determine what, if any, new regulations need to be adopted.

He said it’s not clear whether formal rules and regulations are necessary to implement the law and that the office might be able to address some of the issues by issuing policy guidelines instead.

Davis, however, said that process does not allow for formal notice or public hearings, and it effectively allows Kobach to make decisions on his own that can affect how those municipal races are conducted.